storytelling: fifth lecture

PLACE AND TIME

FIFTH LECTURE

sjoerd-jeroen [email protected] education | storytelling | culture

EXERCISE 1

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sjoerd-jeroen [email protected] http://moenandar.blogspot.com

Close your eyes, take a deep breath and relax

Listen to someone telling a story

EXERCISE 2

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Describe the place where the story you’ve just heard took place

oPlace of the story

oPlace of storytelling

PLACE

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PLACE OF STORYTELLING

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Dunyazad appeared and laid down beneath the bed. In the dead of night she woke up. She waited patiently until the king had satisfied his lust with her sister, after which the three of them were wide awake. At that moment, Dunyazad cleared her throat and said: ‘Sister, if you aren’t sleepy yet, then tell me one of your beautiful stories […].’ Shehrzad turned to king Syehriyar and asked: ‘Do I have your permission to tell a story?’ ‘Very well.’ ‘Listen,’ Shehrzad said gladly.

The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad

PLACE OF THE STORY

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It has been told to me, happy king, that once upon a time there was a porter in Baghdad who was a bachelor and who would remain unmarried. One day, as he stood about the street leaning idly upon his crate, a woman approached him […]. With a sweet, friendly voice she said: “Porter, take up your crate and follow me." The porter could hardly believe his ears. He picked up his crate and ran after her. ‘This is a happy day,’ he said to himself. He followed her till she stopped at the door of a house. There she knocked and an old man, a Nazarene, opened the door.

(Thousand and One Night)

PLACE AND FOCALISATOR

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There was a white apple on the door that I had to take into my hand and turn before I could enter. On the wall there were strips with cherries: all the way from up above to down below. In summer they made me thirsty. One time I triend to take a few from the paper to eat them, but that wasn’t a great success. Lime and glue had a sharp taste. […] I remember the streets: very long and full of stones that fitted each other smoothly. They resembled black water. The streetlights made me wet with their yellow water when I passed them. It really was like that. My Pyjamas were dry […], but I never took them outside, out of fear for the streetlights. Oh! I was much too sensible to let them get wet.

(Lawrence Durrell, “The Cherries”)

o Place can make or break your story

o Place dresses up your ploto Sucks the reader into the

story (activates the imagination)

o Everything is meaningful!• Congruent (crying in the rain)• Incongruent (Hearing that

your beloved passed away while everybody is celebrating New Year’s Eve)

PLACE AND MEANING

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EXERCISE 3

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Sit down at a random place. Describe this place from the point of view of an unreliable focalisator

E.g.o Drunko Insaneo Liaro Etc.

o Story time is in the past in relation to storytelling time

o Storytelling time and story time converge

o Story time is in the future in relation to storytelling time

STORY TIME AND STORYTELLING TIME: 3 POSSIBLE RELATIONS

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STORY TIME IS IN THE PAST IN RELATION TO STORYTELLING TIME

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It is said – but only God knows what is hidden and the history of the ancient peoples – that once upon a time, during the Sassanide dynasty in China and India, there lived two brothers who were both kings.

Thousand and One Nights

STORY TIME AND STORYTELLING TIME CONVERGE

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Here they know me as ‘Patch’ and tonight Patch plays a game of poker with Gene Claymore, once a terrible piece of scum, now respectable and rich beyond belief. […] Fortunately, Claymore isn’t a sore loser. The night is getting longer and longer and so far he didn’t win a single game.

(Jo Duffy, “Memory of Peace”)

STORY TIME IS IN THE FUTURE IN RELATION TO STORYTELLING TIME

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On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a Question will be asked, a question that must never, ever be answered.

Steven Moffat, The Time of the Doctor

o To focus on the now of the story instead of the now of the storytelling

o To raise the tensiono To suggest a general

truth

USING PRESENT TENSE

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TO RAISE THE TENSION

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They came to wake him up in his chair, in the next room, whether he wanted to see her one more time before they’d lock the lid of the coffin. ‘What, it’s dark? So suddenly?’No: half past nine in the morning. But it had been like that today right from the start: you could barely see each other. The procession was to leave at ten o’clock.Dazed he looks around him.

Luigi Pirandello, “Barefeet on the Grass”


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There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Mystery of Marie Roget”

o Flashbacko Flashforward

INTERRUPTING THE TEMPORAL FLOW OF YOUR STORY

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There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Mystery of Marie Roget”

STORY TIME IS IN THE FUTURE IN RELATION TO STORYTELLING TIME

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My father who, once I’m born, will be talking excitedly with the blonde nurse Aletta Jacobs after a few minutes of complete silence, doesn’t notice that I’ve taken my thumb out of my mouth. The way I will see him in a while, small, vulnerable, he’d fit right into a story […].

While my mother is busy talking to the social worker, my thoughts slide back to my father, Mehdi, who grew up under the smoke of a glue factory. Sometimes, on the playground, he can smell the scent of a blend with which they make glue, according to the teacher who keeps watch over the playground. He sticks his nose in the air and breathes deeply. ‘They’re melting the cow bones,’ he says and continues to gaze over the playground.

(Abdelkader Benali, The Long Awaited)

storytelling: fifth lecture

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