The Art and Practice of Story Telling

Almost all good stories follow a similar pattern or plot line. Prof. Olher makes this even more accessible to the reader thru the idea of a Visual Portrait of a Story (VPS). You can look at a story as a journey or trek over a mountain or mountains depending on the complexity of the story. Generally, this goes something like this, our hero or protagonist is living his life or the “ordinary”, this would be the level ground. A challenge or problem arises that the hero needs to handle or solve, this would be the trek up the side of the mountain. During this upwards hike our hero will undoubtedly encounter obstacles in his or her way, be they personal and internal or physical and external. This struggle to over come these obstacles makes for the tension in the story. Finally our protagonist reaches the mountain peak; he or she has over come their conflicts. The continuing hike down the mountain is easier now because a solution to the problem or the answer has been found. This represents the resolution to whatever the challenge was, the goal has been met. Final we reach flat ground on the other side of the mountain and life goes on, but because of the challenge there has be a transformation of some type to our protagonist.

Looking at my future video project for our Technology course we can see these basic story elements:

In 1700’s it was commonly thought that life came from non-life or spontaneous generation, the most common example meat and maggots (no refrigeration and no microscopes to see fly eggs). Maggots would start showing up on meat within just a day or so, therefore the meat spawned the maggots, life from non-life and this was the common perception (level ground). Some scientists started to doubt this (the challenge, the uphill trek). How to prove it? (an obstacle). So two pieces of meat were put into jars, then one jar was sealed. The unsealed jar grew maggots the sealed jar did not thus disproving life could come from non-life, but wait said the critics you need air for spontaneous generation, your experiment is invalid (another obstacle and the tension builds). Scientists go back to the drawing board, this time they design and experiment using the same idea of the meat in jars, but this time they again left one jar open and the other they cover with cheesecloth (lots of air but the flies). Maggots show up in the uncovered jar, but not in the one covered with cheese cloth (the mountain peak). So the theory of spontaneous generation must not be valid (question is solved, challenge answered, the downward trek). Life continues as we reach bottom of the mountain, but there has been a transformation in public knowledge.