Stories and Comparing Drive Invention

 

These days, the art of telling stories is essential for the communication of almost any purpose or content. I find continuing inspirations for the creation of stories from the field of screenwriting. Here's a snapshot of a beautiful paradise beach taken from a plane, with a house hidden in the trees. What story does it imply?

How are “important” scenes, characters and features selected as meaningful that "drive" a plot line forward...? How can we take our raw experiences and turn them into an interesting story?

I'm fascinated to explore, articulate and re-purpose the artistic motives about what makes the power of a "good story" - scene by scene. I've noticed in the shaping of a story line that what's missing is just as important as what's included. Whatever is left out becomes unnecessary, and what is selected becomes highlighted in its importance.

How did I do this? It’s been fun for me to expand my ideas from reading longer books after seeing the movies that digested stories to a much shorter experience.

One observation I gained (not obviously revealed by merely watching movies) is how movie viewers have been educated over the years to figure out what is happening in a story. Viewers are shown scenes depicting what has been determined by screen writers to be relevant to the story. Making sense of these scenes are embedded in the action of the actors, set and events – and movie music scores. Of course, this also includes indicators of time frames, foreshadowing of later events, suspense, drama, character building, etc.

This means that movie watchers are, to a great extent, completely unaware of how much work they are doing to construct the plot, events and characters as a story unfolds. 

Good storytelling never disturbs the illusion of how a viewer must continue to be tracking these elements to make sense of the illusion that is being created for their own story experience.

Of course, many of us enjoy movies. Our appetite for a good story seems to be unlimited! That's enough for most people...but for me, it wasn’t. 

THINKING SKILL TACTIC: Splitting is better than Lumping

In opposition to collecting a grouping of what is similar, I find generating differences to be the more constructively creative strategy. When it comes to creativity, comparing to reveal differences is my favorite process to generate new discoveries. By noting differences, the selected features can be designed into a model or form. Then possibly unrelated areas can be plugged in as different content - it's a way to "repurpose" the same content. Seeking differences allows former randomly related factors to become relevant as the process is explored and expanded. 

 This is a bit abstract, so let me give three examples... 

 Recipes are an obvious example. You can observe and note what makes a casserole different from a cake. Then you'd take the form of a casserole, which is some sort of grain or starch that is baked, including some sort of vegetable or meat, usually precooked and a type of topping such as a cheese or a crunchy goody. Now once you've done this describing, you can take as a form a genre of food, such as lasagna - and switch the contents to another cultural style of food - For instance, you can make a Mexican food casserole instead of an Italian one. Then you get an original creative combination that wasn't obviously apparent. 

Concerning art materials: What's are the different functions of sealing a charcoal drawing? So you can avoid smudging the drawing, giving it a finishing coat; you might want to continue to draw further on it without spoiling what you've previously drawn. Needs to disappear after drying. Can't change what you've drawn that it's sealing. Can't change the texture of the paper you're drawing on.
(There a product designed for this called "workable fixative.") Now that you have described differences and features, you can experiment to discover how certain products of hair spray will work just as well. Hair spray can be purchased for two dollars on sale as opposed to sixteen dollars for the product specifically designed as workable art fixative.

 Related to the music business - here's another example in the "music genome" of Pandora.com. 

At the start of this business, musicians working with Pandora would listen to songs and describe the characteristics of the different, unique features in each song - features such as instrumentation, style, use of harmony and rhythm and "feel" etc. Eventually, descriptive commonalities of particular songs were cross-categorized and organized into a large database – the “genome.”. As these features of music were established, these descriptions of unique characteristics were matched to other "similar" songs to generate a streamed delivery of music that Pandora called a "radio station." This was delivered as a paid and a free service containing advertising to Pandora listeners. It had many monetization possibilities: exposing listeners to new musicians they might enjoy possibly had listeners buying new music. As the business service model evolved, any user of the site could specify a type of music they enjoyed, based on a particular song, musical artist or podcast theme. With their own streaming radio station, the user design would be generated by an algorithm written by Pandora from the mix of characteristics present in any particular song's description - going far beyond any musical genre. Each user would design their own unique mixture as a "radio station," share these stations with others, etc. The user could "tune" or "shape" their station with a "thumbs up/down" interactive feature if Pandora database delivered the “wrong” songs to the stream. 

 Every business could use a story about how and why it exists.
  
Would screenwriting templates about what makes a 'good story' help you formulate your interesting story? 

How would the ability to compare to reveal differences help you to tell your story and expand your business?