Monday, 9.44pm
Sheffield, U.K.
Every great story seems to begin with a snake. – Nicolas Cage
I’m reading Will Storr’s ‘The Science of Storytelling’ and I keep stopping to jot down notes. There’s a lot in there that makes you think.
I’m thinking about this more because I have a presentation to do soon and I’m a little worried that I haven’t got my story right. I don’t know if what I’m saying is created in a way that helps the audience or just ends up being something they can’t connect with.
One of Storr’s suggestions is that every scene (or every slide in my case) needs to advance the story.
What you don’t want is something happened and something else happened, and then something else happened.
What you want is things to happen because.
So, a thing happened.
Because of this, something else happened.
Or, I suppose, you could also have: a thing happened; it happened because…
When you put together a series of because links rather than and links it keeps the audience interested.
This applies mostly, however, to “commercial” stuff – the kind of thing you want to do if you want to become a best-selling author or movie maker.
If you want to be a good writer – well then you can do what you want to get something across the way you like.
Some people spend pages describing a flower, apparently.
And I’m pretty sure Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes a sentence that goes on for pages in “100 years of solitude”.
I’d say that most of my favourite books don’t really follow this formula at all.
Think Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
And actually, I’m ok with it when it comes to thrillers – the kind of thing that I have the time to read on holiday.
Although I do get very irritable if people write in the present tense.
What’s wrong with just telling the story?
Anyway… where was I?
Oh yes.
I guess this is a formula, a tip, something that you can try out and see if it works for you.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 