by Alexandra Sokoloff Oh, all right, I guess I can???t avoid this one any longer. So why is this so hard? The third act so often falls apart or disappoints, don???t you think? We all seem to be somewhat afraid of it ??? that is, unless it???s all there in our heads to begin with and we can just ??? ...
My friend Jim O’Grady is a Moth GrandSLAM contest winner — a great storyteller and a great guy. He’s been a reporter for the New York Times, and works for some mysterious think tank that he says is “physically located on Wall Street, but in no way associated with finance.” The thing about these stor ...
Today is national fix-the-country day, and it’s gonna be a long one. No matter what side you’re on, you’re probably sick of the campaigning by now. As a little distraction from all the election-related news you’re sure to be drowning in, I thought I’d post a video of me telling the story of Royal Qu ...
The one thing that separates humans from other animals is not our ability to communicate; most (perhaps all) creatures possess that ability to some degree. What separates us from animals is how we communicate: by words, by stories. We all have stories to tell. At work, we tell colleagues, “You’ll ne ...
Suspense in Terminator The story structure creates the backbone of the suspense in this film because the stakes are as high as possible. Not only are the protagonists unprepared and unbelieved, but they also have to kill an invincible killing machine. The Terminator is extremely well armed, inside a ...
Le Tour de France, c’est l’été (The Tour de France is summer) is one of 40 odd miniatures in Philippe Delerm’s collection La Première Gorgée de Bière et autres plaisirs miniscules*. In two pages Delerm brings together several ideas, feelings and moods around enervatingly warm and never ending summer ...
We’ve been playing around with a method of deconstructing stories lately, and we thought it might be fun to share it with you, the listener. Here’s how we did it: 1) Determine the thesis, or theme of the story 2) Write out a brief synopsis of the story 3) Identify the “Character Crisises” for the ma ...
We’ve been playing around with a method of deconstructing stories lately, and we thought it might be fun to share it with you, the listener. Here’s how we did it: 1) Determine the thesis, or theme of the story 2) Write out a brief synopsis of the story 3) Identify the “Character Crisises” for the ma ...
