You just gotta tell a good story
kampheyapproved.medium.com
You just gotta tell a good story
1–10 of 75 posts
Re: You just gotta tell a good story
#2...to create stories (content).
In fairness, author brings up an interesting counterpoint in teaching board games, because we do not learn games by hearing stories about them, but rather rules, pitfalls, and goals.
Re: You just gotta tell a good story
#3What I find frustrating is people who write history and don't put enough thought into telling the story. The word story is right there in the name "history". Instead they put more emphasis on listing a chronology of events, the personalities and a description of the surroundings. That's all well and good, but the story really ties it all together.
For example, I like WW2 audiobooks to fall asleep at night. "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer or "The Second World War" by Sir Winston Churchill are pretty standard, but then you listen to "Barbarossa - Hitler’s Fatal Gamble" by Jonathan Dimbleby and notice a big improvement in the story telling that holds your interest. And once in awhile you get really surprised by how good something is (by an amateur no less) such as "Red Road from Stalingrad" by Mansur Abdulin.
Edit: If you want an example of prime, top notch story telling look no further than "Spare" by Prince Harry ghost written by J. R. Moehringer, who has won awards including the Pulitzer Prize. Whether you like Harry or not, the writing is almost flawless and really makes Harry's case I feel.
Re: You just gotta tell a good story
#4What I find frustrating is people who write history and don't put enough thought into telling the story. The word story is right there in the name "history". Instead they put more emphasis on listing a chronology of events, the personalities and a description of the surroundings. That's all well and good, but the story really ties it all together. For example, I like WW2 audiobooks to fall asleep at night. "The Rise…
One recommendation from me: "Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk" by Len Deighton.
Re: You just gotta tell a good story
#5Maybe writing the story also matters.
Maybe writing it in a way that isn't annoying.
Like so many one line paragraphs that he's done here.
Just something I noticed.
When I skimmed and stopped reading it.
YMMV.
Re: You just gotta tell a good story
#6teaching is not storytelling.
teaching is instructional - and works best following journalism writing rules:
1. tell/write the most important thing first (in case the reader don't follow further)
2. tell/write the details
3. then tell/write the least important information (so if the reader don't even reach this point, he was already exposed to the most important information)
Re: You just gotta tell a good story
#7Aside: Was that blog post taken from Twitter? If not, Twitter has profoundly affected the way the author writes. Nearly every "paragraph" is a single sentence, and the longest of them is just 300 characters.
I imagine it must be difficult to tell a story if you write it in a style where your paragraphs resemble bullet points! Perhaps, though, it might work if it's very dialog-heavy, and if the characters are noir-laconic. Elmore Leonard would approve of that.
Re: You just gotta tell a good story
#8Maybe writing the story also matters. Maybe writing it in a way that isn't annoying. Like so many one line paragraphs that he's done here. Just something I noticed. When I skimmed and stopped reading it. YMMV.
[deleted]
Re: You just gotta tell a good story
#9What I find frustrating is people who write history and don't put enough thought into telling the story. The word story is right there in the name "history". Instead they put more emphasis on listing a chronology of events, the personalities and a description of the surroundings. That's all well and good, but the story really ties it all together. For example, I like WW2 audiobooks to fall asleep at night. "The Rise…
One recommendation from me: "Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk" by Len Deighton.
Thanks, I'll look for it. The backstory of Red Road From Stalingrad is interesting:
Over the following few years, Abdulin worked to complete his memoir while at least some of his comrades, such as Shamrai, were still alive to read it. Some years after its Russian publication in 1991, Artem Drabkin, a Russian popular historian of the Soviet-German War, found a copy and realized it could find an English-speaking audience. He tracked Abdulin down in the town of Novotroitsk, and suggested an English edition. Abdulin's reply was "Why not? Let's give it a try..." The English edition was published in 2004.
Re: You just gotta tell a good story
#10[deleted]