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Ira Glass on Storytelling - Part 1



I found this series of talks by Ira Glass very helpful. My high school English class also emphasized the essay paragraph and really never taught story telling. I somehow absorbed by osmosis that anecdotes were something to be avoided, but I agree with him that anecdote is the seed of the story. It's not a story yet. As Ira says, next must come an explanation of why you're spending time reading this anecdote, which he calls the "moment of reflection."

In this example, he takes advantage of the dual meaning possible in the events of the anecdote. Waking up to a quiet house might mean a pleasant Sunday morning or might mean the house is too quiet, abnormally quiet, with ensuing consequences. The example is setup well for a suspense story...it remains to be seen whether this anecdote followed by reflection is applicable to other types of stories. I suspect it is.

It's always been an obstacle to my writing, that I find material I know is compelling, but get stuck attempting to discover the story within it. For a long time, I tried to turn some significant life experiences into songs, Western poems and stories, but despite these experiences being compelling, there never seemed to be enough there to make a complete song, poem or story, until I rediscovered haiku. Immediately I recognized that I didn't need to write more lines, that what I had was perfectly sized for haiku. Not only that, but the intense, personal experiences involving intuitions about nature were the stuff of haiku.

It was also important for me to accept that whether or not the haiku were "correct" or great art did not matter to me, what mattered was the haiku for perfectly expressed what I was trying to express and what I was being compelled to express. I was satisfied that I was able to express, realize and convey my experience with fidelity and satisfaction without any regard to external requirements, such as "needing" to write down the experience in a Western poetic form because it was the only "legitimate" way. I don't care so much if they are "good" as much as I care that they represent and communicate my experiences accurately and effectively in a way that is satisfying. I can't get them out of my mind move on until then.


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