This part will try to capture some of the learnings from this thread. I don’t know how much of it will be actually useful, let’s find out:

Wes Kao, a person with intense sales energy says:

  • Aim to create resonant moments that draw your audience’s attention
  • Manage the energy of the crowd by expecting their responses and tailoring your narration
  • You’re good at telling stories you’ve told before because you know when the interesting points are (I dunno, maybe it’s just the practice?)

Then the author mentions Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling and recaps them, so let’s read them directly from the source instead? Well, that seems kinda hard to track down, the source is a Twitter thread by Emma Coats, but here’s an infographic instead:

This advice does seem partly tailored to a written, longform-ish story. Nevertheless, a lot of the advice makes sense. Can’t really find much to comment on - this is short, concise wisdom. Must be why Pixar makes such successful movies :D

Next in the thread is… a thread by a fellow guy who seems identical to the original thread author? And starts by linking to the author’s thread which links his thread inside? Confusered. Anyways, he has a bunch of links to other guys talking about storytelling. Let’s watch the Ted talk “The magical science of storytelling”

  • Okay so this presenter has strong “guy trying hard to storytell” energy
  • He does cite an interesting story about a journalist who bought objects, and asked authors to write about them, then resold them at a profit. Not sure if this is a plug for Enchanted Objects or just general business advice
  • Cheesy storytelling tricks and narration, but part of it does land
  • He does have an interesting way of exhibiting the properties of a story by telling it, kinda overdone tho
  • His 3 pieces of advice on “functional storytelling” are:
    1. Understand that you can be a good storyteller
    2. Write down the stories in your life
    3. Index them by seeing people’s reactions to them

This is while following along with Tom van der Linden’s course on Nebula titled How to analyze stories and enrich your own

Stories

What is a story?

A story is a vehicle for meaning

Why do we tell stories?

  • They help us explain unknown things and concepts (e.g creation myths)
  • They help us inject some meaning into an otherwise possibly pointless existence, add order into a chaotic world
  • They allow us to identify with and empathize with other characters (empathy machines)
  • They allow us to experience catharsis, a purging of repressed emotions, that gives us relief

How do you break down a story?

  • People often start by describing the plot. That’s okay, but try to remove specific elements and generalize it. E.g “Iliad” is about how humans and fight and destroy each other at the whims of supernatural forces. Or “Jurassic Park” is about how humans think they can control natural forces they don’t fully understand.

What is an archetype?

A common element on how to build stories. We use these to identify the shared elements across different stories.

What is a common archetypical story?

The hero’s journey or the story circle are generally similar ways to tackle telling a story.

We begin with a protagonist, who is living an ordinary life. It’s important that we describe their ordinary circumstances, even if they are weird for us (e.g a mercenary in the Star Wars universe), because the adventure will require them to do extraordinary things down the line

The call to adventure comes with a trigger that disrupts the character’s life. There is some challenge that they need to complete.

We walk through their journey, which may end in success or failure.

We end in some transformation - the character is changed. This change will possibly relate to some of the deeper meanings of the story

What are character archetypes?

Core pillars, or building blocks, that you can use to construct human personalities. The underlying assumption is that there is some sort of set of shared characteristics (collective unconscious) that transcends cultures and geographies.

Archetypes are typically quite pronounced, e.g Wise Mentor or Warrior. Recognizing archetypes allows us to map those to our own traits as well, and use them for self-reflection.

There is a shadow of every archetype as well, which can be broken into an active and a passive side. An active shadow of an archetype tends to twist some key element usually increasing aggression while remaining within the same context, e.g a benign king and a tyrannical king. A passive shadow tends to have reduced drive and a more detached relationship with the world around it.

Archetypes can and often are gendered and they can be easily corrupted by our bias to project ourselves into them. One way to try and avoid this is by trying out multiple archetypes over the same character to see how they describe them.

What is a symbol?

Something that represents something else

Can you get too deep into symbolism?

Yes, you can. Typically this is done when you find meanings the author did not plan for due to overanalyzing specific segments. You may also believe that your understanding of the symbolism of an element is the “universal” one which is also untrue.

Are symbols universal?

No. The exact same symbol, e.g the color red, or a rainy day can be used in different contexts to denote very different meanings (e.g red can convey passion, danger, or pain).

On top of that, symbols may be referring to concepts that the audience may be less familiar with, e.g the birds in dutch renaisance paintings are often used to denote sexual desire between characters, because “birding” was slang for sex at the time. This is a meaning that is easily lost to all who are not familiar with that very, very specific cultural context.

We, the audience will often project our own internal thoughts into symbols, whether they match the author’s intention or not

Are stories subjective?

“All art is political”, or slightly more politely “All art is biased”. It is biased by the author’s belief’s that shaped it, but also by the audience’s cultural context that interprets it.