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Storytelling in the Digital Age. It should have have an acronym, but SDA sounds like a medical device. StoDA?

Or, maybe it’s time to drop the “Digital Age” reference and remember that storytelling, in any age, is storytelling.

No matter what you dub it, it’s a sizzling time to be a storyteller! Powerful new storytelling platforms, tools and communities are being invented every day, empowering storytellers and audiences but simultaneously introducing new challenges. As a writer, storyteller and teacher, I’m a bit obsessed with the evolution of author/audience relationships. Storytelling in the Digital Age is redefining this timeless relationship in exciting and unpredictable ways; empowering raconteurs of all stripes to explore new narrative vernaculars; unshackling indie creators from yesterday’s gatekeepers and referees; and enhancing audiences’ appetites for stories and previously unimaginable story interfaces.

But Storytelling in the Digital Age isn’t all noontime massages and dark chocolate. The proliferation of sexy media tempts creators to swap good narrative craft for snazzy special effects. Critics worry that audiences are becoming lazier, more passive even as increasingly interactive storytelling is possible.

What follows is a digital scrapbook of interesting tidbits about Storytelling in the Digital Age for you to check out. I’ll add and subtract as inspiration (and time) permit. Don’t hesitate to recommend juicy material that I’ve overlooked!

It’s a sizzling time to be a storyteller! New, powerful platforms and tools are invented every day. And storytelling communities are coalescing where and when they never existed before. Here’s a digital scrapbook of interesting tidbits for you to check out.

http://storify.com/virtualdavis/storytelling-in-the-digital-age

Related articles

• What Will ‘The Future of Storytelling’ Look Like? (mediabistro.com)
• Digital storytelling project aims to inspire (mnn.com)
• Narrative.ly Taps Into NYC’s Untold Stories (pbs.org)
• Kickstarting a literary studio for serialized fiction (boingboing.net)
• Beat reporting in the digital age (journomel.com)

Jeff Polish storytelling at The Monti

Laurels and hugs and lots of chin-chin toasting to Lisa Pepin (@lisa_pepin) for her poignant video “Storyteller” about north Carolina’s storytelling organization, The Monti including director Jeff Polish’s backstory. I’m fascinated with storytelling unplugged and with The Monti in particular, and I suspect you will be too after enjoying Pepin’s moving pictures and talking heads.

“As a storyteller it gave me validation for all those years that I was quiet… the stage is the best expression of myself… I’m bulletproof. It’s amazing. It’s probably the most amazing place that I live.” ~ Jeff Polish

I’m reminded of Michael Ondaatje‘s In the Skin of a Lion.

“It is a novel about the wearing and the removal of masks; the shedding of skin, the transformations and translations of identity.” (Contemporary Writers)

Perhaps you should read it. Especially if you enjoyed The English Patient. You’ll recognize Hana and Caravaggio, for instance… And you’ll recognize why Pepin’s tidy storytelling about storytelling at The Monti reminds me of Ondaatje’s storytelling in In the Skin of a Lion. Are you starting to catch my drift?

I’ve excerpted Polish’s comment, substituting an ellipsis before “I’m bulletproof.” Those two phrases which I removed — two phrases which are reemphasized dramatically in “I’m bulletproof” — speak to the puissance of storytelling that fascinates Ondaatje. That fascinates me. Drawing the storyteller’s mantle over our quotidian garb, pulling the cavernous hood low over our eyes, obscuring our familiar face, we become our stories. We are bulletproof. For while. And it is indeed an amazing place to live.

Related articles

• On a Mystery Voyage with Michael Ondaatje (nybooks.com)
• The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje. Reviewed by John Purcell (booktopia.com.au)
• Children can be decent storytellers. (ctolle.com)

The Monti is my kind of place. Well, almost. They’re all about live storytelling and they’re all about community. So why almost? Because they aren’t a short walk away. They aren’t even in my community…

The Monti is an organization that invites people from the community to tell personal stories without the use of notes.  It’s just simple storytelling.  Each month, events are held around the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area and as far away as Greensboro.  The goal is to create an intimate, open, and fun atmosphere where people can relate their personal experiences to one another through narrative… by inviting interesting people with amazing stories that amuse and compel.

And for two and a half years they’ve been selling out their shows. In fact, they’ve grown so popular that they’ve launched The Monti StorySLAM during which audience members are invited to tell 5 minute stories on a specific theme.

Each night promises an unexpected and refreshing night of provocative entertainment.

This sounds like The Moth, another storytelling institution that intrigues me. I discovered both via NPR and have wiled away way too much time on their websites plotting participation… and imitation!

Clipped from: www.themoth.org (share this clip)

The Moth… is an acclaimed not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling… The Moth has presented more than three thousand stories, told live and without notes, by people from all walks of life to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. Each show features simple, old-fashioned storytelling on thoroughly modern themes by wildly divergent raconteurs who develop and shape their stories with The Moth’s directors.

I believe that storytelling is the glue of community. No, not just the glue. Storytelling is the lubrication of community. No, not just that either. Glue and lube? And lately I’ve been wondering if Essex, if the Champlain Valley is ready to plunge into our collective narratives. I believe (and hope) so!

Update: I’ve created a related oral storytelling mashup called Storytelling Unplugged for further information, and I’ve received a few notable additions from @TheMonti that I’d like to pass along (first four), and in the process of exploring these, I’ve stumbled on to some others. What am I missing? Please contact me via Twitter (@virtualDavis) or use the contact form on the the virtualDavis website. Thanks!

• Porchlight (San Francisco)
• The Stoop (Baltimore)
• Odyssey Storytelling (Tucson)
• Norstar Storytelling League (Twin Cities)
• SpeakeasyDC (Washington, DC)
• First Person Arts (Philadelphia)
• Back Fence PDX (Portland, Oregon)

What exactly is transmedia storytelling? What are “rabbit holes”? Cheese holes? In Liz Thomson’s interview Alison Norrington, CEO of storycentralDIGITAL, tackles all three while considering the ongoing impact of transmedia storytelling on the publishing industry. “I would like to think… The book might not be the primary platform…” But she’s not optimistic. And she sees the future of transmedia storytelling as platform agnostic. Once again, I’m reminded that gaming is a driving force in this transition.

Transmedia storytelling, often referred to as crossmedia or multiplatform storytelling takes the elements of a character’s narrative and applies them uniquely to each medium while extending the story… Under the traditional model, when a big movie comes out, for example, we are offered the novelization, the adaptation in comics, and the videogame version for our Xboxes. It’s the same story over and over again, so the property is essentially milked until it’s dead. The transmedia approach to this kind of narrative would give us different pieces of the narrative on different media platforms, so that we can see the movie and then explore different aspects of the characters and the world in other media. Taken as a whole, it’s a richer, deeper experience that gives us more of what we really want. But most of all, transmedia narrative by definition has a number of what we call “invitational” components, where audience members are welcomed to participate by commenting on the narrative, by playing established or original characters, or even by contributing creatively to the world and the storyline… We are watching a generation rise to power that is plugged in and expects to be heard. They are learning to use these amazing tools and are becoming enormously savvy. They interface with gadgetry and any number of screens intuitively—but right now, most of the entertainment and brand messaging does not do that! The principles of transmedia storytelling address this, which makes transmedia narrative the most powerful in existence today. (SmartPlanet)

Powerful, poignant and totally innovative storytelling! And a bit of a tear-jerker (of the happy variety) too… Long live the flashmob! Echoes of Improv Everywhere, don’t you think? Tell me you didn’t find yourself longing for this emotional welcome the next time you land at an airport?!?! Kudos to T-Mobile for super innovative storytelling.

Aside from the emotionally charged experience and story, the underlying idea that life is for sharing is compelling, timely and powerful. We live in the digital age when it is easier than ever before to share an event like this “spontaneous” welcome home concert in Heathrow airport. Indeed the video cuts repeatedly to travelers recording the event on their mobiles. Photos, videos, phone calls… this is the age of immediate, virtually universal sharing. And the powerful message underlying this advertisement for T-Mobile is that connecting with others to share beauty, to share happiness is magical and humanizing. It’s a universal desire. Too often we all fall into ruts of isolation passing through each others’ lives like ghosts, like passengers in an airport. But moments when our isolated, insulated bubbles pop and we are connected, even temporarily to others is what makes life worth living. We are inherently social creatures, but we’ve been socialized to wear blinders, to limit connection with those around us. Storytelling — and, in this case, T-Mobiles communication tools and network — bridge the divide between us. Okay, time to lay off! I’ve become gushy and repetitive. (The sign of an effective advertisement!)

The Word Made Flesh – book trailer from Tattoolit on Vimeo.

The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide is a full-color photo-and-text anthology edited by Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor, forthcoming October 12, 2010 from Harper Perennial.

The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide is a guide to the emerging subculture of literary tattoos — a collection of 100 full-color photographs of human skin indelibly adorned with quotations and images from Pynchon to Dickinson to Shakespeare to Plath. Packed with beloved lines of verse, literary portraits, and illustrations — and statements from the bearers on their tattoos’ history and the personal significance of the chosen literary work — The Word Made Flesh is part photo collection, part literary anthology written on skin.

Special features include a reprint of a short story by Donald Barthelme (along with the tattoo it inspired on the author’s daughter), an interview with Brian Evenson about seeing his own work tattooed on someone else, Shelley Jackson’s SKIN Project and Rick Moody’s Shelley Jackson tattoo, Jonathan Lethem’s homage to Philip K. Dick, Tao Lin’s Tao Lin tattoo, and much much more.

I’m not much of a tattoo fan, but this trailer (and the concept for the book) is totally intriguing. If it’s piqued your interest too, stop by tattoolit.comto see more tattoo photos, read about the book, and find out how to attend the launch party at the powerHouse Arena in New York on October 20th. You can also follow this dynamic duo on twitter (@TattooLit) and Facebook. What are you waiting for, a message from God?!?!

Update: Feeling curious-er and curious-er? Check out these additional The Word Made Flesh sightings:

Each photograph appears with a statement from its owner, describing the tattoo’s history and significance. Commonalities emerge: inspiration, whimsy, a certain gloom… The literary tattoo… still bears some connotation of punishment. But… it is also a way of using literature as a public symbol of character. (New Yorker)

Jenny Hendrix reviews The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide, edited by Justin Taylor and Eva Talmadge:

The literary tattoo is at least as old as Hester Prynne’s scarlet “A,” and like any tattoo still bears some connotation of punishment. But as with Hester’s, it is also a way of using literature as a public symbol of character. It also invites serious considerations of font and typesetting, even to the point of recreating a specific edition of a book. …

As with any form of self-publishing, the literary tattoo takes pluck. [Bold mine!] Montaigne wrote, in a phrase I imagine no one has tattooed themselves with, “Only fools have made up their minds and are certain.” But it seems to me to be a wonderful group of fools that, like the memorizers in “Fahrenheit 451,” carry the written word with them everywhere.

via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

Most people are not proficient at the art of listening. It requires practice and dedication.

David Weedmark, author of The Tanglewood Murders recently opined on the global listening deficit. And like so much that germinates from his clever mind, his observation that the population at large isn’t very skilled at listening and his “5 Keys to the Art of Listening” are worth reading, re-reading and then passing along to the folks you’d like to listen.

It reminded me of something I used to tell my students. The first step in storytelling is listening. And the second and the third.

To tell stories, you must listen to the world around you. Not just the stories written, told, illustrated by others. There’s a deeper listening that precedes good storytelling, an intentional receptivity to the world around us.

That cracked manhole cover has a story. That twisted walnut tree has a story. That distant dog bark carried on the wind, and the smell of burning leaves, and the scar across you left pinky knuckle. All have stories.

Can you hear them? If you listen, really listen, you’ll begin to hear the stories underneath. And then you can begin to pick and choose the ones you like, the ones you understand, the ones your audience most desire and need.

Weedmark’s guidelines are helpful:

1. Listen actively. Look in the person’s eyes, watch their mouth. Lean forward.
2. Don’t think about talking. Think about what the other person is saying.
3. Ask questions. When the other person has finished… [speaking] ask a question…
4. Don’t fake it. [Your] time is just too valuable.
5. Ask better questions. Take them deeper into their own thoughts and feelings by asking them why they did what they did and how they got to where they are.

(via David Weedmark)

Related articles

• Storytelling, Stillness & Deep Listening (virtualdavis.com)
• The Wonder of Storytelling (virtualdavis.com)
• Storytelling: From Ira Glass to Benedictine Monks (virtualdavis.com)

Talk about the future of journalism often takes on a victim-istic tenor. [But] there’s poetic sensibility in his [David Schlesinger’s] words:

Knowing the story is not enough. Telling the story is only the beginning. The conversation about the story is as important as the story itself.

[…] Along this line, he clearly sees Reuters embracing social media:

What is great about 2010 is that technology has created a completely new concept of community. And it has given that community new powers to inform and connect.

[…] Schlesinger goes on to say the Reuters model will combine the best of both worlds, “the professionalism of the journalist and the power of the community.” Underpinning the Reuters approach, storytelling remains a core tenant as Schlesinger shares:

If we have learned anything from these past two years, it has been that pure facts are not enough. Pure facts don’t tell enough of the story; pure facts won’t earn their way… We’ve been drowning in facts, and that deluge continues to threaten.

[…] What Schlesinger has written is more than an insider’s look at Reuters adjusting to a digital world that puts the consumer in charge.It’s a manifesto for news organizations around the world.(Ishmael’s Corner)

Lou Hoffman’s post about the merits of storytelling communities (ie. nexus of conversations provoked by a story) is a thoughtful and refreshing counterpoint to the woe-is-me grumbling we hear so much lately.

He is reacting to David Schlesinger’s post, “Changing Journalism; Changing Reuters”, and I’ve excerpted some of the most compelling thoughts from both of them above. (Note: I’ve condenced their paragraphs to simplify the layout.)

This notion that the future of journalism — and to a large degree, storytelling, in general — lies in sharing, interaction and community is thrilling. And it’s totally accurate. One-way information is dying. Journalism and storytelling will become more democratic in the process, allowing a much broader conversation to replace the top-down approach that has long prevailed. Citizen participation. Citizen journalism. Open source journalism! It’s exciting. And it poses all sorts of new challenges. Fact checking, for example. And curatorship. As more and more content is generated and aggregated from increasingly diverse sources, it will become more and more inportant to sort, organize and filter the flow if information. This challenge of curatorship will be one of the critical areas of innovation over the next decade.

And last but not least, Schlesinger’s comment about the limitations of facts, reminded me of that old story about two beautiful young maidens, Truth and Story… Let’s see if I can find it!

Ira Glass on How to Build a Great Story

If Bob Dylan and Willy Nelson are two of the most unique voices in music, Ira Glass has to be one of the most unique voices in storytelling. Don’t you think? His slightly nasal voice, awkward cadence and captivating delivery absolutely suck me in.

And Ira Glass isn’t just a master storyteller; he’s a master story crafter. In this series of four YouTube videos Glass explores the building blocks of a great story. Take a few minutes. You’ll learn something. And you’ll enjoy it!

• Ira Glass on Storytelling #1
• Ira Glass on Storytelling #2
• Ira Glass on Storytelling #3
• Ira Glass on Storytelling #4

His humility is encouraging, especially when he samples the reporting he was producing after a half dozen years in the business. By his own admission, there was still so much improvement needed, so much learning. All storytellers know this, but it’s helpful to be reminded by a storyteller with a weekly audience of 1.7 million (according the the statistic he offers in the video) to remind us that their is always plenty of improvement to strive for. Even after years of practice!