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.
