How do you view storytelling?

I think this would fit in well with you tropers, considering what we are, supposedly. I'm talkin' 'bout everything. Movies, video games, literature. The prose, the presentation, the aesthetics, the narration. The tools you use for those and more: Do you see it more like building a house, or sculpting a clay piece, or coding stuff...For those who can. I wanna see how you guys think of tropes, all-around, and why/how.

I'm not sure how to explain it for me, mostly in that I see it as a combination of everything I listed and more. Won't fit on that side? Cut it off. Now it doesn't look as I imagined it at all? Tough luck me, reworking that entire structure, maybe even other stuff too because I can. This is assuming I'm talking about literature, but that's the only thing I've worked on much at all, so there.

And you all?

I view storytelling as execution, simply. How do you tell the story, how do you present the characters and the elements, etc etc.

I SEE IT LIKE WEAVING A BEAUTIFULLY CONFUSED WEB AROUND CHARACTERS AND THEIR LIVES EVEN IF THOSE LIVES ARE REALLY FUCKING BORING.

YOU ARE ADRIFT IN A SEA OF WORDS AND THOUGHT AND YOU PUT THIS TOGETHER IN A HAZY DAZE.

WITH BOOZE.

Building a house, most likely. Think of the end product, start with the foundation, work on one layer at a time to avoid early-onset problems.

Sorry if this is too vague.

It's when my

imagination

makes babies with my

dedication.

Juan: And you do it quickly and cleanly and with a sharpened axe pencil?

It is fun and enjoyable and an important and ancient human tradition.

Well, the real question is of how many sword fights I can fit in.

I see storytelling as being about efficiency. Express as much as possible in the smallest amount of time, so the words/visuals get out of the way and the audience has time to feel.

Also word use. This is terribly important. Not only must your words convey a particular idea but they must sound nice. There must be a pleasurable rhythm to your sentences. They must flow into the next sentences well. Paragraph transitions must also be brought to aesthetic perfection.

Repetition is fine for this purpose.

As are short sentences.

And awkward breaks.

Many things are. It all depends on your writing style and many styles are lovely.

But many are dead and bland and you should be shot for using them.

I view storytelling as a foundation for many things. Motivation of what the characters are doing / what I'm doing should be a good idea, since I want to know what goal is there for the characters / me. Storytelling should be essential, as it creates a well developed world with believable characters, along with a good plot that will create emotions.

Of course, storytelling doesn't apply to Shoot 'Em Up games most of the time.

I love storytelling. You make up a bunch of people, and you complicate their lives so that you can tell people all about them.

Thread moved by request.

I view it mathematically—for instance, Dumb Blonde + big ugly monster = blood splatter. I like to set up unusual equations and see what solution logically follows.

edited 15th Jul '11 5:48:11 PM by feotakahari

I view it as writing the history of events that never happened.

I view it as threading together a shirt or a pair of pants. Or for a broader comparison, like putting together a well-built challenging puzzle.

I view it being like painting, you start out with broad strokes then fill in the details and sometimes you have to paint over the parts you love because it would improve painting as a whole.

For me it's like construction. You start with a plan, you put up the framework, you add the decoration, and then the people move in. There are different trades involved: engineers for plot, architects for characters, landscapers for setting, mechanics for atmosphere. The process for a shed is the same as that for a skyscraper, the components differ only in degree.

You can spend years on building one house, or a few weeks on an entire subdivision of cardboard boxes. You can give the same floor plan to two people and get two wildly different houses.

Bella's nailed it. Story construction can and should be viewed as an engineering problem.

• 1:Start with an idea. sketch it out, doodle, improvise etc.
• 2:Once you've mulled it over, come up with a more comprehensive plan. Start solving all the big problems. Do some homework to learn the stuff you don't know.
• 3:Build a prototype. Start solving all the pesky little problems you didn't know would be there but are staring you in the face now.
• 4:Design a better version.
• 5:Build a better version. Put the better version through its paces.
• 6:Repeat steps 4-5 until you get what you want.
• 7: get someone to mass produce your creation.
• 8: Profit! *
  ^{or not, but we'll assume everything goes well here.}

Most writers get tripped up around step 2, honestly. How many people do we know in this community alone who have a story "in-development" (fancy writer parlance for "not done yet, and likely won't be ever")?

-raises hand-

^ I wouldn't call it in-development for mine. (Especially since on your chart it's at Step 5-6.)

That's a hard question...

Well, first I get one small idea in my mind, and then my mind expands it into a full-on story idea, which I share with the world...

...See. Hard to explain.

...

I don't know.

I mean...I guess...

I think I know how I subonciously view it.

If you're conscious of it, it's not subconscious!

Storytelling is one of the few things I take a semi-Measuring the Marigolds viewpoint towards. (Note I said 'semi'; I am a troper, after all.) Guides to what 'a good plot' or 'a good character' is are fine, and often important, but ultimately you have to sort of...feel your way around what does and doesn't suit a story than think your way around it. (This is part of the reason why I hate novelists who write cookie-cutter fantasy by just directly copying The Hero's Journey, because THAT WAS NOT JOSEPH CAMPBELL'S FUCKING POINT. Guidelines, not rules.)

So I think of storytelling as like writing music. You can write optimum music by reading about the exact notes that resonate in the exact right way at the exact right time to elicit a certain emotional response, and that's definitely a worthwhile thing to look into. But I wouldn't write the piece by going through that process, note by note, until I had a piece of music. I'd research and listen a lot, then write the piece, then (I'm sorry for this pun) fine tune it.

edited 22nd Jul '11 6:34:39 AM by AirofMystery

Kash: Well, see, basically, I created a character, and it was only later that I realized that he represents a story teller. So, even though I figured it out, I don't know how conscious it really is.

I think storytelling is one way to share what I have created, i.e. worlds and characters, with others. So for me the important thing - and the easy thing - is creating the stuff. Doing the story is difficult, and doing the plot is really difficult. I'm not sure whether writing is difficult in itself or if it's just because I'm a perfectionist.

Of course there are only really three ways to share worlds and characters, as far as I can see: You can share them via non-interactive fiction (novels and ovies and TV shows), or via interactive fictions (RP Gs and computer games), or you can tell people about them (which tends to be a bad idea).

So maybe for me storytelling is something I do so that I can share the stuff I've created?