Random Story Quotes

Posted on by

Rob Kall has a nice collection of quotations about story on his Storycon site. Here are a few of my favorites:

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
— Muriel Rukeyser, poet

“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.”
— Maya Angelou, American poet

“A human being is nothing but a story with a skin around it.”
— Fred Allen, humorist

“The highest-paid person in the first half of the next century will be the ‘storyteller.’ The value of products will depend on the story they tell. Nike and many other gloabal companies are already manily storytellers. That is where the money is — even today.”
— Rolf Jensen

The Narrative Arc of PhD Programs

Posted on by

Several entries ago, I reported the discovery of Jill Walker’s site documenting the explorations of her PhD program. I’ve now found several more and have realized that they, along with mine, describe the narrative arc of our PhD programs, or at least portions of our programs. My blog attempts to tell the unfolding story of my encounters with story.

Danah Boyd, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, explores “how people negotiate their presentation of self in mediated social contexts to an unknown audience.”

Christy Dena’s sites cover a number of fields, including Writer Response Theory, New Media Arts, and the ones of greatest interest to me, Polymorphic Narrative, and CrossMediaStorytelling. Dena is a PhD candidate at New Media and Creative Writing, School of Creative Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia.

I also keep another blog, password protected and mostly for my own benefit and that of my doctoral committee, that traces the narrative arc of the process of my program, where this one is about content.

I find fascinating the idea of being able to follow the stories of intellectual discovery of globally far-flung scholars.

Storytelling for College Students: Stealth or No Stealth?

Posted on by

I’m teaching an entrepreneurial seminar to college students starting next month. I’ve taught this class once before, but this time I plan to completely revamp it and take a storytelling approach to it. The class lends itself perfectly to storytelling because it is speaker-driven — each entrepreneurial speaker tells his or her story.

But I’m a little worried about how my students will respond to the idea of a class taught with a storytelling approach. Last time I taught it, I had a few arts and sciences majors. This time, my roster shows 30 business majors. I’ll be an INFP talking to a sea of ESTJs (probably). When I emphasized the importance of good writing when I taught business communication, my students would whine, “But Mrs. Hansen, this isn’t an English class.”

And last time I taught the entrepreneurial seminar, one of the students’ absolute favorite speakers was the only one who didn’t really tell a story. He framed his talk as the 10 Commandments of Entrepreneurship or some such thing. He was much more didactic than the other speakers. And the students ate it up for some reason.

I got a glimmer of an idea when I saw a little snippet from Steve Denning in response to someone who said “Storytelling will never work in my company.” Denning said sometimes you have to use stealth storytelling — use storytelling, but don’t tell your audience you’re using storytelling. So, I’m considering using stealth with my students. Part of me feels that I’d be a pretty rotten proponent of storytelling if I were not able to make my case to a classroom of college students that story is a wonderful thing. But I am a bit tempted by the stealth idea. What to do? What to do? Color me perplexed. I’ll keep you posted as Aug. 29, the first day of classes, approaches.

Let the Story Unfold …

Posted on by

Last week, I made my first small attempt to publicize this blog. Having sent an annoucement to the Working Stories list, I got a lovely e-mail from Stephen Harlow, who, I believe, became the first blogger to blog about my blog

Stephen turned me onto several interesting story links. I’m just beginning to digest Ulises Ali Mejias’ blog and his concept of Distributed Textual Discourse.

A bit more accessible to my feeble brain is Mark Bernstein, with whom I was already familiar and one of whose articles is linked from this blog’s links section. In a frequently cited piece for A List Apart magazine, “10 Tips on Writing the Living Web,” Bernstein presents Tip No. 6, Let the story unfold:

The Living Web unfolds in time, and as we see each daily revelation we experience its growth as a story. Your arguments and rivalries, your ideas and your passions: all of these grow and shift in time, and these changes become the dramatic arc of your website.

Understand the storyteller’s art and use the technique of narrative to shape the emerging structure of your living site. Foreshadowing hints at future events and expected interests: your vacation, the election campaign, the endless midnight hours at work in the days before the new product ships.

Surprise, an unexpected flash of humor or a sudden change of direction, refreshes and delights. Use links within your work to build depth, for today’s update will someday be your own back story.

People are endlessly fascinating. Write about them with care and feeling and precision. Invented characters, long a staple of newspaper columnists, are rarely seen on the Living Web; creating a fascinating (but imaginary) friend could balance your own character on your site.

When the star of the site is a product or an organization, temper the temptation to reduce the narrative to a series of triumphs. Although you don’t usually want to advertise bad news, your readers know that every enterprise faces challenges and obstacles. Consider sharing a glimpse of your organization’s problems: having seen the challenge, your readers will experience your success more vividly.

Interweave topics and find ways to vary your pacing and tone. Piling tension on tension, anger on rage, is ultimately self-defeating; sooner or later, the writing will demand more from you than you can give and the whole edifice will collapse in boredom or farce. When one topic, however important, overshadows everything else in your site, stop. Change the subject; go somewhere new, if only for a moment. When you return, you and your reader will be fresher and better prepared.

Brush with “Blog Daddy” Fame

Posted on by

So, I went to 5th and 6th grade with Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine fame. Yeah, probably lots of people have met Jarvis, described as “Blog Daddy” in a CNN screen capture at BuzzMachine. But how many of them know that in 1964, today’s liberal wore a political campaign pin sporting a plastic bubble with gold glitter suspended in water — get it? — Gold Water? Or that he was a lieutenant on the safety patrol? Or that he played Captain Hook (to my Peter Pan) in the 6th grade play.

That’s him in May 1965 in the lower left corner of the photo above (I’m the one with with four round buttons on my jumper in the upper right). To me, he looks exactly the same today as he did then, today’s beard nothwithstanding. Who knew back then that he would grow up to spoil TV and movie reviews for me forever because he, to the best of my knowledge, invented the system of giving letter grades in reviews. Now, if a review doesn’t have a letter grade, I don’t know what to make of it. I even make my husband give my cooking letter grades. Jarvis carried this invention to Entertainment Weekly, of which he was the founding editor. He’s long gone from EW, but he set the tone for a terrific magazine, to which I still subscribe. For a time in the late 80s, my husband and Jeff both worked at People magazine.

Is this tribute to Blog Daddy Jeff Jarvis a cheap attempt to get more attention for my blog? Ummmm ….. yes?

Blogging and Writing-to-Learn

Posted on by

If we accept the premise that blogging is primarily storytelling, then if we can learn by writing stories, we can learn by blogging.

Ana Ulin, who has a multicultural and multilingual background (and currently lives in Sweden) is the author of the blog at anaulin.org.

In this entry, she offers a number of quotes on the process of writing from the book How to Get a PhD, and then adds:

“Interestingly, the ‘writing to learn’ idea is in tune with some popular ideas about blog writing.” She then cites several blogs that reinforce the writing-to-learn by blogging concept.

Distributed Narrative

Posted on by

Ah, I think I’ve found a blogish kind of Web page that is somewhat analogous to the exploration of story/narrative I’m trying to conduct with this blog.

In 2004, Jill Walker started researching distributed narratives. She uses this page to track her progress on the project.

Her paper, Distributed Narrative: Telling Stories Across Networks, which I admit I haven’t totally digested yet, is available in a 10-page version, a 20-page version (these first two are PDFs; you can download them at her page above), and as a Web version of slides.

Walker writes:

“Distributed narratives don’t bring media together to make a total artwork. Distributed narratives explode the work altogether, sending fragments and shards across media, through the network and sometimes into the physical spaces that we live in. This project explores this new narrative trend, looking at how narrative is spun across the network and into our lives.”

Blog as a Disruptive Narrative Form

Posted on by

Supporting the notion that blogging is a form of storytelling:

Michael Heraghty and Gerald Adams prepared a 500-word proposal for the European Conference on Weblogs, 2003.

The authors contend that if no story moves through the “blog,” it is not a blog. Ulp — beginning to wonder if my blog is a blog on that basis. Perhaps mine is the story of my exploration of story.

Key points that especially resonate with me:

  • The blog is a narrative form optimized for the web. All weblogs draw from a set of visible features and functions, and underlying motivations, that make them ongoing “conversations” among bloggers and readers – stories with pasts, presents and futures. Unlike portal sites, blogs are not juxtapositions of datum flotsams.

  • A site may utilize blog-style UI conventions (calendar, archives, etc.) but if it has no underlying narrative – no story moving through a past, present and future – it is not a blog.

  • Blogs feel more human than non-narrative sites.
  • (Postmodernists might argue that all blogs/identities can be interpreted as fictions!)
  • The weblog combines interactive narrative with notions of identity, authenticity and community, in a manner suggestive of pre-literate, oral/tribal communications networks.
  • The blog is not just a narrative form; it is a disruptive narrative form.

    • Sampling a Course in Storytelling

    Posted on by

    SimmonsCompBook.jpg

    In an earlier entry, I described the presentation by storytelling author and expert Annette Simmons at a storytelling conference in Washington, DC, in April. I mentioned how Annette had pulled an Oprah-like act of generosity and given each audience member a copy of The Story Factor Composition Book (pictured) and the accompanying CD with a sample of the first two lessons that go with the composition book.

    I finally had a chance to listen to the CD, and it was a delight to again listen to Annette’s Carolina twang. I’ve reviewed several audio products in my work for QuintCareers, and they are usually quite didactic and lecture-y. Annette’s is, conversely, completely conversational. The first two segments are about 20 minutes each, which seems like about the right length, and they are full of illustrative stories. I have to say that in all the research I’ve done about storytelling in the last year, proponents talk a lot about the value of story, but there seems to be a dearth of examples of actual stories. Not the case with Annette’s CD, which also offers some old-timey, twangy musical interludes that sound exactly like what you’d hear sitting around the campfire listening to stories.

    I’m struck by a couple of things about Annette’s composition book and CD combo. First, I thought about the “Telling Stories” seminar I recently attended for my PhD program and how Annette’s approach would probably have worked in the seminar. Which is not to say that the approach of the seminar conveners wasn’t great. The seminar was excellent, but Annette’s framework would have been extremely useful as well. At the seminar, the focus was on writing, but there’s only a slim nuance of difference between that focus and Annette’s emphasis on story composition and storytelling.

    The other thing is about the applicability of Annette’s 7-day course to job-seeking and career. Anyone who is actually reading this blog knows that, while I am interested in many aspects of story, I am especially interested in how storytelling can be used in organizational entry, i.e., getting jobs. Annette’s course would be fantastic in a career workshop because so many of the stories she talks about can be used in the job search. Sure, some types of stories are more useful in the job search than others. Her “Who Am I?” “Why I’m Here?” and “Vision” stories are particularly relevant, but all her story types have SOME application to job-seeking and career development. That was evident to me when I read her book, The Story Factor, but it’s especially evident in sampling this course.

    Annette’s approach is even applicable to networking. One of the first points she makes is that storytelling is reciprocal; the same is true of networking. To be an effective networker, you have to give as much as you get. Similarly, Annette says that you have to be a good story listener to be a good storyteller.

    While it may seem far-fetched to apply Annette’s definition of story to resumes, cover letters, job interviews, and career portfolios (well, maybe not so far-fetched with interviews), I am convinced this definition could breathe new life into the job-hunting scene:

    “Story is a re-imagined experience narrated with enough detail and feeling to cause your listeners’ imaginations to experience the event through their imagination.”

    Think of it — if an employer can imagine your performing for his or her company based on the vibrant story you tell of what you can do, you will be that much closer to landing a job.

    As you can tell, I am very high on Annette Simmons’s work, and I’m sure the full CD and composition book will be a big hit when they are released in the fall of 2005.

    Blogs vs. E-zines

    Posted on by

    I recently received an article for publication from Suzanne Falter-Barns about how blogs are beating out ezines.

    But I’m not so sure. I thought about ezine publishers I know who have switched to a blog format. Find Your Way was a newsletter that became a blog. It’s a good one, too, but I never think to check it out since I’m no longer receiving mailings about it from its publisher, Liz Sumner. In contrast, I get regular mailings from Kevin Donlin, who used to send an ezine but now sends monthly reminders of his blog. I rarely visit the blog, though, because the monthly reminders have sometimes linked to an annoying “audio postcard.” One of my favorite ezines is Jennifer Warwick’s Success Tips for Gutsy Women! Jennifer has just announced that she has started a blog, but she says the blog will fill a void between issues of her ezine. That seems to me to be a better approach than abandoning an ezine format altogether. At Quintessential Careers, we have an ezine, QuintZine, as well as what I would call a quasi-blog. If you don’t have both — or at least regular reminders to subscribers that they can visit your blog — readers may forget about you.

    Many of Falter-Barns’s assertions make it seem as though blogs are better for the reader, but she actually makes them sound easier for the creator. She does make the point that if you trade your ezine in for a blog, you will no longer have to mess with subscription lists, which is a pretty good point. She says that all the e-marketers she knows have lost subscribers. QuintZine has not significantly lost subscribers since the Great AOL Meltdown (when AOL arbitrarily decided that we were spamming all our opt-in AOL subscribers, and we removed them from the list), but our list has remained static for more than a year. And we do all our circulation functions manually, so it would be kind of nice not to have to do that. Of course, at QuintCareers, it’s actually sort of a goal to lose subscribers because that means they have found a job and no longer need our advice.

    Anyway, here’s Falter-Barns’s article:

    I was all set this morning to write about something totally different in this issue … but thanks to the power of blogs, I’m here to deliver a totally different message. Namely the ascendance of blogs over ezines.

    Why Blogs Are Beating Out Ezines … And Matter So Much to Your Platform
    by Suzanne Falter-Barns

    I was all set this morning to write about something totally different in this issue … but thanks to the power of blogs, I’m here to deliver a totally different message. Namely the ascendance of blogs over ezines.

    First of all, you may notice that you’re not getting a whole lot of issues of this ezine from me. Why? Because I’ve come to understand that blogging is faster. It’s more immediate. It’s got a wonderful airstream of energy that follows each post. And because it’s less formal, it’s less work — but still communicates just as effectively as an ezine … perhaps even more so.

    This point was made wonderfully clear for me just this morning by Stacy Brice, who runs the noteworthy VA training program, AssistU. Stacy sent up a very thoughtful comment to my “Painless
    Self Promo” blog, under the header “The Future of the Ezine.” Which led to an email, which led to a lengthy phone call. Stacy and I had a real heart-to-heart about this ezine vs. blog thing … and here’s what I’ve decided is the state of things at the moment.

    1. We’re in a transitional shift from ezines to blogs. This has mostly to do with people being reluctant to give up old comfy ways for a few minutes of learning new technology, downloading RSS desktop applications, etc. It was like this just before we traded in vinyl for CD’s, telepathy for cell phones and to-do lists for Palm Pilots. And some of us have never moved forward. Those of us who did are pretty happy.

    2. Blog technology has finally leapt up to the plate. It’s happening; it’s here; it’s on the cover of Business Week. Blogs can no longer be dismissed as fringe techie territory. They’ve gotten so easy to use, and read, that there is simply no denying them. Blog creation software du jour is typepad and wordpress. Typepad blogs exist on the vendor’s website for a small monthly fee. WordPress blogs exist on your own site for frëe. Typepad’s more elegant. WordPress is more basic and functional. I’m running a test to see which will eventually work better for me.

    3. It’s no longer all about the list. I am still an advocate of ezines, but I believe the list/email connection is rapidly unraveling. My own lists have declined in size as have those of every Net marketer I know. Ezines have peaked and crested in their usefulness and appeal. Meanwhile, blogs are hot. AND you can capture names on them. (See my blog for details on how to do that.)

    4. We’re no longer happy with passive activities. Maybe as a culture we’ve grown completely sick of sitting around doing nothing … all those hours of reality TV? We’ve now begun to expect to participate in our entertainment, even when it comes to reading websites. So blogs — which allow comments from readers — are the perfect medium. (This is also why my current theater project, at serenityhawkfire.com, is an entirely interactive theater piece.)

    5. We’ve become a less formal culture. These days, our world is all untucked; clothing is big and slouchy, coffee is slurped in paper cups on the run. Even TV has let down its defenses, showing us as we “really” are. So it makes sense that blogs, which feature faster, less formal entries more in the style of a diary, are becoming bigger than ezines. Blogs are casual. Ezines take planning, layout, require regular entries and take a lot more time.

    6. Blogging is faster. How long does it take to make an entry? Five to ten minutes, I’d say. My ezine, meanwhile, takes 1-2 hours. Yes, you need to do more blog entries, but they’re hardly brain surgery. Instead, they are quick insights you offer up from your life on the go. And so they are read in the same spirit.

    7. Blogs are beloved by the media. This is where a majority of all media research on who’s who and what they’re up to is now done. It used to be that your credibility as a media subject was evaluated strictly by your site; that’s where the media looked first to get a beat on you. Know they want to know what you’re posting on your blog — even if it doesn’t have a “media room” like your site (hopefully you’d have that linked somehow in your margins.) And they want to know what kinds of posts and comments your getting.

    If you’re still working on building up your ezine list, I recommend you beef it up by including a blog in your offerings. It will energize your website, attract Google and Yahoo ranking and generally create more buzz.

    If you have a blog but have not maximized it by setting up a name capture tool, or do not post frequently, give that a whirl, too. You’ll be amazed at who stops by!

    And if you have thoughts on the tender blog-ezine dynamic, email them to me — or even better, drop by my blog and post them on the most recent comment. Then we’ll all be able to see them and add comments of our own.

    Here’s to the continuing discussion. May your blog bring your platform, and set people talking!

    Suzanne Falter-Barns’ Web site offers tips and tools that help you build your platform and get known as an expert in your field. Sign up for her free ezine, Expert Status, and receive her free report, “25 Top Self Help Literary Agents.”