To truly understand what storytelling is, and grasp the potential it holds, one must first comprehend what a story is. To analyze what needs to be developed in a story, why a particular story worked—or didn’t work—in a specific context, you must understand how stories are interconnected, how they are structured. To delve deeper into the concept, let’s break it down: the art of storytelling— The Telling of a Story.
It is the foundational story that sets the limits for what constitutes storytelling—and it is you who decides how you want to work with it.
Wikipedia provides the following definition:
Story = a written or oral account of a series of events, which can depict both real and fictional occurrences, or a combination of both.
Going further back in history, Aristotle defined a story as follows:
A story…
- consists of a series of actions and/or events that
- together form a unity, allowing one to discern a beginning, a middle, and an end.
This definition encompasses everything that can fall under the designation of stories. There are so many different types of stories that it is challenging to find a common denominator less abstract and overarching than this. However, the image of a story based on the above definitions is rather dry.
When we hear the word “story,” we do not think of such a comprehensive, abstract, and somewhat cumbersome explanation. No, when we hear the word “story,” we prick up our ears and see people, flesh and blood, thoughts and emotions in front of us. We prepare to hear something that makes us want to stay, to listen a little longer — something exciting perhaps, or something that makes us smile or even laugh, maybe something that brings tears to our eyes. For stories are connected to life and are thus intimately linked to emotions and contexts. Most people have a fairly good sense of what a story is—and what it is not. There is no absolute truth. Even within science, there is no complete agreement on the definition of a story. Some argue that anything reflecting a plot is a story, while others claim that only what is retold by someone constitutes a story, thus excluding, for example, theater and film from the category of stories. In his study “What is narratology?”, Carlshamre writes that:
“Another relevant contrast is the one Aristotle makes between dramatic and narrative representation. The typical form for drama is to represent a sequence of events ‘in persona,’ to imitate it (mimesis), while for the epic, it is typical to narrate it (diegesis).”1
Literature theorist Per-Åke Skalin raises the discussion of boundaries in this way:
“A representation of narratology should not convey the false impression that results have been reached on which there is total consensus and that all narratologists essentially share the same view of what constitutes storytelling. — As an example, the question of the criterion for a story can be mentioned. Story narratologists, following Aristotle, chose the presence of a plot as the criterion. The consequence was that not only novels, short stories, and fairy tales but also drama and film, series of images, ballet, and many other forms of expression were considered obvious objects for narratological study. For a discourse narratologist such as Genette, on the other hand, the idea that dramas could be narrative was definitionally impossible. The criterion for a story was the presence of a narrator, telling something to someone.”2
I will address stories in the broader interpretation and treat also depicted stories as stories, as storytelling in the broader perspective is about the art of conveying a story, and in this perspective, I do not want to place any value on how they are conveyed.
So, we have a fundamental definition of what a story is, to start from. But there are more things that are important to shape a story. With the help of these, context arises, the reader or listener is captivated, and emotions can be conveyed. In the postings to come, I’m going to describe these elements one at a time.
- Carlshamre, Staffan, 2006: Vad är narratologi? http://www.philosophy.su.se ↩︎
- Skalin, Per-Åke, Narratologi – studiet av berättandets principer, 2002, Studentlitteratur ↩︎
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