The Philosophy of Storytelling

DiegoPalacios 2018-01-24 06:12:19 UTC #9

I agree. I learned a lot from a storytelling course i took at college. That course changed my view of how i tell stories and taught me how to make a work different.

I wish i learned more about panelling before starting my comic. I am currently fixing some newbies mistakes as part of my art upgrade. But the difference in how it looks makes it worth it. It feels cleaner.

Anyway, if someone can afford to go to a good art class and has the time, it can be a great help to learn faster what would take more time to figure out by himself/herself.

WednesdayAsh 2018-01-24 07:16:44 UTC #10

the basic premise of storytelling is to impart an experience onto an audience.

so before you create any story, its valueable to be concious of what experience you want your audience to experience and then tailor your training and technique to achieve it.

strohlchad 2018-01-24 14:41:17 UTC #11

Lots of good advice and opinions on this subject. You can find a million and one books on the subject by a million and one experts. Interestingly enough, none of that matters. Most of the advice out there is based on reverse engineering stories that have had success and hoping to catch that same lightning in a bottle. If only it were that easy. There are too many intangibles that go into it. Was the plot interesting? Did the characters interact well and merge with that plot? Was there an underlying theme that provoked thought or emotion? And did it all get out of its own way and feel like a seemless experience for the audience?

It's really trial and error. Tell stories. Get reactions. Feel what works. Feel what you're good at. I always say that writing and storytelling are similar to music. Maybe most everything is. Know when to play. Know when to be silent. Feel the beat. Dance.

Hexigate 2018-01-24 21:42:54 UTC #12

As a little kid, my mother saw that i had a knack for art, and sent me to an art school. I hated it back then. I didn't want any teacher telling me how to draw this line or see that reference, i wanted to make my own path.

It took a long time for me to realize that my mindset for "making my own path" is useless when i haven't learned how to make a path in the first place.

So here i am, in college, regretful of my past decisions. I'm sitting here with my homegrown "skills" and i've been living that maverick lifestyle my younger self strove for. Yet i feel deprived, depressed, and unsatisfied with my own skills. All because i refused to learn from those that went before me; i thought i was better than them.

Any money i do have belong elsewhere: Rent, groceries, bills, tuition, you know. I wish i can learn from someone, but...It feels like it's too late for me.

Hexigate 2018-01-24 21:48:05 UTC #13

I think that the best stories are personal.

That last paragraph is very resonant with me. I have a lot of regrets, and I...I see that now; how i'm speaking to myself. I've learned something new; Thank you.

dakotasapphire 2018-01-24 22:39:42 UTC #14

I like telling stories that are based on my own fantasies around people i know or concepts i'd love to explore. I'm still a newb at comics though,i've written a lot of stories though i could adapt.
I need to really work hard on anatomy tho.

dakotasapphire 2018-01-24 22:41:08 UTC #15

Homegrown is fine if you aren't selling your work. I think art is subjective... you can make it as obscure as you want. Just be consistent.

storytimebiondi 2018-01-25 00:50:21 UTC #16

Something that resonates with me anyway is the idea that "you have to earn it". This can be applied to character arcs, scenes, plots, or artwork. Basically, if you want a scene to mean something, or a character arc to resonate, you have to earn it in the storytelling.
You earn it by setting up emotional connections between the reader and your work. Imply things early on that pay off later (the loaded gun scenario, if you're familiar with that). If an emotional weakness is present in a character, make that the focus of a later story point, but make sure the audience resonates with the weakness.

Draconic 2018-01-25 02:56:19 UTC #17

Ask yourself: "is this path/job really worth to rot myself?". Because any path/job you choose, you will rotting yourself with it. Any path/job is hard, don't be just because it's boring you don't want to do it. Are you want to be better or not? Or just keep staying there and feeling bad for yourself because you don't want to do a boring thing?

You don't want to FEEL better, you want to BE better.

When you playing videogame, would you grind your character level up to fight some bosses? Grinding is the most boring part of any videogame, but you always have to if you want to progress the storyline. The same as real life, you need to grind your level to be better.

I'm 27 this year and haven't achieved anything yet with my artwork. Same as others, being an artist has never been easy for anyone. You will never feel satisfied with your artwork, you will never be able to learn enough. And that's a good thing, you need to find a way to make yourself better.

You're not too late, just try your best. learn anatomy, stick to your college and find a job after.

jpnakashima 2018-01-25 03:53:55 UTC #18

Many good answers here. I specially like @DiegoPalacios and @storytimebiondi visions.
I believe each story asks for different tools. Different pacing, different focuses. I mean, it's pretty obvious there's not one way to do it. Great artists have different styles that illuminate different aspects of storytelling.
I think you do have to stop and wonder why you're telling the story the way you are. I write, can't draw for crap, but I always discuss with my partners and give some suggestions for angles and layouts. I believe you have to visualize in a visual medium.

I can relate. Super relate. That said, my friend, learning is a never ending process. It never stops. You can always start. It's frustrating to feel ''left behind'', but I hope you power through. Think like this: here you are, looking to improve and with a series on Tapas. You're moving, and that's what matters.
(That's a case of ''do as I say, not as I do'', but oh I'm trying)

But is it not?
In a way, all we do is a mirror of ourselves, I believe. Stories are no different. There's some of us in each character.
Now, don't get me wrong, it's boring as shit when you read a story that has no characters, only discourse (I'd know, I've done some and regret it deeply), but still, it's your soul in the paper. It's you. To me, of course.

I kinda like to grind...

TimCaloweh 2018-01-25 04:18:04 UTC #19

Actually people these days tend to forget they are writing someone else's experiences. That's the whole point of creating a character. You gotta make them their own person. Especially in dialogue. The writers here can't remember to remove themselves from the work and expand on a different personality. You can notice this when the MC talks as though the story is in their favor.

jpnakashima 2018-01-25 04:28:15 UTC #20

I agree to a certain extent. I fully agree that a character should be its own person. I also fully believe what you say of dialogue. Each person has tics and ways of speaking and that is crucial.

But I love when, as I know more of an author, I can see him in his characters. Stories like The Invisibles by Grant Morrison, Promethea by Alan Moore, the Fourth World epic by Jack Kirby, Preacher by Garth Ennis, ANYTHING by Ales Kot... all of those super personal stories have characters take as stand ins for authors with grace and great effect. I mean, King Mob IS Grant Morrison.
But he's also not. He's King Mob. I think its in this balance, in making a character ringing true as well as representing yourself. That's where the trick lies to me, balance.
(I get what you say about comics here. As I said, I'm guilty of this. It's a tricky thing and us amateurs have yet to get there. Still, I believe it's all good to try)

The stories I feel are the greatest are about something. Themes. So its irrelevant in many ways to me if the author is stating his opinion using a character (as long it's consistent of course. Is the Punisher the best way to express your strong feelings about friend zone??) as long as they balance it, make it ring true and flesh out their themes.

TimCaloweh 2018-01-25 04:39:10 UTC #21

Then i guess this is a more meta question. Is a person's personality interesting enough to be mirrored into their work and still seem a good piece of writing?

Draconic 2018-01-25 04:56:10 UTC #22

You can make yourself interesting, you can't really be interesting by default.
But if you alter yourself to be interesting or living in another world, then you have created a new personality with diffirent life. That's why when you have created a new character based on yourself, you're not writing about yourself anymore.

Unless you're tell a story about yourself, your reality, your life, your memoir.

jpnakashima 2018-01-25 05:05:41 UTC #23

To me, every story is about how you tell it. Being meta and assuming we are the stories we tell ourselves, I guess being interesting or not is a matter of how you tell it. I mean, as all human, we all share traits and experiences with others. We all can empathize. If you tell it in a cool way and it serves your story, I guess it would work.

With that said, I do think the people I mentioned are pretty interesting, so there is that. There may be something to think about more deeply about your meta question!!

TimCaloweh 2018-01-25 05:13:17 UTC #24

The mind is a very tricky thing to talk about. It's like art that has many opinions gazing upon it. I just noticed that these new writers are picking up a pattern that's messing up the tones of their stories or setting them up to give that odd shift. Dialogue is one of the many challenges, but many forget why it's there. I can't tell anyone how to write something good. That would be formulaic. But I can tell you when your writing is off.

bobabyulcom 2018-01-25 05:52:55 UTC #25

In the West, the Aristotelian view on storytelling is basically the pinnacle of the profession. From books, to plays, to movies, his requirements [or needs] are what are studied in order to create the best story. And in a good story you would need to polish each and every one of them. These needs would be:
1. Plot
2. Character
3. Theme
4. Dialog
5. Music, Sound
6. Design
7. Spectecle

You can find the theory online fairly easily. As for whether it IS the greatest way to tell a story, I can't tell you that. I can tell you that a lot of the most popular storytelling examples do in fact follow Aristotle's philosophy. I also know that some Eastern countries are also using the method due to it's popularity, but I have just started to study Eastern methods of storytelling, so I hope to find where their strengths lie.

That's the academic answer. Personally, though, the key to good storytelling is, of course, studying. And reading. And writing. And critiquing, which I don't see too much of. Find a group of people (a mix of people who write similar things to you, and those that don't) and constructively criticize your stories. Criticism has been the single greatest help.

sarrowsmith10 2018-01-25 15:29:47 UTC #26

There is a lot of talk in this thread about the benefit of art school. I think maybe I should refer to this post:

I think it was about 50/50 that people saw it as valuable in terms of being a better comic artist or saw it as an expensive waste of time. I personally did not attend art school, although I did take an oil painting class for fun. If anything the class gave me time and an excuse to do art, but I don't think my professor did anything special beyond what a youtube video could have in terms of technique. (He was a very nice professor, don't get me wrong)

Overall I think that between the writer and I, our story telling is just fine? People seem to connect with the characters and are happy to read updates. Doesn't seem to be anything super deep or mysterious about it? Honestly I learned the most about doing webcomics, by just doing webcomics.

THIS ^^^ Sometimes you try stuff and it doesn't work, so you just try something else. I think some creators get frustrated because they keep trying the same things and aren't getting different results. If your story isn't clicking with people, it's okay to try a different story. You really don't have to force something to work. Just move on to something else. Terri and I have put out all kinds of interesting crap, and we stuck with what worked and abandoned the rest.

Okay, so that I thought I guess I did get from my oil painting class. My professor was all about telling students it was okay to scrape their canvases and start over if something wasn't working.. haha..

MGComics 2018-01-25 16:37:55 UTC #27

I'm a huge fan of outlines. I'm gonna include a video where some simple methods are explained (you don't have to watch it)

But If you do watch it, and you like the method, you can go deeper, google search and check concept that are extremely important for storytelling and keep the readers attention

Concepts like: Introduction, pinch point, middle, pinch point, climax, resolution... And also basic rules for a story to be good. How to make believable characters, to know what you want to convey to the reader, etc. You can check an awesome book called "The foundations of screenwriting" by Syd Field. He revised tons of scripts for movies and was kind able to predict which ones were going to be a success while others were going to fail

There are people that don't like planning their comic at all. I used to be one and created around 40+ stories... they're not as good as the ones I have made an outline or/and script for. Then again, it depends of each person's creative process

There are also tons of books about the subject and If you really like creating stories you will probably find them extremely interesting.

That's only the writing part of course. Storyboards are another subject. For those, may I recommend "Understanding comics" by Scott McCloud. It's a book on comic format about comics. It's so good.

For discipline and beginner mistakes, you can read "On Writing" by Stephen King.

Maybe those may seems like many books for some people. I just love getting better and learn from mentors a bit faster rather than reinventing the wheel and making even more mistakes myself.

But I understand If some people... Just will go with their gut and that's ok too ^^

strohlchad 2018-01-25 21:29:25 UTC #28

... should be mandatory reading.

Skip the first have of the book. It's an autobiography. Unless you love King, it's useless.

But that second half is gold.

I especially like the way he describes stories as "found things" - archeaological relics from some other time and space. Like a clay pot from 1000 years ago we might get the whole thing, or we might get a broken version with many cracks and holes.

I noticed a mention earlier of character's being extensions of the writer. That is true, but only in the fact that we cannot help but be the archivist for that character. Real and true character's are more than the sum of parts that any writer can give them. Real characters take on a life and personality of their own. If you can "see" the writer inside, then you've pulled back the curtain and you've seen Oz. In my opinion, that writer has failed.

You'll know when you've created THAT character, because you will miss them when they are gone. You will wonder what they are doing. How they are doing. They will no longer feel like something you've created, but something that visited for a moment and then was gone.