Anyone experienced with storytelling will tell you that throughout time, the stories never change, just the way they are told. While the stories in prehistory were told only by word of mouth, in current times we have many ways to tell stories. Through films, literature, websites, music, theatre, and video games, stories of all scales and genres find their way into our worlds. Often, they are in a form that is more interactive than ever achieved in the past, especially for video games and websites. This interactive form of storytelling is not for everyone, however, as it requires more input from an individual in order for said individual to gain all they can from the story. For some people, their own unique input and hard work makes a story more rewarding and personal, but some simply wish to be spoon-fed the information. While some may argue that some new media has taken over old-fashioned storytelling, some storytellers themselves prefer books exclusively to film or video games. Therefore, storytelling will never full evolve out of its traditions, and instead will simply embrace new methods to perpetuate stories.
In my personal opinion, the future of storytelling within new media lies in blogging and social networking. Though the stories are not all fictitious, anyone can steal a glimpse of another life just by reading their blogs status updates. In a way they can be considered interactive storytelling, as readers are allowed to comment and, naturally, interact with the authors. However, when everyone can participate, the stories become disjointed and incoherent, and their quality fluctuates greatly. Linear stories are better off in a more concrete environment, in which few people have absolute control over what happens.
Source used for research of opinion:
Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1998.
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I think the stories do change just by human psychology. When one person tells a story to another and that person tells the story to someone else, etc it leads to minor changes in the story. The premise of the story stays very similar, but it can change over time.
ReplyDeleteFor example if you have a person whisper something to someone else, and it keeps being whispered in secret to the next person around a room of about 30 people, the sentence will be completely different by the time it hits the last person.
So are you saying celebrity following will be the prodominant method in the future? Or will people come together online, almost unwittingly documenting their lives into a new kind of book? While kind of interesting in theroy, I think that kind of sdtory would be bland in practice, I hope novels, movies and games stick around to compete.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens if paper volumes are no longer produced? Will storytelling move completely into the online/ digital realm? (I sincerely hope this never comes to pass!)
ReplyDeleteI don't know of too many places where one can find collaborative stories written by more than 3 people. Such stories would be horribly confusing, as you already pointed out.
I must disagree with the very first line of your post, as Ryan already said its sort of like the old "telephone game" where you pass information from person to person and the information slowly changes.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting second paragraph, I've never thought of blogs and status updates as storytelling but now that you mentioned it, it makes a lot of sense. Especially if you follow anyone who tweets every detail about what they are doing every twenty minutes.
I also hope that traditional media sticks around for years and years, though new media always emerges.
ReplyDeleteAnd what I meant by the first paragraph was that most stories, when stripped down to their elements, never really change. There are many different ways to tell a story, character names and settings will always be different, but it's nearly impossible to come up with a story free of archetypes and commonly-used scenarios.