A New Semester Begins -- Fall 2009
On Storytelling
Asking students to "tell me a story" was a way of saying that we are all experienced storytellers. We are at our best when we recall vivid details, identify the humor, pathos or frustration that is the point of the story, and deliver a narrative in an attention-getting, compelling fashion. Why is it that there are some stories we can appropriately tell perfect strangers but some that will only be appreciated by a particular person or persons?
One form of storytelling we're all familiar with is the joke. Are you a good joke teller? Some people can't tell a joke to save their lives. Often, it's because they misunderstand that the build-up is as important as the punchline. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Build-up, punchline. How easy is that? Can you see why the joke does not begin, So, this chicken wanted to get to the other side of the road. Do you know why? We learn this joke exactly the way it should be told at an early age because it is so delightfully simple. We then progress to more complex jokes as our command of the language increases. Riddles are simple, narrative jokes are harder. For both the writer and the readers, sometimes it is good for news stories to break down logically as a smartly ordered series of short sections or scenes.
Interestingly, people who cannot tell a joke still can be very good writers. In this course, we will learn several ways to organize a news story. In most of them, the "punchline" comes first in what we call the lead. In some features story, we withhold the punchline in what is called a delayed lead. You will learn how to make choices based on the characteristics of the story you are writing.
