Narrative Design

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. —Robert McKee 

This is a small, advanced seminar designed for students interested in comparing the formal constraints and opportunities of storytelling in different media. Students will examine the hallmarks of storytelling in different media and then create a story in three media.  

We live by and through stories, whether they are family stories, national stories, or even spiritual stories. They are the medium of our lives, and the vehicle for changing our lives, so understanding how they work and how to use them gives us enormous power, as almost any artist, politician, or executive will tell you. In this course we investigate a variety of storytelling forms to build a  repertoire of tools for telling the stories that are important to us, whatever they be and whatever form they take—sonic, textual, visual, or some combination thereof.  

This class examines narrative design in performed storytelling, especially the oral storytelling on  radio, and compares it to narrative design in other forms, such as print and the graphic novel. After  considering what media theory, psychology and linguistics understand about how different forms  of narratives operate on us, students will create a "base narrative" and then versions of that narrative in two different other forms. The goal is for students to understand narrative design  principles both across and specific to media forms and be able to apply them to move audiences.  Students will also have the opportunity to meet and work with master storytellers Anthony Doerr and G.B. Tran.  

While the course is especially useful to aspiring writers, filmmakers, and artists, it benefits anyone who wants to tell a story well, be it a fictional story, the story of one’s research, or one’s own story. 

Instructor: Jonah Willihnganz.