An article by Issac Vinu
“As the king looked upon his kingdom for one last time, he didn’t see the prosperous nation he knew, he saw the eyes of death.” Very deep meanings are hidden in these words, meanings we can’t comprehend without context. If a writer gave me these lines and asked me to comprehend it, I would obviously have some questions due to a lack of context. Questions like “why was this the last time the king looked upon his kingdom?” or “why is the kingdom being compared to the eyes of death?”, the basis of these questions is the lack of context. So why don’t we add some context? Let’s craft a story out of this.
Let’s give both the king and the kingdom some character development and obviously provide a background to them. We know obviously that the characters are nearing the end of something, so giving an apt context to these lines would sound something like this; “wars that came to the kingdom, initiated its demise, the king and the kingdom that once stood high in the pedestal of power, now watch quietly, letting destiny take over. As the king looked upon his kingdom for one last time, he didn’t see the prosperous nation he knew, he saw the eyes of death.” and this is the art of storytelling.
Before I begin with the main content of this article, let me give you a disclaimer of sorts, To completely understand about the things I’m going to tell you and to actually apply it in your writing, you need to learn to stop taking in stories at face value, I want all of you to ignore the obvious meanings, because what’s the fun in reading then, when you write to an audience, be sure to add in a few hidden meanings, a certain depth to your stories, so even after they’re done taking in the obvious meanings they’ll think and it’ll provoke a sense of thought in them, and if you managed to do that, congratulations you’ve become a storyteller, Because genuine thoughts like diamond, are rare to come by. With that my friends, welcome to a journey worth taking.
Stories are all around us, hidden in little things that go unnoticed, you master the art of storytelling only if you discover these hidden gems and craft brilliant stories out of it, everybody has a story, so open your eyes, and look, the world is your inspiration. Wait, why is this art suddenly so important? The world is changing at a rapid pace, we are only a few years away from complete artistic digitalization. Well, telling a good story requires your brain, your tongue and your heart to work efficiently, once you learn to convey efficiently, you think efficiently. So, if we look at it that way, storytelling is a very valid 21st century skill.
Let’s look at the specifics of a story, what you need to craft one, and where to get them from. Your characters are all around you, your location is whatever you can imagine, the only limit your story has is your imagination. When talking about crafting the perfect story, we need to compare the template of the perfect story with a story you admire. When you do that you will realize, that the standard introduction, body and climax don’t really exist in each and every story, and more often in interesting stories, you rarely find a definite ending. You will usually find something called a cliffhanger, and no it isn’t a character in the story hanging off a literal cliff, but rather a way to conclude a story without revealing what happens in the end, leaving the audience to theorize about what might happen next, a brilliant example of that would be Christopher Nolan’s mind-boggling masterpiece, inception, In the end we never stop thinking about it and to this day people theorize about what the director was trying to convey. And speaking about inception, one more thing you can add to your story is another story. Weird? Not really. This story within a story technique is ages old. Storytellers like Nolan have been using such methods to layer their stories and add oceans of emotion into their flow of events. To do this, you can involve flashbacks or visions the characters might have. This not only allows you to give the readers an insight into the emotional beginnings of the characters, it also gives you room to expand and explore their personalities.
Once you have your inspiration, write down the main events of your story, almost like making notes, but a bit more organized and chronological. Once you have your story’s timeline down, start working of the type of storytelling you want to pursue. There are two main types of storytelling in the basis of chronology; Linear and non-linear.
Linear storytelling is relatively simple, you have a timeline of events and you convey it in the order of occurrence, not breaking your timeline even once in the process. Let me give you an example of linear storytelling; “Hugo walked towards the light, the brightness of the light blinded his eyes as he approached the source of it, the world seemed to slow down for Hugo, stopping to a standstill.”
Nonlinear storytelling is when you cut your timeline into different fragments and shuffle those pieces to give a more dramatic effect to a story. If this same story was conveyed in a nonlinear form, it’ll seem something like this, “When the world stood to a standstill, Hugo remembered the light blinding him as he walked towards it, slowing down the world along with it.”
If there is anything I’m trying to convey today, it’s just that there is no single way to tell a story, the art of storytelling has been developing since the ancient times, from civilizations that existed years ago, to the millennial generation, the art of storytelling has developed and will continue developing till the end of time.
From kings and kingdoms, concrete jungles, and burning forests, your stories need to be set free into world, because you and I are just characters in this epic story of life.
Issac Vinu 2nd Jan. 2020