Ira Glass on Storytelling
I found these videos of Ira Glass (from intueri's blog) on storytelling. Glass is a noted radio personality, best known for his radio show This American Life.
I have been thinking a lot about storytelling, partly because I struggle with it during the course of my own research, and partly because my work involves reading other people's stories of their research. I used to love reading as a kid and through college. In school I kept a diary that listed the hundreds of books I had read and every once in a while I would cherish running my finger down the list and recalling with great pleasure the stories in those books. After starting grad school I have lost my joy of casual reading for a lot of reasons. First, I am reading all the time as part of my research and everyone knows that scientists are some of the worst writers. As a result I read so many badly written papers everyday that I have lost patience with reading. Second, one rarely feels like doing in one's free time what one does for work. And so, since my work involves so much reading, I prefer to get away from books and the computer in my rare free time. Third, even when I do have some free time, I feel sort of guilty about reading non-reserach related material like fiction because I could have been utlilizing that time to read research-related books and papers. So, even though I still love books, libraries, and book-stores and can spend hours going through the books section of amazon.com, I have lost my appetite and enthusiasm for actual reading.
After reading so much bad writing, I have also become more and more determined to improve myself as a writer. I do not want to make other researchers suffer through my papers. Coming from a technical background meant that through four years of college there was no emphasis given in my formal education on my writing skills. I used to be a good writer in grade school but research writing is far more complex and I did not pick up the skills or practice enough to be able to write well today. And hence the interest in learning more about the art of storytelling. Because even though most researchers and scientists do not see it as that, research writing is storytelling.
One of the things that I take away from Glass's videos is that the basic building blocks of storytelling are anecdotes and reflection. Anecdotes are a sequence of actions; the step-by-step description of "what happened next". A good story-teller captures her audience by mastering the art of telling the anecdote. Glass says that the facts in the anecdote could be most boring and unteresting but you can still create anticipation and suspense in your audience by the way you tell the anecdote. The other important thing is th reflection at the end (or throughout) the anecdote which answers the question "Here is the larger point of the story; here is why I am wasting your time telling you this". Sounds simple but if you think about it, most stories never get both these right; either the anecdote is very interesting but its not clear what point the storyteller wants to make or the anecdote is very boring but is trying to highlight an important larger point. Getting both right is key to good storytelling. Now if only I could apply this to my research writing.
I have been thinking a lot about storytelling, partly because I struggle with it during the course of my own research, and partly because my work involves reading other people's stories of their research. I used to love reading as a kid and through college. In school I kept a diary that listed the hundreds of books I had read and every once in a while I would cherish running my finger down the list and recalling with great pleasure the stories in those books. After starting grad school I have lost my joy of casual reading for a lot of reasons. First, I am reading all the time as part of my research and everyone knows that scientists are some of the worst writers. As a result I read so many badly written papers everyday that I have lost patience with reading. Second, one rarely feels like doing in one's free time what one does for work. And so, since my work involves so much reading, I prefer to get away from books and the computer in my rare free time. Third, even when I do have some free time, I feel sort of guilty about reading non-reserach related material like fiction because I could have been utlilizing that time to read research-related books and papers. So, even though I still love books, libraries, and book-stores and can spend hours going through the books section of amazon.com, I have lost my appetite and enthusiasm for actual reading.
After reading so much bad writing, I have also become more and more determined to improve myself as a writer. I do not want to make other researchers suffer through my papers. Coming from a technical background meant that through four years of college there was no emphasis given in my formal education on my writing skills. I used to be a good writer in grade school but research writing is far more complex and I did not pick up the skills or practice enough to be able to write well today. And hence the interest in learning more about the art of storytelling. Because even though most researchers and scientists do not see it as that, research writing is storytelling.
One of the things that I take away from Glass's videos is that the basic building blocks of storytelling are anecdotes and reflection. Anecdotes are a sequence of actions; the step-by-step description of "what happened next". A good story-teller captures her audience by mastering the art of telling the anecdote. Glass says that the facts in the anecdote could be most boring and unteresting but you can still create anticipation and suspense in your audience by the way you tell the anecdote. The other important thing is th reflection at the end (or throughout) the anecdote which answers the question "Here is the larger point of the story; here is why I am wasting your time telling you this". Sounds simple but if you think about it, most stories never get both these right; either the anecdote is very interesting but its not clear what point the storyteller wants to make or the anecdote is very boring but is trying to highlight an important larger point. Getting both right is key to good storytelling. Now if only I could apply this to my research writing.
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