The Elements of a Story
Words hold power—the power to soothe, excite, offend, embrace, and cut. They are “events unto themselves” (Sidwell, Community, 2007). Stories, as amalgamations of words, possess the same power. Great stories grab our attention—they evoke deep and lingering emotions as they transport us, excite our senses, preserve our past, create a sense of community, or engage us fully. Our lives are transformed by great stories.
Which, of course, begs the question, “What makes a story great?”
Vonnegut humorously posits that great stories follow prescribed paths along the Y-Axis of “Good Fortune” and the X-Axis of “Beginning to End” wherein the hero (or heroine) experiences personal growth and challenge before (undoubtedly) triumphing in the end (Comberg, 2010). Although not explicitly stated, Vonnegut’s description assumes a dramatic arc as his recounted stories begin with exposition, continue through rising action to climax, and experience a fall in action as a denouement signals the (usually) happy ending (Comberg, 2010; Melcher, 2012).
Tongue-in-cheek aside, it is our experience of shared humanity in a story that holds our attention. In The Clues to a Great Story, Karin Hueck & Rafael Quick (2013) posit great stories “make me care, take me with you, [are] intentional, let me like you, and delight me.” The National Storytelling Network (n.d.) describes interactivity, the use of word and action, presentation of a story, and the active imagination of the listener as fundamental characteristics of a compelling story.
Although “storytelling isn’t a one size fits all” (Stevenson, n.d.) approach, in a great story, the listener creates “vivid, multi-sensory images, actions, characters, and events…based on the performance of the teller and the listener’s own past experiences, beliefs, [and] understandings” (National Storytelling Network, n.d.). Powerful stories…great stories…require our participation as they enrapture us in the world of vivid pictures they paint. As Sidwell (Community, 2007), states “When you want to give information, write it down; when you want to give images, tell a story.”
Why do we tell stories?
Stories teach us to understand our individual place in the world and embrace interdependence as we see the intrinsic value of others through their stories. We experience the universal emotions of love, death, joy, grief, and aching sadness intimately and personally and as a part of the collective whole (Sidwell, Community, 2007). Through story, we teach new generations, “[passing] on traditions, community and cultural paradigms, and moral and ethical codes” (Sidwell, Community, 2007). In short, stories shine the light of our humanity, enabling us to vividly see the connection of self to the whole.
Powerful stories push the boundaries of experience shared to embrace experience created. A phenomenal storyteller understands the capacity of an individual to capture the hearts of a community, provoke an emotional response, and affect real change. “When a system is unjust, our voices must be heard. When a community is suffering, our voices must be heard. When children and families are hurting, our voices must be heard; and when process has been compromised and corrupted, we must speak out and tell our stories” (National Association of Black Storytellers, n.d.) [original emphasis]. “Powerful stories illustrate our shared humanity and show how much more we [have] in common than divides us…every story matters and every voice counts” (StoryCorps, Discover, n.d.).
Finally, “the simple pleasure of remembering is another reason to tell our own stories” (Sidwell, Telling, 2007). Our stories become welcome friends and ageless comforts as time passes; remembering a parent’s love, sharing a fiery grandmother’s tales of her youth, holding a child for the first time, reminiscing time spent in the arms of an unforgettable lover, or something as simple as driving down a dark country road, feeling the warmth of a loved one’s hand resting on your knee as a warm wind caresses your cheeks and rustles your hair, the radio softly playing the music you hear in bars with scarred wooden floors beaten by the boots of “regulars” as they keep time to the antiquated jukebox in a small Texas town, watching the headlights weave in and out of trees, occasionally lighting the eyes of something wild, as the powder blue 67’ Chevy bumps and rattles over hills and dips lending infinity to the moment only a teenager could experience but one whose feeling we, aging though we may be, will never forget.
We tell our stories because our lives matter and we want to be heard. (StoryCorps, About, n.d.)
How does “digital” change stories?
Digital stories do not vary from the traditional concept of storytelling in element or purpose; we expect both to enthrall our senses, engage our emotion, and carry us with the story (Iwancio, 2011; Hueck & Quick, 2013; Smith, 2013). A great story is a great story regardless of environment or delivery.
Digital diverges, however, as its affordances allow readers to interact with and “experience the story differently” (A.C., 2015). In a digital environment, the storyteller may select the platform(s), increase interactivity with the story, include stronger images and content, or choose the medium/media that best tell the story (Smith, 2013). Digital media allows for bold experimentation and “[nudges] the reader into a new kind of relationship with the story” (A.C., 2015).
Further, multimedia expands the canvas for storytellers, creating “transmedia storytelling” wherein our interactions take advantage of machines, as opposed to “organic communication” to bring “orality [back] into the communal circle as a core human activity” (Jenkins, 2010). Using social media and other Web 2.0 platforms, anyone can tell a story to a potentially unlimited audience; the widespread availability of these platforms encourages mass engagement around both the most important and most mundane stories in the global community in a way that would have been impossible in years past (Jenkins, 2010).
Digital; to what end?
The greatest affordance of digital storytelling is its ability to reach audiences around the world, creating intimately shared experience across the global community. In the last ten years, my world has expanded exponentially. Whereas before “snooze” was my favorite morning activity, when I wake up now, through Instagram, I see StoryCorps blurbs about fellow citizens whose lives are very different from mine but with whom I find commonality. I read stories of love, loss, fear, rejection, and overwhelming hope on Humans of New York, and I relate. People willingly bare their souls, even when “it’s hard and scary,” and I see their fearlessness as a gift (Choi, 2015; Sidwell, Telling, 2007).
Digital storytelling empowers those whom circumstance has marginalized. By teaching people how to use digital media to tell their stories, the Center for Digital Storytelling, pushes for a new “literacy” as they teach the language of production and ask participants to tell “the story that only [they] can tell” (Martin, 2009). The technology associated with digital storytelling allows those oral cultures whose language and are at risk or those whose disability or age has “trapped [their stories] in their minds,” to “continue to nourish these [communal] relationships even when the traditional means of reciting stories aren’t available” (Cook, 2014).
As an educator, historian, and archivist, the potential to use digital storytelling to weave context and story around historical primary source records fascinates me. I long for a day when classrooms move beyond a textbook, instead asking students to engage with the original voices of history to make meaning of our shared past. Where they, and not only historians, act as detectives and explorers of our shared past. I learned to love the relationship of object and communal story as a young girl when my grandmother would share family stories with me around objects I’d dug up in her home. As I hope to inspire this in other someday, I’m very excited to see where digital takes us.
“The breath of life,
The spirit of life,
The word of life,
It flies to you and you and you,
Always the word.” – Maori Proverb
(Sidwell, Telling, 2007)
References
A.C. (2015, November 23). The real future of electronic literature [Web log message]. Retrieved Nov 26, 2015 from http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/11/interactive-fiction?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/the_real_future_of_electronic_literature
Choi, A. (2015, July 8). The art of storytelling, according to the founders of StoryCorps and Humans of New York. Ideas.Ted.Com. Retrieved from http://ideas.ted.com/the-art-of-storytelling-according-to-the-founders-of-storycorps-and-humans-of-new-york
Comberg, D. (2010, August 30). Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ
Cook, T.J. (2014, November 4). How digital storytelling is bridging the gaps and preserving cultures. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/t-j-cook/how-digital-storytelling-_b_5766946.html
Hueck, K. & Quick, R. (2013). The clues to a great story [Image]. TED & Superinterestante. Retrieved from http://blog.ted.com/how-to-tell-a-great-story-visualized/
Iwancio, P. (2010, June). Seven elements of digital storytelling in four minutes. [Video FIle]. Retrieved Aug 20, 2011 from http://vimeo.com/12672069
Jenkins, H. (2010, August 23). How new media are transforming storytelling in four minutes [Web log message]. Retrieved Aug 20, 2011 from http://henryjenkins.org/2010/08/how_new_media_is_transforming.html
Martin, C. (2009, January 11). How to tell stories, one byte at a time. The Denver Post Lifestyles. Retrieved from http://origin.denverpost.com/lifestyles/ci_11420400
Melcher, C. (2012, October 3). Empathy, Neurochemistry, and the Dramatic Arc: Paul Zak at the Future of Storytelling 2012 [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1a7tiA1Qzo
National Association of Black Storytellers. (n.d.) The issue of safety in our communities has been intensified by the Ferguson, Mo. Grand Jury decision. Retrieved from http://www.nabsinc.org/issue-of-safety
National Storytelling Network. (n.d.) What is Storytelling?. Retrieved from http://www.storynet.org/resources/whatisstorytelling.htmlhttp://www.storynet.org/resources/whatisstorytelling.html
Sidwell, D. (2007). Storytelling and community. Ultimate Guide for Storytelling. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20080212232519/http://76.163.124.178/ohtelling.html
Sidwell, D. (2007). Telling stories from our lives. Ultimate Guide for Storytelling. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20080212232519/http://76.163.124.178/ohtelling.html
Smith, D. (2013, June 22). What 17 industry leaders think about digital storytelling. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/derek-smith/what-17-industry-leaders-_b_3116677.html
Stevenson, D. (n.d.) Use storytelling as a strategic tool. Association for Talent Development Highlights. Retrieved from https://videos.td.org/detail/video/5273310241001/use-storytelling-as-a-strategic-tool
StoryCorps. (n.d.) About. Retrieved from https://storycorps.org/about/
StoryCorps. (n.d.) Discover StoryCorps. Retrieved from https://storycorps.org/discover/
Well, that was certainly worth waiting for.
The structure of your narrative is well conceived and executed. Starting off by examining the nature of stories (as opposed to storytelling as a process) provides a perfect context for your thoughtful discussion of how “digital” changes stories. “A great story is a great story regardless of environment or delivery.” How very true. What I find compelling about your argument here is that the emphasis is largely on the experience of the listener/reader/participant and not on the medium itself. If there is a defining difference between digital storytelling and traditional storytelling, I think it involves the idea of scale and not content. By scale, I mean the multiple modes that storytellers may use to engage participants, the potentially larger audiences that stories may reach, and the increased options that participants have to not only react to but also to participate in the storytelling process.
Scale is a two-edged sword, though. I like the amplifier analogy that Jason Ohler uses in his book Then What? Basically, he suggests that technology is an amplifier of whatever one does. Giving a large amplifier to a competent guitarist means that more people will hear how good (s)he is–doing the same for a poor guitarist simply broadcasts his/her inadequacy to a larger audience. So the corollary to your statement is also true–a poor story is a poor story regardless of environment or delivery.
I also found this observation powerful and thought-provoking:
This speaks to another vital aspect of the power of digital tools, including digital storage, distribution, and transmission–the ability for everyone to become a storyteller and to find an audience. The mass media we grew up with (well, that I grew up with, anyway) delivered the same message to everyone. That has powerful implications for the transmission of cultural norms, but that’s grist for the next assignment. “The greatest affordance of digital storytelling is its ability to reach audiences around the world, creating intimately shared experience across the global community.” That sums it up perfectly.
Just one issue:
should be:
if I’m not mistaken. Grammar Nazis may weigh in here.
Thank you for your feedback and the compliment! Based on your comments, I feel that I did a much better job of explaining the nature of stories and why we tell them, than discussing the specific affordances of digital delivery. To be honest, I was concerned I might be writing too much. Given that, are there specific points that you would like to see me strengthen or further in my argument? Aside from poor stories being poor stores, that is. The Ohler analogy made me laugh…how true!
To your correction, it is “whom”…and I’m usually a grammar Nazi, so I know better. I’ve fixed it but plan to use late night writing as an excuse should my fellow Nazi friends ever see this. 😉
Heather you have joined an elevated crew, folks of whom I am jealous. I will expect to learn much from you this semester.
I totally hate your paragraph:
Our stories become welcome friends and ageless comforts as time passes; remembering a parent’s love, sharing a fiery grandmother’s tales of her youth, holding a child for the first time, reminiscing time spent in the arms of an unforgettable lover, or something as simple as driving down a dark country road, feeling the warmth of a loved one’s hand resting on your knee as a warm wind caresses your cheeks and rustles your hair, the radio softly playing the music you hear in bars with scarred wooden floors beaten by the boots of “regulars” as they keep time to the antiquated jukebox in a small Texas town, watching the headlights weave in and out of trees, occasionally lighting the eyes of something wild, as the powder blue 67’ Chevy bumps and rattles over hills and dips lending infinity to the moment only a teenager could experience but one whose feeling we, aging though we may be, will never forget.
Please don’t every write anything so good again.
Alas, I disagree with your opening claim, people, not words hold power. I assert that people make great stories and if they are crafty as well great storytellers and best, listeners.
Vonnegut was glib and smug and entertaining, but, the depth of that video is on the listening side of the deconstruction. He mocks taste and appetite. But we can hear many, many different lessons from Cinderella, as Terry Prachett shows in Witches Abroad meaning proliferates rather than narrows.
Again, I disagree that the listener is dependent upon the storyteller I would assert that the currency flows the other direction in this economy. Or, perhaps I am agreeing with you when you say that great stories require our participation. You mention phenomenal storytellers, but what of phenomenal listeners? How does the story amplify, to steal Skip’s emphasis, when the listener is better than the teller? Alas, at this point, I depart from Skip/Ohler, and you, I don’t think volume/amplifier is the most telling, rather, I think trans-media, and social appropriation of telling/listening is the power of digital/online storytelling. The unintended consequences of sharing a story online, the butterfly flap in Brazil, that chaotically exponetiates (my word, I made it up) to a hurricane in Florida, as it were.
“Again, I disagree that the listener is dependent upon the storyteller I would assert that the currency flows the other direction in this economy.”
Or both ways? Clearly a listener/participant brings his/her own experiences, biases, emotional associations, etc. to a story, and that person’s reaction to a story may be different than the next’s. But the story’s point of origin–digital, print, visual, transmedia–is the trigger for that reaction and is typically an intentional conceit on the part of the storyteller. Even when the story is constructed for a very specific purpose–say, WWII propaganda created by the US to portray Japanese and Germans as subhuman monsters–the participant may react in unpredictable ways. Follow that link to see what I mean.
I’m going to be honest, Bob, I had a moment when I read you hated that paragraph. I reread it thinking the whole time, “That was my best paragraph, &%!@*!!!” And then I saw your comment underneath it. So, thank you very much for the compliment (and redeeming yourself in my panicked 5 a.m. brain). 😉
You and I, however, wholly disagree on the nature of words. I remain adamant that words are powerful. Maya Angelou frequently spoke of the power of words, describing them as “things” we must treat with great care as they cannot be easily erased. I encourage you to watch this short video:
Words linger. We do not forget powerful words.
In Conversations with Toni Morrison (Taylor-Guthrie, 1994), Toni Morrison discusses how words both empower and marginalize. Morrison describes friendly interactions with an immigrant student in her fifth class as she teaches him to speak English by reading to him. “I remember the moment that he found out that I was black–a nigger. It took him six months; he was told. And that’s the moment when he belonged [in America], that was his entrance. Every immigrant knew he would not come as the very bottom. He had to come above at least one group–and that was us” (p. 255). One word divided two children. One word empowered a boy with a prejudice not his own. One word marginalized a girl who for whom nothing had changed. One word.
Although we tell children, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me,” I believe quite the opposite to be true. Physical wounds heal with time. The wounds left by words can damage forever. Short of physical violence, what power do we really have over another? Yet, who among us hasn’t said something we regretted immediately when we saw eyes alight with pain? In those instances, no amount of regret or wishing we could take back those words will change the moment. We breathed life into the words and we do not have the power to take them back.
There is a finality to our lives. We will age. We will die. The process cannot be overcome. Powerful words, however, live in perpetuity. Consider the earliest storytellers. Homer is dead and, therefore by all logic, retains no power, yet every high school student will read Homer at some point in time. It is Homer’s words and his stories, that have the power to stay, not Homer himself.
Consider, too, our Founding Fathers. They embraced an act of grievous treason by committing the Declaration of Independence to paper. The words they willingly wrote had the power to bring their lives to an end…and, yet, they wrote the document. They knew the risks, “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor,” but they so believed in the rights of the people that they were willing to rely “on Divine Providence” and breathe life into the words. Take a few minutes to close your eyes and listen to those words. You cannot deny the power they carry when you hear them as they were intended to be heard.
And, yet, for all the power they wielded in their day, it is the words, and not the men who wrote them, that remain. Our government, save through use of extreme military force and violence, would not have the power we willingly surrender to it today were it not for the words granted them in the Constitution. We are a nation and a people of words.
Finally, who among us does not remember the power of the words, “I love you,” the first time your child utters them of their own volition? The words of praise offered by a mentor upon an achievement? The soothing words of a parent when life seemed overwhelming? The moment a friend praises you for your grace and humility in an unbearable situation? If you do not share these memories, you have your own meaningful memories from which you can pull.
I reiterate that “words hold power—the power to soothe, excite, offend, embrace, and cut.” People may wield that power when they use their words, but it’s the words, not the people who remain.
Okay, enough on words and back to your comments. 😉
I love that you make up words, I do the same. As to your other point, I believe a strong dynamic exists between storyteller and listener, however, I chose to focus on listener experience because, at the end of the day, I believe a listener will always find someone to whom they can listen, however, the same cannot be said of a storyteller. We love and will seek out good story tellers, but few of us will stick around for a bad story. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice… And, if, at the end of the day, we tell our stories to be heard, doesn’t it make sense to focus on listener experience?
Finally, I discuss transmedia and its effects in my third section. Do you have any suggestions for how I could make the point better or am I misunderstanding that I do not make the point clearly enough?
Thank you for the feedback and sorry for the lengthy response – as a Literature major in my Undergrad, I paid a lot of money to further my appreciation of words. 😉
Heather Marie,
Thank you for arguing your claim about powerful words. Even as I stated my misgivings I was and still am struggling to articulate my reasons for them. I suspect this will be a theme that we debate across the semester.
I think that my concern with relevating transmedia, and social media before amplification derives from internet phenomena. And yes, I saw that you included transmedia in your post. The loudest YouTubers, PewDiePie and TheRadBrad, in the gamer-genre, for example, create extensive content, and social media networks prior to the volume going up. Perhaps, I am looking for patterns of success, rather than the anomalous one-off going viral. Also, the harshness of the internet peer review system (thinking reddit, for example) I think would destroy a purely amplified approach.
I apologize for the lateness of my reply back; we’ve been in the midst of Accreditation at work and I’ve been battling the never-ending cold. Each bad enough on its own; together, less conducive to getting anything done!
I’m happy to debate words; philosophical debate is one of the things I missed most when working on a science-driven Masters Degree. I think we learn just as much from attempting to put our own thoughts and theories into words as we do asking questions of others to clarify their thoughts. Plus, for lack of a better expression, I love having an environment where I can “nerd out”.
To your comment of looking for patterns of success, I would actually encourage you to check out the Vlog Brothers (particularly the Crash Course series) as an example of a successful YouTube channel. The channel was started in 2007, has almost 3 million followers and their content has been viewed more than 600 million times. While I will admit they have a definite appeal to the nerds in my life, I think the numbers alone speak to their ability to engage many. On a more personal note, I’ve used Crash Course World History many times in teaching students and they, for the most part, seem to like it as much as I do…and I really like the videos. I was also quite surprised to realize several years after using these videos that John Green of the Vlog Brothers was also the John Green who wrote “A Fault in Our Stars” – he, along with Alton Brown, has a place on my “Modern Renaissance Men” list. 😉 If you have a chance to look, I’m curious to see what you think…
Great piece if writing! In addition to a great structure of your essay, I really liked how you concentrated on the positive aspects of storytelling, words, and digital. I think it is much needed. And even though I am more of the “Great, BUT…” person I am not going to do the but in this case (besides the only but I can think of got covered already by Skip in his “Scale is a two-edged sword” comment).
Thank you for the Reference section. I loved Sidwell’s “Storytelling and community” piece and it would have been hard to find as it lives in the internet archives.
Your first paragraph made me think of Isabel Allende’s “Two Words” a short story from “Stories of Eva Luna” collection. One of my favorite lines in the story, “…words make their way in the world without a master, and that anyone with a little cleverness can appropriate them and do business with them” similarly elevates the power of words over the writer or storyteller. Looking forward to reading more from you!
Thank you, Tatiana! I’ve been toying with how to add scale into the post and will likely do so as I think it’s a great point and one I attempted to make but did not do well. As to your comment on Sidwell, my Masters Degree is in Information Science and the Wayback Machine is one of the absolute best things I discovered in that two year process. 😉 I love that it allows you to find content that, for all practical intents and purposes, is otherwise missing. Particularly when you keep seeing references to the amazing quality of the content on a site that you cannot access.
I’ve not read “Two Worlds,” but what an amazing quote – thank you for sharing! If you didn’t see the reply I posted to Bob’s comment regarding the power of words, you should check out the Maya Angelou video there…I imagine you’ll like it.
A very thought provoking piece, thank you for sharing your thoughts. Your statement ” The greatest affordance of digital storytelling is its ability to reach audiences around the world, creating intimately shared experience across the global community” is interesting. I would add more to this expanding the statement to include without censorship. What I mean by that, is digital storytelling has given everyone both a platform and a receiver. No longer is a publisher deciding what is worthy. But given that everyone now has a voice, how do you keep the noise down, so you hear what interests you?
Thank you for your feedback, Martha! I think you make a great point with looking at the quality of what is posted and how we, as users, can find the stories that most interest us. Aside from digital storytelling, I’m also doing quite a bit of work through my job with Open Education Resources (OER) — academic materials with open, usually Creative Commons, licenses published outside of the traditional publisher-driven process. Debate also exists in this field as to what controls quality when a publisher does not oversee the process and research is showing that peer review and usage patterns work as strong indicators of quality in these materials. If we apply that concept to Digital Storytelling, perhaps those things that are highly recommended by our peer groups and stories that have high views/usage numbers are a step in the right direction of quality? (I say that fully having Bob’s comment about the one-offs and viral videos in my head, so perhaps a better way to say it is that consistent use patterns can potentially indicate quality.)
Wow, I really like your first paragraph! You sum up my feelings about the power of words very well. I agree with a lot of what you say about stories in general, although I do have some questions.
For starters, what do you mean by “participation”? How do we do it with a paper book? (aside from our own intellectual engagement with the story) I also wonder about how the term interactivity, which I see as being similar to participation, but not an exact match, applies.
You make some great points about how digital storytelling can build bridges and allow people from a variety of backgrounds to share their experience, but how is that markedly different from the print text. Literature, specifically post-colonial literature, attempts to those things. We could argue that digital media are more equal since you do not need a book contract to write a blog, but there is still the audience to consider. By nature of its needing to be viewed on an electronic device, digital media excludes a portion of the population, either because of economic or age concerns.
Your document is very nicely designed. I also appreciate the wealth of sources you have incorporated into your argument. Thank you!
“A phenomenal storyteller understands the capacity of an individual to capture the hearts of a community, provoke an emotional response, and affect real change.”
This quote struck a cord because I recently attended The Moth in Anchorage. If you’re not familiar with The Moth, it’s people telling true stories live on stage. A few of the evening’s storytellers fit this definition of a “phenomenal storyteller,” capturing an emotional response by telling a story so well that it will stick in my brain and perhaps affect real change at some point in the future.
Your post was very well written and easy to follow. I especially liked the Digital; to what end? section. It points out that we truly live in an exciting time. Never before have humans been able to tell a story digitally and post it on the Internet for anyone in the world to view. Of course, you have censorship in certain countries, but for the most part, sites like YouTube make it easy for any human to have their voice heard.
I’ve not attended a Moth event before, but I’m definitely interested to do so! I love the evocative response I have when hearing or reading a story I know will change my life. Sometimes it is the words themselves that stay with you (Thoreau’s “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” or George Bernard Shaw’s “You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?'”), sometimes it is the feeling they evoke (Chbosky’s Perks of Being a Wallflower), and sometimes it is the lessons they teach (Maya Angelou’s discussion of the impact of words, the actions of the tree in Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree, or the morality of Jim in Huckleberry Finn).
We do, indeed, live in an exciting time — the amount of knowledge generation and exchange we will see in our lives is likely incomprehensible. To your point on censorship, I spent a few years working on a curriculum called Freedom Matters wherein students learn about the nature of rights, examine the documents that grant them, and learn to analyze the state of rights in the world today. Even as a (decently) well-informed adult, I was surprised by how few countries earn the Freedom House’s approval as “free” when it comes to speech, Internet access, etc.
Thank you for your feedback!
Heather,
“A great story is a great story regardless of environment or delivery. Digital diverges, however, as its affordances allow readers to interact with and experience the story differently.” I really like that you said this because I feel the same way. Not everyone interprets stories in the same way. What might be really moving to me might be boring to someone else.
I also like how you said, “We tell our stories because our lives matter and we want to be heard.” I agree with you. In the digital storytelling world we can use many forms of technology to create a piece about virtually anything. This allows us to connect with millions of people around the world. To me that is a very amazing thing. Great post!
Thank you, Krista!
I actually commented on Bob’s post about the divergence of interpretation. His post included a video about fishing in Texas that was clearly meant to inspire fishermen/women, yet all that spoke to me was the landscape and how much I miss home sometimes! Clearly not the author’s intent, but it’s the part of his “story” that resonated. 😉 I think, because we all have individual, unique stories and interests, we find the pieces in stories that resonate with us and we stay to listen or we fail to see relevance to our lives and move on.
I think telling our stories is such an interesting thing. While digital gives us the ability to amplify who hears our story, and therefore gives us access to a (likely) larger group of those who will relate, we also take great joy in sitting on a porch, over a cup of coffee, sharing the stories of our lives with a trusted friend, loved one, etc. We are fundamentally social beings and, as such, we seek to share our humanity, learning more about ourselves and our audience (be it one or a million) in the process.
Heather,
Your first paragraph…….wow. So powerful and well written. I love the you expanded on the idea of what a story is and why we tell them. When describing digital stories and the power/purpose of them, you wrote, “The greatest affordance of digital storytelling is its ability to reach audiences around the world, creating intimately shared experience across the global community.” I think this is one the powerful things about all types of technology, it truly opens up the world.
Thank you for the feedback, Nikki!