Let me tell you a story. Of course, it happened once upon a time and long ago, but, it did not happen on a dark and stormy night. In fact it happened on a warm sunny day, with soft white clouds gently floating across an enormous blue sky. Birds were singing, and a balmy breeze caressed the world with its tender airy touch.
Is that a good way to begin a story? It’s nice. Nice and boring. Shouldn’t the first paragraph grab your attention? Make you want to read on? Make you wonder what’s going to happen next? The Roman poet, Horace counseled aspiring writers: “Let not your reader depart from beginnings that refuse to start”.
O.K., that’s good advice, and interesting, but it’s not a story - It’s technique. A good story, or any written piece will camouflage technique. Ideally, readers should be so caught up with the tale that the framing structure will go unnoticed.
Interesting stories, even when badly written, will still be interesting. Dull stories will remain dull. Brilliant writing cannot save them. Interesting content is made better by good technique, but not the other way around.
You may be wondering if I’m ever going to tell a story.
Yes, I am.
I’m going to tell a story about stories. People started telling stories as soon as they moved past hooting and grunting. Although, some still do more hooting and grunting than speaking. Mostly at sporting events, and in rap songs. The first stories were sung more often than spoken: long, long stories; epic sagas; tales of glory and honor. Nowadays, glory and honor are mostly out of fashion.
Homer begins the Iliad by evoking the Muse. He asks the spirit of the Muse to infuse his body and sing the wrath of Achilles. It’s easier to remember the words of a song, than it is to remember the words of a text, and, isn’t it always good idea to ask for help from above.
There is a popular notion that these old stories must surely have been altered and elaborated over the centuries. I’m not so sure. I once heard a scholar of oral traditions describe his field work in many small villages located from the Middle East to Uzbekistan. He recorded long hours of story-telling by the local storytellers. If any of these storytellers made a mistake, the villagers would stop him, and correct the mistake. The Dead Sea Scrolls read exactly as the same texts do today. Medieval monks were punished for every small error of transcription. I think old manuscripts are pretty reliable. Modern transcription, not so much. Consider modern-day news stories.
The earliest form of anything like a newspaper story were the Anglo-Saxion chronicles. They were about as accurate as todays news stories. Even so, without them we would have no idea of what was going on during those dark times. They were written by various scribes from 600 A.D. to nearly 1200 A.D. They were recorded by the year. Some years got only one-line, other years, several pages. Unlike today, if nothing happened, then nothing was recorded.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, (1100A.D), wrote a history of British Kings that was undoubtedly more fable than history. Nonetheless, One of the Kings described by Geoffrey was a figure so compelling that we are still telling stories about him today – King Arthur.
Sir Thomas Malory, (1485), wrote about the Arthurian legends in a lyrical work titled, Le Morte d’Arthur. It was a work of literature that made little effort to persuade anyone that it was a history. It might be described as the first novel.
When Winston Churchill was asked if he believed King Arthur ever existed, he said, “If he didn’t, he should have”.
Great stories of fiction can sometimes be more true than true stories. That’s because we recognize true things, even when they are embedded in fiction. When you write about humans, you are writing to an audience of experts. The prolific author, Stephen King, once said that the difference between writing fiction and non-fiction is that fiction has to be believable.
Most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Jack Kerouac’s book, On the Road didn’t quite put an end to that structure, but it paved the way for more informal ways of story-telling. On the Road tells of mad road trips back and forth across 1950’s America in search of Dharma. Its events and characters are mostly real, but not necessarily. The characters are necessarily entertaining.
Kerouac typed the manuscript on one, very long, continuous roll of paper. He created the roll from single sheets taped together. Why? He didn’t want to stop typing to insert a new sheet. This was not laziness. It was theory. He wanted his stream-of-consciousness rambling to emulate the often drug-infused, uninterrupted, narratives of ancient tribal story-tellers. I guess it worked. Probably drove the proofreaders crazy.
That aside, there’re are a lot of ways to tell a story. How many Mothers have said to their son, “Is that the truth Timmy, or are you telling me a story”. Stories don’t have to be lies but lies are stories.
Movies are now the most popular way of telling stories. In the early days of Hollywood there was some uncertainty about how to use this new medium. The early movies featured set stages of the sort common to theater. Actors interacted with little movement. After a while, someone figured out that if you can show things in motion, you probably should. In Marshal McLuhan’s 1967 book, The Medium is the Message, he pointed out that the content of new media always reflects the content of the media that came before. McLuhan called this, “the rearview mirror effect”.
Hollywood soon learned the value of motion, Perhaps too well. Modern films tend to be generous with action, and skimpy with story. Worse yet, the actions have become clichés. How many times have you seen a low-angle shot of a high-heeled shoe descending from an opening car door? How about a silhouette of a fleeing figure against a background of flame? And, so on. This is all regrettable. Movies have been, and could be again, a wonderful medium for telling stories. Action cannot replace story. Action can amplify story. That is how action should
be used.
We are - each of us - a story. A long narrative of many episodes. Told, and retold so many times that in our old age we may not be certain of how much is true, and how much has been fabricated. It may not matter all that much. A good story is a good story. As Churchill said, if it isn’t true, it should have been.
Narrative is crucial to be-ing. Without our story we are like Peter Pan without his shadow. There is no evidence that we exist, or that we ever existed.
All stories are human stories. Even when we write stories about animals, we turn them into furry, anthropomorphized versions of ourselves. The Roman playwright, Terence, said, “I am human, nothing human is alien to me”. He may have also said, I am human, I understand nothing else. There are untold stories beyond our understanding.
When little girls play with dolls, or little boys play at war, they are starting to tell their story. If our hopes and dreams fall short of reality, then, our stories may still provide drama to the fall. It’s something. It’s a story.
And that’s my story about stories.
The End.
