The Word Cloud

Story telling
Story writing
Memoir
History
Science
Leg-pulling
Lying

We all have ways to structure experience.
Does anyone have ideas around the nature of narrative?

Okay, this may be a conversation stopper, because you've caught me in the middle of my PhD thesis, but how about Kearney, who as well as being a philosopher, is also a novelist, talking about the narrative act:

"In each case there is a tale, a teller, something told about and a recipient of the tale... narrative is a quintessentially communicative act.… A tale was spun from bits and pieces of experience, linking past happenings with present ones and casting both into a dream of possibilities. "

and then he goes back to Aristotle:

"Mimesis is ‘invention’ in the original sense of that term: invenire means both to discover and to create, that is, to disclose what is already there in the light of what is not yet (but is potentially). It is the power, in short, to re-create actual worlds as possible worlds... mimesis involves both a free-play of fiction and a responsibility to real life... this brings me, ultimately, to what Ricoeur calls the circle of triple mimesis: (1) the prefiguring of our life-world [the bits and pieces of experience] as it seeks to be told; (2) the configuring of the text in the act of telling; (3) the refiguring of our existence as we return from narrative text to action."

But my favourite take on fiction is by a critic and novelist called Maria Margaronis: "Fiction is the memories we don't have".

To discover and to create. That is how the act of telling feels to me.

With a storytelling group, I arrive with a series of stories I might tell. We talk, and I find the mood of the group. I try a story, usually a short one, and find out very quickly from the listeners' eyes if the story connects.

If I get it right, the next step is to draw listeners into the creative process and make up a story together, perhaps with a 'magic' box or scarf. The listeners are then drawing on their own experience and fantasy. My role is to shape the story and hold the boundaries. Between us, we create something entirely new. Could it be a shared set of memories we each have in part?

This process works with both children and adults (once they've lost their inhibitions). When I'm writing, I think that process of dialogue still goes on, but this time, it is a dialogue with my cast of imaginary characters. Maybe writing is akin to schizophrenia.

Do I have ideas on it? Do I hell! I was commissioned by HarperCollins to write a book on the human storytelling instinct, but the commission was aborted 1/3 of the way through. (They forgot to pay me for that third though, for some reason. Or even apologise. Most unlike a publisher.)

One of the Big Ideas in that book was this. There's loads of evidence that fiction & make-believe is how we learn to model and internalise the existence of other minds - and since our ability to build very sophisticated models of other people's intentionality is almost the most uniquely human thing about us, then it's not a wild exaggeration to say that the fiction-instinct lies at the heart of what it is to be human.

Harry, when I write my book on storytelling in fiction, may I come to you for advice? Then there'll be two seminal but unpublishedbooks about storytelling.

Likewise, Harry AND Emma (this could start a chain reaction)

When I write a book based on storytelling experiences with people with learning disabilities, can I come to you both for ideas?

The book (first projected in 2003, before I had written a word of a novel) would look at the way people interact with stories and develop their sense of self, and hence their ability to make valid choices.

No one would read it, and so it would just be a glorious exercise in self-justification: I like telling stories! A third unpublished book on storytelling.

However, it is based on a small amount of hard evidence, from storytelling with the young woman who first inspired the character in my novel. After four month's storytelling, this adult was surprising her mother by speaking in longer sentences. It wasn't about building her vocabulary, although I do think there was an element of giving her language skills a good stretch. The main benefit was that the storytelling experience made it feel worthwhile for her to try and communicate.

She could empathise with the stories (they were and are usually about her, sometimes in scary situations) and she received positive encouragement every time she tried to join in or solve a problem. ('Wouldn't do that – you're silly, John!') She found that she had something to say. And sure enough, when she left the group, her language skill went down. Since then, it has gone up and down several times, but we haven't quite matched the original peak. Maybe it was sheer excitement when she discovered that she could participate in stories.

Emma's quotation from kearney reminded me of a piece of advice in a book on narrative I read which was when writing in third person POV, ask yourself 'who is telling this story and to whom are they telling it?'

Yes. Sometimes I catch myself telling stories to myself. No one else would be interested!

Although if you have a good enough time talking to yourself, others will want to get in on the act!

You could have something there, Phil. As a verbal storyteller, I communicate much better when I'm in a good mood. I lose myself in the story, and the energy transmits. On a bad day, I'm a mere narrator.

I do need to be in a reasonably good head space to write. I certainly can't write anything useful at all if I'm tired or hungover or stressed.

Then again, since I like writing more than most things, the act of writing itself tends to improve my mood. I can quite often spend three hours at the keyboard and, on the face of it, accomplish nothing, then get a huge amount of productivity from my final 2-3 hours working.

I'm writing non-fiction at the moment, which is much easier - but even there, I need to find an upbeat, jokey, energetic tone and can't do that if I'm not feeling up for it.

I sense undertones of Tony Hancock in there, Harry. The jokey, energetic tone and the hangover. But having met you, maybe not...