How to Tell a Good Story - Beyond Technique
4#Storytelling #Story #FantasyStorytelling
How to Tell a Good Story - Beyond Technique
Jay Sherer and Caleb Monroe explore the essence of storytelling in order to determine why humans love stories and what about humans makes storytelling essential to our being. It's about going beyond technique to what's deeper: Why storytelling is to important to humans.
- What lies underneath technique? How do we know what a good story is, NOT by looking at technique, but rather by looking deeper than technique?
- Why do human beings have needs and wants? And do you think that question is relevant to storytellers?
- What needs and wants does storytelling attempt to address?
- What objective criteria do we have at our disposal that we can use to determine whether or not a story is good?
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WANT MORE STORYTELLING TIPS? CHECK OUT JAY'S ONLINE COURSES:
- Fiction Writing: How to Identify Your Target Market: https://www.udemy.com/course/writing-...
- Marketing 101: The 4 Ps for Self-Published Authors (Coming Soon!)
- Fiction Writing: How to Write a Concept that Sells (Coming Soon!)
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THE RECLAMATION SOCIETY'S ORIGINAL STORIES:
- Star Wars: Rivals: https://youtu.be/wrqWoTLRzCw
- DEATH OF A BOUNTY HUNTER: https://mailchi.mp/99c612968e83/dbh-q...
- TIMESLINGERS: https://www.reclamationsociety.org/ti...
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JAY'S NOTES FROM THE CONVERSATION:
HOW TO TELL A GOOD STORY - BEYOND TECHNIQUE... WHY ARE STORIES SO IMPORTANT?
I believe that the human brain is seeking an answer to the question: What is Truth?
In order to find that Truth—capital “T” Truth—the core of our very existence… what would we need in order to discover that Truth?
We need answers to the following questions, the basic elements of storytelling:
What - What’s happening?
Where - Where is it happening?
When - When is it happening?
Who - Who is experiencing it?
And the most important: Why is it happening?
If we don’t have relevant answers to those questions, we cannot discover the Truth.
EXAMPLE:
If I say: A man in Downtown Los Angeles ran across the street at 8:05AM and was hit by a Subaru Outback...
I gave you WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN…
It’s not enough to know the Truth. These “facts” are not enough.
If I go on to include: The man, Alexander Drummond—lost his wife and child in a car accident a year earlier. He was devastated by that, lost his job, and became addicted to heroin. And that morning, he was out looking to buy more heroin when he looked across the street to see a toddler pull away from his mother and run out into the street. Remembering the immense pain and suffering of losing his own family, Alexander rushed out into the street to grab the toddler.
Now, having given you WHO and WHY… you have something closer to the Truth.
What, Where, and When are important…
But understanding Who and Why are critical…
Because in our quest to explore and discover the very nature of Truth, we must:
Understand WHO we are…
And we must understand WHY—not only WHY we’re here… But also WHY anything happens...
Which means a good story must go deeper.
A storyteller must, in some sense, become a philosopher, a psychologist, a private eye, and even a shaman in addition to being a detail-oriented journalist.
Here’s another real-life example that I’ll end with:
John Wick, in my mind, does not become a popular film if his dog isn’t killed in the first movie.
The action is amazing. The cinematography is stunning.
But if we don’t understand WHO he is and WHY killing his dog matters so much to him…
That movie doesn’t work. It’s just an impressive, 2-hour action sequence.
HOW TO TELL A GOOD STORY - BEYOND TECHNIQUE... WHY HUMAN BEINGS HAVE NEEDS AND WANTS:
I think this question is crucial to storytellers, because it’s not only crucial to the audience, it’s crucial to US. If we don’t understand why the needs and wants of our audience exist, how in the world can we address them in a way that leads them—and US—toward TRUTH.
We have needs and wants because we are not gods.
And that’s a story we tell ourselves over-and-over again: Jurassic Park, The Fly, Watchmen, and you could keep going.
The reality is we know we’re not gods, and therefore we must guard ourselves against hubris.
BUT… because we’re not gods we can’t will things into being.
And because we can’t will things into being, we have needs and wants.
We need food. We need shelter. We need relationships.
We want safety. We want prosperity. We want peace.
In my mind, THAT’s why we have needs and wants, and life is the process of discovering Truth so that we can answer those questions.