Storytelling (4/11/11)

At one point in my life, I wanted to be a writer because I loved creating my own stories. I am a huge fan of fantasy and science fiction stories. But I never did go out and write an entire novel. I may still have some short stories I wrote, somewhere in storage but none of them were ever completed. When I go and think back to those days I used to write, I never did any sort of brainstorming or mind maps. I sort of just started writing away with whatever came to mind. As I look back now, I wonder if brainstorming or creating a mind map would have made a difference in completing my stories.

The reason I brought up how I once wanted to be a writer is because yesterday’s class was all about storytelling. It was interesting how class started off in the morning. Our morning discussion was able to lead into the class topic on storytelling. Class started off with Professor Jimmy Moss asking a fellow student how her weekend was. She said she had the chance to visit an exhibition where it was a parody of Disney characters. Disney characters were drawn in a sort of twisted way from what they normally would look like. Artists were creatively expressing a different side to the normal happy, kind, and friendly characters. So Jimmy asked us, how is Disney so successful? We all know that Disney is an extremely successful multi-billion dollar company. They are the largest company in the world who has hired the most artists and designers. But how have they lasted so long? And what it comes down to is that Disney stays on a strict guideline as to how they convey their stories and their characters. Their characters appeal to children because they are not scary or indecent. They are cute, friendly, and funny. Disney has embedded this vision to their audience and has been extremely successful in keeping to their vision.

So after talking about Disney, we moved on to the topic of storytelling. What are the elements of a story? As we brainstormed in class, we came up with a lot of terminology involved with stories:

Beginning	Setting	Rising Action	Suspense	Sex
Middle	Plot (Plot Twist)	Theme	Experience	Different View Points
End	Mood	Metaphor/Symbolism	Interaction	Voices
Characters	Conflict	Relationships	Fantasy	Narrative
·       Protagonist	Climax	Moral	Tragedy	Biographical
·       Antagonist	Resolution	Expression	Romance
Cliffhanger	Gore	Humor	Dialog

After taking the time to write down all of these words, Professor Moss said all of our answers were correct. We then moved on to watch two videos on TED.com. The first video was Amy Tan, the author of the Joy Luck Club. The second video was Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love. I think the reason for watching these videos is to help prepare us for our final. Jimmy gave us a quick description of what it would be. It’s going to be a 5-minute video of our self, expressing how we create something from nothing.

As far as storytelling went, I enjoyed watching Elizabeth Gilbert’s video most. She didn’t use images from a PowerPoint presentation when she did her talk. She just spoke and in doing so, really captured my attention. It had to do a lot with her body language also. She walked around the stage a bit and as she spoke and used her hands as gestures when she spoke. But you never lost focus of her face as she spoke, she may have used hand gestures but her face and voice were the focal point. I really liked what she had to say as well. She was a very good motivational speaker. She talked about how her book Eat Pray Love has been such a “freakish success”. And now everyone is going up to her asking her if she is afraid that her next book will fail miserably or that her next piece will never be as good as Eat Pray Love. She admits that yes, she is afraid. She states that she is 40 years old and that her best work may already be behind her. But so what if that’s the case? She says that creative minds need to live, and not go down that dark road of feeling doomed or turn to drinking as a solution. Her motto is that she’s not going to let that stop her from working. We should all find a creative process, even if it is to get inspiration by talking to an invisible being, a  “genius”, as the Romans called them. Elizabeth Gilbert is going to continue to write and tells the rest of us that we should not be afraid, but continue to do our job, whatever it may be, and keep showing up.

This is extremely good advice to a designer because there are always going to be moments in our lives when we have “writer’s block”. When we have an idea in mind but are stuck in a sense that we don’t know how to get to the next steps. This is the best time to go back to where your inspiration originally came from and look at it again in a different way and get reinspired. With Amy Tan, during her entire talk, she had a bag on the floor in front of her. At the end of her talk, she revealed what was in the bag. It was what she called her muse, her inspiration. It turned out to be her dog. That is where her inspiration comes from. Not all of us will have a muse, but if we believe in the idea of a muse being something that’s real, then it gives our mind that extra creative boost we need in finding our ideas.