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You just gotta tell a good story

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Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#61

Post by j7ake »

waprin wrote: post #14

The other day I was aimlessly browsing through Youtube, and I found a video by a man named Ira Glass. I had never heard of him but apparently he's a famous NPR journalist. He told a story about how in English class he learned to start with a theses and then explain facts. But, in broadcasting, he learned that doesn't work. Instead, you start with an anecdote - the purest form of a story. Ira pointed out that humans a…

I loved that video (watched it a long time ago).

The great thing about that video is that Ira Glass talks about storytelling / broadcasting, but he speaks at a level that is deep enough to connect to anybody in a creative field (e.g. writing, science, art).

His discussion about the need to produce a volume of work, killing your good but not great ideas, and persistence in failing over and over are keys to success in any creative endeavor.

Note in that video he speaks of two building blocks: one is anecdote as you mentioned, but also the other is questions / reflections. Both are needed for a successful story.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#62

Post by [deleted] »

waprin wrote: post #14

The other day I was aimlessly browsing through Youtube, and I found a video by a man named Ira Glass. I had never heard of him but apparently he's a famous NPR journalist. He told a story about how in English class he learned to start with a theses and then explain facts. But, in broadcasting, he learned that doesn't work. Instead, you start with an anecdote - the purest form of a story. Ira pointed out that humans a…

[deleted]

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#63

Post by pilarphosol »

zamnos wrote: post #40
woolion wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That style has became ubiquitous for TED-style talks and most American non-fiction books (even technical ones). The chapter uses an anecdote, if possible name-dropping a known case or famous person, then shortly expands supporting research to the general principle. That style is very persuasive but unscientific. It is precisely designed to lower psychological defenses against the idea, which can leave the spectators…

Can you name any ideas, strong or otherwise, just any one, that would actually stand up to the kinds of misinformation and bad faith arguments that are common on the Internet though? If TED was, instead of being intellectual entertainment for the wealthy, but instead tried to portray itself as a serious scientific conference where papers are presented, it would stoop to "fighting with pigs", as it were, and open itse…

TED is also a laundry for the wealthy. It’s a knock-off of Davos (also PR, because the WEF itself doesn’t have power) that isn’t overtly evil, and it’s also more accessible, insofar as anyone who wants to attend probably can if they make the effort.

The WEF is a weird brand of expensive deadpan satire. The institution itself doesn’t have the power to implement conspiratorial evil, and the attendees can do that anywhere. Davos is more of a meme than it does anything. People who own billion dollar meat companies aren’t actually going to make us eat bugs. TED is a nicer, left-speaking alternative for people who get the Davos joke, and its purpose is to trick the PMCs into thinking they are still in college and that this is actually a mutual aid society where the way things are is just the best humans can do.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#64

Post by croo »

waprin wrote: post #14

The other day I was aimlessly browsing through Youtube, and I found a video by a man named Ira Glass. I had never heard of him but apparently he's a famous NPR journalist. He told a story about how in English class he learned to start with a theses and then explain facts. But, in broadcasting, he learned that doesn't work. Instead, you start with an anecdote - the purest form of a story. Ira pointed out that humans a…

At another part of the globe at uni they teach this style as the "American" style of writing.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#65

Post by fumblebee »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #7

Aside: 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-lac…

This writing style was popularised on LinkedIn, and has the unaffectionate nickname "broetry". A quick search serves up this definition:

> Broety is a style of writing, often popular on LinkedIn, that uses line breaks after every sentence to create long posts that tend to drive high views and engagement. These “broems” usually follow a standard formula: A clickbait-style “hook.” Followed by a somewhat unrealistic conversation.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#66

Post by PeterisP »

WA wrote: post #57
waprin wrote: post #14

The other day I was aimlessly browsing through Youtube, and I found a video by a man named Ira Glass. I had never heard of him but apparently he's a famous NPR journalist. He told a story about how in English class he learned to start with a theses and then explain facts. But, in broadcasting, he learned that doesn't work. Instead, you start with an anecdote - the purest form of a story. Ira pointed out that humans a…

And yet, the author of the article teaches board games by not telling a story, but by explaining the winning condition. Imho, storytelling in a business/teaching/problem-solving context is overrated.

The way I see it, the author of the article teaches board games by arranging the explanation according to narrative principles of good storytelling, arguably making the explanation more effective that way.

Though it would be more effective to directly read and apply pedagogical research instead of pulling in vaguely similar stuff from the field of writing and theater as the author does. For example, much of what the original article says matches pedagogy literature e.g. if I look at 'Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom' by Svinicki chapter 7 about goal-oriented motivation for learning or 'Making Learning Whole' by Perkins chapter 7 about reasons and ways to 'put the learner in driver's seat' then this seems to say similar things as this article only in more detail and with some evidence basis.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel - we have a whole discipline of science dedicated to researching what works best for learning and instruction, it just needs to be applied.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#67

Post by ivansavz »

alexccrist wrote: post #6

teaching 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)

Yes, I've come to the same pattern after many year of crafting explanations.

If I may add somethig, an initial step 0 that contains a "pitch" or "hook" to motivate reader to read the material. e.g. why what you're learning is important/useful.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#68

Post by cableshaft »

WA wrote: post #57
waprin wrote: post #14

The other day I was aimlessly browsing through Youtube, and I found a video by a man named Ira Glass. I had never heard of him but apparently he's a famous NPR journalist. He told a story about how in English class he learned to start with a theses and then explain facts. But, in broadcasting, he learned that doesn't work. Instead, you start with an anecdote - the purest form of a story. Ira pointed out that humans a…

And yet, the author of the article teaches board games by not telling a story, but by explaining the winning condition. Imho, storytelling in a business/teaching/problem-solving context is overrated.

In board games, it kind of makes sense. There's basically only a handful of ways to win anyway. A common joke at my board game night when teaching a game is to start by saying "In this game, the winner is the person with the most points." everyone playfully gasps "Stop the presses!" "Shocker!" ...because it's just so common in the games we play.

Now how you get the most points will come in the details, and the end game scoring might not be elaborated on until near the end of the explanation. But starting with 'winner is the most points' or 'winner is first over the finish line' or 'you win if you achieve X' is usually a good way to start the explanation.

Most games victory condition is usually either 'most points', a race, or achieving some binary condition, and even those last two can be thought of as 'the winner scored 1 point and the losers score 0 points'. That's how BoardGameArena handles it.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#69

Post by smcin »

namaria wrote: post #60
smcin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone attempted to analyze the NYT hardback and softback lists for superficiality, by year? As Po Bronson remarked, I fear we are getting superficial, but maybe even worse, we're (intentionally?) losing touch with any compass to objectively assess that. A lot of these titles feel like massaging people's egos to feel okay about doing bad or arbitrary things, while telling them how smart they are. Seems there's a…

I don't know the answer to your question, but reality is 'most things suck'. It takes effort to make valuable things, and it takes effort to find valuable things. I don't think we are collectively trending either way.

No, it's not accidental mediocrity, it's actual malice.

Stuart Diamond's book is stuffed with underwhelming anecdotes teaching people to be pushy and manipulative with people in low-wage, low-security service jobs [in the US], but moreover selling them that this is being a "master negotiator with elite MBA-school skillz", not just super-pushy, annoying, entitled, whiny. Like the 'cure' for empathy. The only thing I took from it was "Wow it must really suck to work a low-wage, low-security service job in the US these days". I used to think "emotional labor" was hyperbole, but this sort of schlock would change my mind. ("one of the world's leading experts on negotiation. His book, has sold more than 1 million copies, making it world's largest selling book on the subject since it was published in 2011."(!?))

This is much worse than merely the empty superficiality that Po Bronson warned about, which seems harmless by comparison.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#70

Post by namaria »

smcin wrote: post #69
namaria wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the answer to your question, but reality is 'most things suck'. It takes effort to make valuable things, and it takes effort to find valuable things. I don't think we are collectively trending either way.

No, it's not accidental mediocrity, it's actual malice. Stuart Diamond's book is stuffed with underwhelming anecdotes teaching people to be pushy and manipulative with people in low-wage, low-security service jobs [in the US], but moreover selling them that this is being a "master negotiator with elite MBA-school skillz", not just super-pushy, annoying, entitled, whiny. Like the 'cure' for empathy. The only thing I t…

>No, it's not accidental mediocrity, it's actual malice.

I agree it's there. But there's always been people willing to push out bad books for money. And there's also people putting as much, if not more, effort on quality content. I really don't think content is getting worse on average. There's a lot of fluctuation in the noise levels.

But maybe the signal to noise ratio is getting worse. I don't systematically analyze this. Just honestly don't think it's harder to find good books now then 10 or 20 years ago. I did move from a country and language with a fraction of the publication volume you can find in English, and to a country with many high quality physical bookstore that I trust for curation and discoverability of material so I'm biased there.

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