Viewing Category: Storytelling
I spent about an hour writing the first part of this story; at this rate, I think it will unfold over 2 or 3 parts, so I'm just going to release this part today. I'm making it up as I type incorporating the 9 elements that were submitted by readers Last Tuesday.
I did spend about an hour thinking about the elements and how they'd link together, but whatever comes out is going to surprise me just as much as it surprises anyone else. This is "straight through" writing; I will not go back and edit previous sentences unless it's a grammatical problem. I think the raw dump might be interesting to look at in itself.
Commentary is welcome...the way the story ends is not set. I am not going to publically respond to any commentary until the whole story is over, so just talk amongst yourselves.
Enjoy! Or not :-)
PART 1
Ulrick the Bee, as was noted in his annual Hive Review, was “a solid but eccentric performer.” If he had been born a human instead of a bee, he would have been a test fighter pilot; while other bees tended to stay close to the hive, Ulrick was an explorer. There was no raindrop that could fell him, no flower too far to collect nectar from. He had flown further and higher than any bee in the hive, a true maverick that was particularly well-suited for scouting missions.
In other words, he didn’t really fit in.
Being part of a Hive was about conformity, doing what you were told, and keeping to the Schedule. Ulrick hated schedules, preferring to take leave when the wind happened to catch the underside of his wings. Invariably, he would find some rich pocket of flower pollen and dance out its location. The Ancient Bee Code, of course, was what he danced. This is a series of repetitions of turns and wing movements that detail, with remarkable accuracy, the precise direction and distance relative to the hive by using the position of the sun as a reference. The Bee Code was highly effective, and could be communicated back down to the rank and file without having to actually talk; the Hive is way too loud to have even a shouted conversation in. You might as well try getting nectar out of a rock.
Ulrick was having a particularly bad day. He liked being away from the Hive far more than being in it, and during moments of solitude he caught himself thinking dark thoughts about his coworkers. “Drones, all of them”, he thought. “Doing what they’re told. There’s got to be more to Life than collecting Nectar.” He had once asked this very question of his supervisor, back when he was less cynical about such things: “Sir, what more is there after collecting Nectar? What is it all for?” His supervisor had just gaped at him for a moment, then explained in a very slow and careful voice just in case Ulrick was an exceptionally stupid bee, that Nectar was Life. Life was Nectar. This was the Great Bee Cycle, perhaps even older than the Ancient Bee Code itself. What else could there be for a bee? The Flight Deck had even grown a tad quieter, as the other bees paused to stare at the young bee who somehow didn’t understand the Great Bee Cycle. “He must have grown up on the Fringe”, he heard one bee whisper (or what passes for whispering in a noisy hive, which is basically yelling). Another bee had nodded sagely, “Yes, all that exposure to the weather will addle a young bee’s mental development; he probably should have been kept closer to Hive Central where it’s warmer. What a shame. What a shame.” After that, the other bees started treating him with the formal courtesy that people sometimes offer to children who can’t go swimming because they are susceptible to ear infections: kindly and with understanding, tinged with a slight veneer of caution in case the infections were somehow communicable.
The incident had irritated Ulrick in ways that he hadn’t known was possible, and after that he kept his questions to himself. Determined to prove himself a strong bee, he developed his flight technique to go faster and higher than any bee he had met. He had subsequently developed a reputation for being a great asset to the Hive, but how was the Hive an asset to himself?
His reverie was interrupted by his supervising flight deck officer, a stolid drone responsible for dispatching the morning’s nectar seeking squadron from the Hive to the wide world outside. The season was starting to change, which called for a wider search pattern than normal. Ulrick would probably be flying an extended patrol to tag his flowers quota for the day.
“Top of the morning, Ulrick”, said his supervisor.
“Whatever”, grumbled Ulrick, “Show me which direction to scout.”
The supervisor started dancing out the Bee Code. Ulrick, despite his bad temper, was drawn into it. Unlike the normal unimaginative dancing he’d come to expect from his supervisor, this one was a bit different. It was clumsily executed, with the poor leg extension and awkward wing gestures that belied the non-flying status of the deck supervisor, but it clearly was different. Ulrick was intrigued.
“I’ve never seen you dance one like that before,” commented Ulrick. “I’m not even sure I got it the first time through. You better dance it again.”
“It’s correct,” said his supervisor. “It got danced in just a while ago by the Dawn Squadron. I have duplicated it in exact detail.” His supervisor had a habit of assuming that Ulrick was a bit slow on the uptake, ever since he’d asked that question about there being more to Life than Nectar. Ulrick bristled internally at the perceived slight.
“Do you want me to dance it again, more slowly?” asked the supervisor, helpfully but still annoyingly.
“No, I got it. It was just…different.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s a WEIRD one alright, but sometimes it’s the weird ones that are the biggest scores. Ready?”
Ulrick hopped to the Hive entrance. “Ready.”
“SCOUT ULRICK IS ON DECK. FLIGHT DECK CLEAR FOR LAUNCH… CONFIRM?.”
“SCOUT ULRICK, DECK LAUNCH POSITION CONFIRM ACKNOWLEDGE!”
“Safe flying, Ulrick”
And with that, Ulrick launched himself out of the Hive, rushing the sky in a steep vertical climb. It felt good to be free of the Hive, alone with his thoughts. His automatic bee autopilot had already started adjusting his flight path based on the unusual instructions he’d gotten from his supervisor, using the position of the sun to calculate the distance and direction that he was to scout. It would have been a pretty easy flight for Ulrick, if there hadn’t been more than one sun in the sky this day, playing tricks on his bee senses.
It was not a good day for safe flying.
» Continued In Part II
Last Tuesday I asked readers to suggest 10 ideas to incorporate into a single story for Tuesday, which happens to be Story Day on a friend's website. I'm always ready to steal a good idea when I see one (credit due, of course), and I thought it would be an interesting design challenge.
Here's what 9 individuals contributed as elements to be incorporated into the story (read the original comments for the full treatments):
- A bee facing management challenges.
- Bee dancing and finding new pollen sources in the face of two suns, which makes the dancing pretty difficult (there's BEE SCIENCE behind this one!)
- Einstein & Relativity.
- An overachieving college student with height issues.
- A Hamster seeking Lettuce and Bee Companionship.
- Gojira on the loose.
- Some kind of “meta-pun”
- A flower in a field of flower. The coastline of an ocean. Both or either.
- The French.
At first glance the list seems pretty daunting...how the hell am I going to integrate all these elements into a single cohesive story? On the other hand, this is exactly what I love about design: the challenge of finding the underlying themes that make the ideas cohere together. It's not unlike dealing with regular clients; if it's challenge you want, lead a client meeting with the heads of engineering, sales, and marketing at the same table. The contradictions in need of resolution are awe-inspiring in their scope. You'll need to go through the same process of identifying underlying common themes and principles, so that the overall strategy makes sense to everyone; I can see the relationship between creating a story from semi-disparate elements and what I wrote about story-based design.
Sometime late Tuesday I'll post the story, written quickly in first-draft form. No promises whether it will be good. I've been reading some children's books lately for fun, so doubtless whatever I come up with will have a similar vibe. We'll see what happens... I'm a little bit nervous, but also excited by the challenge.
READ MORE
Part I of the story is posted!
I happened to catch a PBS (public television here in the US) broadcast that showed a Chick-Fil-A sponsorship spot. Since this is public TV, companies aren't allowed to advertise directly.
Chick-Fil-A (pronounced Chick-filay) is a quirky, privately-owned fast-food chain that specializes in yummy chicken sandwiches; they're known for ads featuring cows that encourage people to "eat mor chiken"; it's a fun ad campaign with a delightfully subversive tone, and it's apparently served them well. They just had to tune it a bit for PBS:
SCENE: A live black and white cow with a Chick-Fil-A sign draped over its side. Camera starts in close on the head, pulls slowly back to reveal more of the cow, and a handwritten wall sign that says "All In Favor Say Moo"
VO (even tone): Why are cows everywhere such strong supporters of Chick-Fil-A?
pause
VO: Perhaps it's because Chick-Fil-A supports quality family programming here on PBS.
Riiiight...
Every Tuesday is Story Day on my friend Senia's website, and I've been really enjoying them because they're different from the usual blog fare. I've also been in a story-writing mood these days myself, so I'm thinking that I should do one for next Tuesday to help create a WAVE OF STORYTELLING across the Blogosphere! Well, maybe it will be a very small wave, but I thought I'd also throw out this CHALLENGE:
Post a Story Idea in the comment area of this blog entry. I'll write a story that incorporates the first ten plot points or ideas for next Tuesday! I don't care what they are. C'mon...I DARE YOU :-)
I can't promise that the story will be any good, but I promise I'll do my best to weasel my way to completion :-) I reserve the right, also, to not write about anything that's very gross or horrifying...that's where I draw the line. I'm curious to see what happens...in a way, it might be like conscious dreaming, with my mind trying desperately to connect wildly-disparate inputs into some kind of cohesive story.
Is there an ideal blog post length? I just scanned through a few dozen of my 250+ word posts to see what secrets I could uncover about my own style. The following observations are based on my gut feeling on what makes for an effective "Dave-Style" blog post.
Introduce the Topic in the First 25-50 Words
I sometimes take a while to get to the point. This is probably due to the exploratory way that I write; I often don't know exactly where I'm going, and am writing to see where I end up. We're all busy; it behooves me, I think, to try to introduce the point as soon as possible. It may be amusing for me to take my time to wander to the point, but if readers don't know where I'm going...that's boring.
Apply "New Idea Periodicity" Mindfully in Your Informational Posts
There is a silly idea in interactive design that "excitement" can be boiled down to a simple metric: interactions per minute (IPM). It's roughly equivalent to the musical idea of beats per minute (BPM); when you look through stock music catalogs, you often see BPM listed along with the genre.
The reason I find IPMs silly is that it doesn't take the quality of the interaction into account. Same thing with music; sure, 120BPM is going to be perceived as more "energizing" than 80BPM, but that effect will last until for about 2 repetitions. Our brains are excellent at recognizing patterns, but after the pattern becomes obvious our minds will start wandering to something else. So it's very important that you change things up in some way to maintain interest, whether it's game design, music, or writing.
Now, I've just delivered two ideas in about 100 words, because I'm trying to be mindful that without new input, the mind starts wandering. In this post, your mind may be wondering where I'm ultimately going with this, but the novelty of the ideas so far hopefully is keeping you reading. You may have even forgotten that I was writing about "New Idea Periodicity", but if the Muses are smiling on me I've built some anticipation. Now I've got to deliver it some the pattern I'm building is complete. Otherwise, I'll get lynched!
So here's what I mean by "New Idea Periodicity": introduce a new idea every 50-100 words. Any shorter, and the ideas don't have time to sink in and develop. Any longer, and I get bored.
Establishing the Pattern
By introducing a new idea every 50-100 words, I'm attempting to provide a certain "freshness" of content, enough to at least keep the mind engaged and build momentum. you're also establishing a kind of "idea pattern"; your mind picks up that things are moving along, and it's pretty enjoyable. The writing has met a certain expectation.
My gut feeling is that you can introduce new ideas about 500 words before people start to expect a larger point or metapattern to be made. You need to remind people that these points are somehow related together. If you can't, the post dies: it's "just a bunch of stuff that happens". That's not necessarily the kiss of death; when done well, you end up with an episode of Family Guy---utterly random but enjoyable for the moments. When done poorly, you end up with Season 12 of The Simpsons.
I've noticed that many of my weaker posts are around 500 words in length. For me, this appears to be the word count of doom, my personal Bermuda Triangle where posts are lost. These posts tend to deliver one or two ideas, but fall flat because they have nowhere to go.
The Nexus of Decision
Up to now, I've tried to maintain rhythm and energy by setting up the expectation that there are new ideas every 100-250 words. I'm at the 600 word mark---the aforementioned word count of doom. I basically have two choices:
End the post! Don't wear out your welcome! Conclude gracefully and then Title Appropriately.
Summarize, breath, then deliver another round of fresh ideas.
In both cases, I need to draw some kind of conclusion, which to me just means taking a "summarizing breath." I'm struck by the similarity between what I've said so far and song structure. I haven't studied music composition, but it appears I'm doing something like AABA][aaba]. Ideas are A, the summary is B.
I'm Taking Option 1
Looking back at what I've written so far, I've delivered the essence of a complete idea: be mindful of how often you introduce new ideas. Do it to keep the mind interested and engaged. Now I have to pick a title.
There are some additional ideas I have, but I will put them in an upcoming post just to see what happens.
Random aside: I'm thinking that writing a good 1500 word article is probably very much like writing a good pop song. Writing anything longer may be like approaching serious classical music, or it could be like assembling the perfect album of songs. I'm leaning torward the latter approach, though I'm not worrying about greatness yet :-)
[850-ish words]
A friend of mine just told me about Ron Walter, Branded Entertainment Storyteller. He works for Conductor, an agency that calls itself a "brand storytelling" company:
“We believe in the power that stories have in making meaningful and lasting connections. We think of consumers as an audience, and audiences are loyal if you continue to surprise and delight them. And as we like to say, ‘Would you rather hear a sales pitch or listen to a story?’”
Part of me recoils in horror because I automatically distrust advertising. However, I have to stop and reflect about what's so different about this and what it is I'm trying to define with "Storytelling by Design". That phrase still doesn't quite ring right to me, either. Gah!
Thinking about this a bit, it again comes down to purpose: I want to use storytelling as a method of engagement with a process, not so much as a "marketing approach". Admittedly, there is a customer service angle as well; my theory is that if people feel engaged in the creation of a story with someone they enjoy interacting with, everyone will be happier and the work will kick ass.
Having said that, I'm looking for a process that emphasizes the co-creation of the story in a real-life, productive context. It's not so much storytelling itself that is the point, though it provides a reference for creating a good experience. I'm also reminded of dungeon mastering and video game design, which are two of my influences, and the importance of being a "good host" at a dinner party.
Last week I was working on an experimental side blog. The idea: build a new writing platform. It's got a bit of additional automation built-in to create a kind of "paced interaction" with a wider audience. Instead of me being the writer, I chose a third party entity called "The Oracle" to speak. I figured it would be an interesting experiment.
Since storytelling has been on my mind lately, I first created a somewhat elaborate backstory and modified WordPress to support the idea. I created characters that serviced the site, and had them speak in those voices as posts. I thought it was pretty cool, but in the limited testing I did it quickly became apparent that people just didn't get it. Or rather, they did, but they didn't care.
So I ripped out all the backstory, and set it up more simply. For this kind of interaction, I'm theorizing, the use of the site will give rise to an authentic story of its own. The most important thing I can do to enable the narrative between site and its audience, make it as clear as possible what the site allows you to do, and then get out of the way.
So that's another aspect of this "Storytelling by Design" thread I'm exploring: your audience has to be "in the mood". The backstory I had originally written may very well have worked in a different context, but you'd have to be more sure of the environment. It's like telling a ghost story; the best experience occurs in a scary place, not a brightly-lit office at 10 in the morning. Can you imagine David Copperfield trying to entertain people who are late for work and trying hail a cab? So choosing when to deliver that killer story is just as important as having the story in the first place. Lesson learned.
I came across this interesting synopsis of branding in government (emphasis mine):
“Branding is a shortcut to people's understanding,” Prince explains. “You don't have to start from scratch with a concept or idea. In government, it is important that communications get through to people and brands are a part of that. Governments have realized the need to focus communications and marketing efforts in terms of consistency of message. They are looking at the private sector and the notion of branding to help them out."
I've been thinking about communication through story quite a bit recently, as it's the most engaging way for me to communicate ideas---increasingly what my business seems to be about---in an engaging manner. Branding as "a shortcut to people's understanding" is very similar, sharing the same methodology with storytelling but emphasisizing something else: inducing a new behavior in the audience, for the benefit of someone else. It's a form of targeted storytelling.
Storytelling by design is slightly different, but maybe not in any meaningful way. The use of "story as a design element" presumes we do want to effect some change in the audience to benefit someone else. However, that someone else could be one of many things. For example:
benefit the storyteller --- the storyteller is raised in the eyes of the listening audience by virtue of telling a good story about himself.
benefit the audience --- the story imparts knowledge and information that helps the audience live life a little better (or at least be a little less bored).
benefit the storyteller & audience --- a direct connection is made between storyteller and audience allows both parties to understand how to work together.
benefit a third party --- the story gives life to the exploits of someone or something (an idea, perhaps) that everyone feels a connection to.
All four scenarios can work in the case of branding:
Telling people how great you/your product is, so they want to buy into you/it.
Giving your audience information about how to live life better. And isn't it nice that BrandXYZ told you about it?
Telling the audience how BrandXYZ came to be, how it shares the same values that you do, and that you can therefore count on them to deliver what you need.
Being the messenger, telling the audience about someone or something that's coming that will affect us all. We should be ready. And BrandXYZ supports this message.
The article also touches upon the infrastructure required to launch a branding initiative:
“There's a whole educational process required before you can even start contemplating branding as such,” Jurkovic continues. “They need to understand 360 alignment. You then need complete senior management commitment (and that means people like deputy ministers need to be driving the branding effort). You need a strong policing and monitoring effort so it is properly implemented, and you may need to create an infrastructure to administer the brand.”
As I think about my own "personal branding" efforts I have to ask myself: do I have these elements in place? What is "360 alignment" in the context of my single-person practice? Am I really driving my branding effort, or am I going through the motions? Am I even capable of monitoring its use and reinforcing my brand?
I feel a little crawly thinking about branding in my own context, but I think it's a necessary evil: if you want people to come to you because you are YOU, you need to effectively get the story out there in a way that makes the benefits clear, so they will work with you. Otherwise, you're just another commodity worker, easily replaced with someone with the same list of skills charging half the rate.
Remember the story of that kid who was given a class assignment to add the first 100 integers together, and solved it almost immediately to the astonishment of his teacher? That was Carl Friedrich Gauss, famed 19th century mathematician. A lot of us have heard this story in school, but American Scientist editor Brian Hayes got to thinking about its inconsistencies: was the story really true or even that amazing? Hayes writes:
The story was familiar, but until I wrote it out in my own words, I had never thought carefully about the events in that long-ago classroom. Now doubts and questions began to nag at me. For example: How did the teacher verify that Gauss's answer was correct? If the schoolmaster already knew the formula for summing an arithmetic series, that would somewhat diminish the drama of the moment. If the teacher didn't know, wouldn't he be spending his interlude of peace and quiet doing the same mindless exercise as his pupils?
This article has also clarified something to me: the essential aspect of academia is documention.
When I was in grad school, the vibe I got from academia was that the process was a sort of hazing ritual you undergo, before you're allowed "in the club" and can get your degree. However, the academic process, once you subtract the research lab drama and interdepartmental politics, is critically useful when it comes to "debugging" long-held assumptions. Without that paper trail of insight, we'd be doomed to repeat our mistakes or re-discover concepts the hard way. A true scholar has a deep understanding of his chosen field, and thusly stands on the shoulders of those who came before. The result: we can reach a bit higher than before.
The issue I have with academia is similar to the one I have with organized religious organizations: dogmatic, organization-centric protectionist thinking. This is perhaps inevitable when the academics (rich with generations of carefully documented theory) meet the street implementors (rich with what actually is working). Both camps circle the wagons when they encounter each other:
The academics, stung by how years of research have caused them to lose touch with working reality on the street, cling to the tradition of scholastic rigor as their prime differentiating factor. "We've got the discipline and the minds" they assure themselves. "We don't just make stuff up and hope it works. This is valuable, and this approach is the very foundation of our modern civillization. Even if these guys who are making more money than us think otherwise."
The street implementors, practical nuts-and-bolts people who have apparently rediscovered the classics, are stung by the academic position that, yeah, it's been done before, and we've got a jargon-rich citation trail to prove it...what is your degree in again? So the street implementors, vaguely threatened by these claims and yet unimpressed by them (they've been scammed by such claims before) , cling to the idea that "what works is what matters". But secretly...they wonder if they just aren't smart enough.
Although I started out on the academic path, I became disenchanted with its emphasis on credentials and lineage within the school...when human selfishness to "work the system" for personal gain obscured the "purer mission". In other words, I let the bastards get to me, both in organized religion and in academia. This is a second, significant personal datapoint. How many babies have I tossed out with the bathwater?
My takeaway from the article (and this is just something that is occuring to me as I type) is at a very minimum, it was academic process and organization---the libraries, the use of citation, and old-fashioned research---that allowed Hayes to even start to answer his question. As he uncovered citations and references, the search became more than "what's the literal truth". He came upon the natural human tendency to tell stories and embellish events that unintentially cause deviations from the source; these are the dirty pawprints of undeclared agenda. These are the very forces that the acadmic process seeks to minimize; through documenting a line of reasoning and stated assumption, transparent to all who would take the time to follow it again, academia does keep ideas moving forward.
There's a parallel idea in journalism: the reporting of fact, citation of sources, and documented first-hand accounts is very similar in that it keeps our understanding of our society moving forward. However, the mainstream media has shifted to news as content, as opposed to news as documented reality. Consuming "news as content" is the equivalent of imbibing nutritionally-empty calories, temporarily satisfying our sweet tooth but ultimately killing us in the end.
We are doomed to repeat our mistakes when we don't have a sense of history. Even worse, it's far too easy to insert fabrications into the continuity of events because no one is checking up on them. It takes too much effort for the average citizen to work through the news media channels to verify a story, so the news media catches a break due to its unresponsive Jabba-the-Hutt like mass. And this makes the news media subsceptable to manipulation...witness the role of P.R. agencies that can insert news into tired journalists newstreams. Or the power of lobbyists in Washington, knowing that if they can inject their issues directly into the sensorium of the politicians themselves, they have the jump on the rest of America. And the system is fragile: in shows like 24 and Prison Break, we can see this illustrated dramatically, as "evil government agents" casually corrupt the information stream by subverting the systems that allegedly record it. It's only possible because these systems---the organized media, corporate accounting systems, and government agency---are not transparent in a way that is accessible to the individual. We instead must observe by proxy. And we've learned to distrust the old proxies, because we know they are at best incomplete. At worst, they are incompetent. If this seems preposterous to you, just think of a more local example: spreading a rumor based on a half-truth. While ideally we can have a system where there really is an emphasis on trust, pragmatically speaking you can't have trust without a means of verification. Yeah, I know..."trust but verify".
In this atmosphere, it's not surprising that blogger-journalists are on the rise. Though the "real" reporters poo-poo the lack of professional standards, they miss the point: the real journalists have already lost credibility because their organizations can't compete with the new medium's ability to transparently provide meaningful continuity. The blogosphere is self-documenting and self-validating, thanks to the low threshold of entry and concentrated fact-checking power of the Internet. We have Google, pings, trackbacks, and services like Technorati, we do have the infrastructure to rebuild our foundation of trusted sources. We can even incorporate old media sources back into the validation chain through hyperlinking, digital imaging, and audio sampling. We can finally follow the trail again. I am starting to believe that while Content is sexy, it's Continuity that reigns in the long run.
I stumbled upon Garr Reynold's blog Presentation Zen just now; it looks like a fun blog about "professional presentation design", which I'm realizing is something I'm interested in. There's a link in particular to designeducation.ca...tons and tons of resources all in one place. Sweet!
As I browsed the site, I was struck by how clearly put his many points were, such a difference from the rather overblown way I tend to lay things out here. Reynold's personal website is also remarkable in presentation: engaging without being in your face, and very relaxed. Apparently he designed and created the site entirely himself too...very impressive.
In the introduction to his site, he talks about how personal websites are very much mandatory in today's world. The following words in particular resonated with me:
The key — perhaps the main key — is finding what is different about yourself and letting the world know about your difference and what you can contribute. A website is one way you can communicate your difference, grow your network, and make connections across this planet.
I have been wondering what the heck has been going on with my blog, because I had started to feel the empowering aspects of it. I didn't quite believe it was true, so it is reassuring to see that someone else feels the same way. Self-described "Poster Child of Occupational Change" Jory Des Jardins also writes about the this idea from her own perspective, listing the benefits that have, for reasons that are eerily familiar and mysterious, befallen her as well. Here they are, shamelessly lifted from her original post:
Blogging helped her identify others in "hybridized spaces" and to build her own hybridized space.
Bloggers are connectors and opportunity makers.
Blogging gets you seen quickly for who you are.
There is a wealth of from-the-heart (but not too much from the heart) storytelling backing each of her observations.
In hindsight, I needed to read both of these posts to really get a handle on it: first Jory's post to provide the backstory of her emergent occupational planning experience, then Garr's post to lay a nice clean template on top of it.
