THE STORY SPOT

Author Christina Baker Kline (Bird in Hand, The Way Life Should Be) did us the great favour of transcribing a recent interview with director James Cameron (Avatar, Titanic) in which he offers storytelling wisdom that is simple but oh so true:

It’s always about the characters and about how those characters express something that the audience is feeling.  So it has to have some universality to it, having to do with relationships, whether it’s male-female, parent-child, whatever it is. And then you have to take them on a journey. And then you have to make it excruciating somehow.

Like that? Sounds so simple, no? Need a hand getting started? Try this: Is Your Hero Sympathetic and What the Heck Does That Mean?

And by the way, you can catch up on Ms. Kline’s latest right here on THE STORY SPOT: she’s now part of our Literati (updated live as bloggers post–if you don’t see her now, try again later.) Click through to read more and subscribe.

Read “The Essential Elements of Storytelling … according to James Cameron” on Christina Baker Kline’s blog, “A Writing Life”
Watch James Cameron interviewed by Charlie Rose

Author JK Rowling speaks of failure and imagination as crucial to a life well-lived.

[E]ven if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

Read the full transcription at “The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination” at HarvardMagazine.com
On Vimeo as: “J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement“. June, 2008.

The eternal debate rages on, does it not? In this segment of human entertainment history, we seem to be swaying heavily toward factual stories — creative non-fiction, memoir, documentaries and the like — as “best”. But as we people will do, our collective minds will eventually change and the course of time will shift these pun-laden sands to invented tales then back again. In the meantime, here’s a little something from intrepid New Yorker, Charlie Todd, a man who understands with the fibre of his being that experience is truth. Period.

Charlie Todd’s Improv Everywhere

Bonus Track: Here’s a terrific program (featuring Improv Everywhere) that peeks inside perception and experience as truth:
“Mind Games: Act Two, The Spy Who Loved Everyone“ Episode 286 of This American Life

Extraordinary cuteness aside, I wanted to share this with you. You, storytellers. You, weavers of imaginary worlds. Little Capucine reminds us of the sheer pleasure there is in allowing stories to appear right before our eyes, without forethought, software, or seminar-approved paradigms and definitely without straining for the best word. Sometimes the thread is all there is and it is good.

Without further adieu, I present Capucine! Via the blog of my cherished friend, novelist Susan Taylor Chehak.

Good writing, everyone!