What is story ?
Imagine, in one global day, the pages of prose turned, plays performed, films screened, the unending stream of television comedy and drama, twenty-four-hour print and broadcast news, bedtime tales told to children, barroom bragging, back-fence internet gossip, humankind’s insatiable appetite for stories. Story noy only our most prolific art form but rivals all activities – work, play, eating, exercise, – and our waking hours. we tell stories as much as we sleep and even then, we dream. Why? why is so much of our life spent inside stories? Because as critic Kenneth burke tells us, stories are equipment for living.
The world now consumes films, novels, theatre, and television in such quantities and with such ravenous hunger that the story arts have become humanity’s prime source of inspiration, as it seeks to order chaos and gain insight into life. Our appetite for story is a reflection of the profound human need to grasp the patterns of living, not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a very personal, emotional experience. In words of playwright Jean Anouilh, “Fiction gives life its form.”
Some see this craving for story as simple entertainment, an escape from life rather than an exploration of it. But what, after all, is entertainment? To be entertained is to be immersed in the ceremony of story to an intellectually and emotionally satisfying end. To the film on a screen in order to experience the story’s meaning and, with that insight, the arousal of strong, at times even painful emotions, and as the meaning deepens, to be carried to the ultimate satisfaction of those emotions.
Good Story Well Told
‘Good story” means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task. It begins with talent. You must be born with creative power to put things together in a way no one has ever dreamed. Then you must bring to the work a vision that’s driven by fresh insights into human nature and society, coupled with in-depth knowledge of your characters and your world. All that …. and, as Hallie and Whitt Burnett reveal in their excellent little book, a lot of love.
The love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.
Just as a composer must excel in the principles of musical composition, so you must master the corresponding principles of musical composition. This craft is neither mechanics nor gimmicks. It is the concert of techniques by which we create a conspiracy of interest between ourselves and the audience. Craft is the sum total of all means used to draw the audience into deep involvement, and ultimately to reward it with a moving and meaningful experience.
Craft Maximizes Talent
Given the choice between trival material brialliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trival material told brilliantly, Master storytellers know how to squeeze life out of the least of things, while poor storytellers reduce the profound to the banal. You may have insight of a Buddha, but if you cannot tell story, your ideas turn dry as chalk.
Story is primary, literary talent secondary but essential. This principle is absolute in film and television, and truer for stage and page than most playwrights and novelists wish to admit. Rare as story talent is, you must have some or you wouldn’t be itching to write. Your task is to wring from it all possible creativity. Only by using everything and anything you know about the craft of storytelling can you make your talent forge story. For talent without craft is like fuel without an engine. It burns wildly ut accomplishes nothing.