Upon watching Ira Glass’ guide to storytelling, I can now utilize the techniques and structure that the story should follow. In the video he tells us about how different a story is in audio versus film or through reading a book. He says we should be constantly raising questions and answering them as we go along. The other thing he said we should do is have the sequence of events be almost in a train like structure. Make the listener feel like they’re on one path that does have a destination at the end of it.
This is really interesting to think about. Because nowadays books and movies swap between characters and point of views all the time that it can be kind of hard to figure out what’s exactly happening. For audio stories it’s different, there’s no visual detail or specific details that movies and books provide. This makes the listener get hooked to the story without having to worry about the setting as much or what other characters are doing in the meantime.
I feel like this is why Podcasts do so well. it’s just a group of people talking about some topics. Its easy to listen to and understand and it feels like you’re a part of it. Just like some of the audio stories. They are structured in such a way that listeners feel like they’re the main character sometimes, and it gets them more immersed in the experience.
Jad Abumrad express the idea that audio stories and radio in general has a better connection between the talker/author and the listener. He expresses that he can describe a scene with his stories and make the listener paint the setting to get a visual. This idea is actually really cool. Not everyone can imagine a scene through listening though. I know I can, I’ve done it even when I read books. I create the world in my head based on context clues and I can imagine the characters interacting in that world. That’s what Jad and I love about non visual story telling. It gets the reader/listener more immersed and really hooked on the story if they are the one who puts the pieces left behind by the author together like a puzzle.
