The Art of Storytelling - Chapter 1 - Overview

Back to Storytelling Contents.

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Chapter 1: Overview

By Ben 'Magic' Brown (ben.brown@talk21.com)

Contents:

1.1 - Introduction
Recommended Viewing
Reasons To Tell a Story
Inspiration

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1.1 - Introduction

Stories have long been part of human civilization, ever since primitive people could communicate with one another as they developed their own cultures and sought to pass events down to the next generations. Simple oral chants have expanded to different lengths and mediums throughout history from paper-based books and scrolls to the digital age of movies, television programmes and, naturally, gaming with, by extension, fan-based work in modding.

For all of these, the same knowledge and methodologies can be applied.

Storytelling is naturally linked to story writing. For the purposes of this article I'll be using the former term of 'storytelling' for all aspects of story creation and design including the broad term 'creative writing'.

I could attempt to produce an equivalent of the entire Modding Compendium on storytelling alone - literary skills can be developed over years in academic institutions while people can spend their entire lives building up their experience in the art, but the effort would likely be beyond my own skill and time.

Nonetheless, the aim of this article is to show you the basics involved in designing a story, especially in assisting newcomers in avoiding the common pitfalls. This is intended to detail the basic parts of stories so it should be considered as a set of guidelines than a set of rules. It is not intended to be comprehensive or perfect. Like any skill you will need to do plenty of exercises and have your work evaluated and critiqued so that you can improve upon it as much as possible.

After this article, you can study other forms of storytelling such as books, movies, games and music to see how others have told tales in those forms. Indeed, it's an excellent way of re-visiting stories that you already know since you can consciously take into consideration how and why they were told the way that they were. Even something that seems creatively simple such as a 'summer blockbuster' movie is something that afterwards you can learn from, like the Pirates of the Caribbean or Spider-man movies.

The depth of your stories depend entirely on the medium and how they match, in the case of gaming, your gameplay. Real Time Strategy and First Person Shooting games range from generic commanders and soldiers (e.g. The Command and Conquer and Quake series) to actual characters (e.g. JC Denton in Deus Ex). Even though these characters do not always perform typical actions in stories such as the 'call to adventure', a story is present nonetheless. For the purposes of this article we shall be looking at general storytelling that could be applied to any format, not all of it need be applied.

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1.2 - Recommended Viewing

It has been necessary to cite several examples for this article to highlight how certain techniques have been applied but there are 'spoilers' as a result. However, I have attempted to cite only popular stories and to only briefly mention ones that some readers may not have seen. Additionally these are excellent examples and are highly recommended viewing.

These are:

- Star Wars (SW): George Lucas' spectacular sci-fi movie saga, set over six episodes in a galaxy far, far away. The first episode produced was number four, 'A New Hope', and was released in 1977 which was followed by The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and then a prequel trilogy (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) circa 2001. The series has become immersed in popular culture and revolutionised many concepts in cinema, especially special effects and the style of sci-fi stories.

- The Lord of the Rings (LOTR): JRR Tolkien's epic fantasy series of books set in Middle Earth and preceded by The Hobbit, all of which had a vast amount of detail of the world, including cultures, geography and languages. Peter Jackon's film versions are truly awesome pieces of recent cinema.

- Dune: Frank Herbert's sci-fi rich universe based around the desert planet Arrakis, involving politics, war and religion. Originally a series of books, it has been made into movies, computer games and a TV series.

- Warhammer Fantasy Battles (WHFB) and Warhammer 40,000 (WH40K), two universes created by Games Workshop for their wargaming hobby that uses miniature figures to simulate battles. The background material for each of these universes are extremely and vastly well detailed.

- The Matrix: The Wachowski brother's cyberpunk trilogy of movies that was inspired by and including references to many sources, from philosophy and religion to computer hacking to martial arts.

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1.3 - Reasons To Tell a Story

There are many reasons to tell a story and many methods and aspects to consider on how to do so. I've witnessed several people start to tell a story without realising necessarily *why* they wish to do so.

So the reason is best asked with "What do you wish to convey?" - what do you want to tell other people? How can you do so and make it interesting to view? What have you learned in life that's worth passing on to others? Typically, the more unique and appealing your story is then the better. Many stories are based on experiences of the author with lessons they learned, such as how they overcame adversity or some sort of massive challenge.

Everyone has a unique journey as they undergo the 'human condition' in life, with different moments of emotion and interaction. Given the vast amount of human experiences, there are likewise as many potential stories but it is those special ones that captivate people.

However, people don't necessarily have to directly experience these moments as they can be based on other accounts or other stories or simply ones own imagination. With Star Wars, Georce Lucas wanted to create his own version of a 'space opera' that was inspired by Flash Gordon. For The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien had reasons including entertaining children (At least with the original The Hobbit), creating languages and designing his own fantasy universe.

Meanwhile, aside from fictional work, soldiers, for example, may wish to portray the horrors of war and the incredible sacrifices that men make for their causes or ideologies. People dying, after all, invokes emotion and is very influential for the viewer to sympathize over their beliefs.

Another reason to tell a story is simply for fun, based on using your imagination and letting it 'run wild'. Thinking up a fantastic setting and then detailing it as you see fit. Morals and experiences may underline the purpose of the story but the focal point is to craft and document a whole land, culture, world or universe. Frank Herbert's Dune, is such an example, with intricately detailed factions, cultures, politics and even weather (The latter being for that of the title planet, a vast desert of a world).

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1.4 - Inspiration

It is worth mentioning that inspiration is the seed of your literary work. It is the main idea, or set of ideas, that drives you to create the story, whether it is from a real-life experience or being influenced by other sources.

One could argue there is no such thing as an entirely original story as every other story is inspired by something in life. This is not necessarily something to avoid as it is inevitable but you should attempt to be somewhat original in some respect. Sometimes it is as simple as combining two themes together, such as a fantasy story to a sci-fi backdrop, e.g. a young 'farmboy' meets old knight who takes him on an adventure across the galaxy in the case of Star Wars, which was inspired by stories such as Flash Gordon for its sci-fi and the Hidden Fortress for the scenario the heroes face with the Death Star.

However, there is a thin line between inspiration and that of blatantly plagurising from a source. If this is ever done subconsciously (i.e. without realising it), then any respectable author should reasses and rewrite their work. There has to be something different about it - something new has to 'be brought to the table' otherwise you are practically wasting your own time as well as that of the viewer.

Many fictional protaganists (the main character) follow what is described as "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", the title of a book where Joseph Campbell discusses the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies and religions, ones that share many parallels. I shall cover more of this in chapter two.

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1.5 - Keep Learning

"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one becomes a master." - Ernest Hemmingway

While there are naturally recognised talents and aspects, it can take years to master certain parts of storytelling. I myself have looked back at some work - namely that for campaigns I made for the Real Time Strategy games StarCraft and WarCraft 3 - and can't believe the poor level of quality and decisions that I made. However, at the same time I can look at them broadly and see how I've improved over time.

Therefore, one should always be willing to accomodate criticism and to re-evaluate ones work, that is the only way you can strive to become a competent storyteller - at which point hopefully those viewing it will undoubtedly tell you.

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CHAPTER TWO: CORE COMPONENTS

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Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces