"[This book] is meant to be a resource for writers and designers and those who must work with us and who may want to talk intelligently with us at some point. This is not a book of rules that, if slavishly followed, will guarantee success. You’ll see that just about every time I try to lay down so
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me canonical law to follow, I immediately think of exceptions. Don’t be afraid to break any rules as you write, as long as you know exactly what they mean, and why they’re rules to begin with. Pablo Picasso knew this, as you’ll soon see. It is one of the continuing themes running through this book. Think of it as a book of ideas and of choices. With any luck, it will help you to generate ideas of your own. And you will feel more comfortable when choices present themselves as you write. Knowing which choices to make is not teachable. It’s part of that creative instinct we call talent whose secret voice guides us in our decisions every time we sit down at the keyboard. And anyway, they will be different for different people. Despite what writing gurus say, all stories are not identical. They are shaped by all those unique facets of the human beings who write them." (Introduction)
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"This book tells how four busy executives, each coming from a different background, each with a very different perspective, were surprised to find themselves converge on the idea of narrative as an extraordinarily valuable lens for understanding and managing organizations in the 21st century. It ref
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lects a conversation that took place under the auspices of The Smithsonian Associates in April 2001 and the effects that this conversation has stimulated since then." (Preface)
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"In his successful Creative Storytelling, Jack Zipes showed how storytelling is a rich and powerful tool for self-expression and for building children's imaginations. In Speaking Out, this master storyteller goes further, speaking out against rote learning and testing and for the positive force with
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in storytelling and creative drama during the K-12 years. For the past four years, Jack Zipes has worked with the Neighborhood Bridges Program of the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, taking his storytelling techniques into inner-city schools. Speaking Out is in part a record of the transformations storytelling can work on the minds and lives of young people. But it is also a vivid and exhilarating demonstration of a different kind of education - one built from deep inside each child." (Publisher description)
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"Whether you’re writing, listening, speaking, or attending meetings, communication skills are critical to your success in the workplace. In this book, we’ll look at some of the skills that will enable your communications to be more successful. These include: Understanding the purpose of a commun
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ication; Analyzing the audience; Communicating with words as well as with body language; Giving each communication greater impact." (Introduction, page 5)
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"Popular films and television series tell stories in an entertaining, easily comprehensible fashion. They seem simple, yet often the audience must keep track of several characters, multiple plot lines, motifs, and thematic meanings. Television viewers often face the additional challenge of frequent
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interruptions—for commercials, for week-long gaps between episodes, and even for stretches of time between seasons. Yet they manage, remarkably, to keep track of not only a single long-running narrative, but often several simultaneously. How do film and television writers juggle the need for graspable, enjoyable stories with the many restrictions imposed by their respective commercial formats? How do those two art forms differ in the ways they tell stories? [...] Because television programs typically face far greater restrictions of time and format than films, the storytelling tactics of television often appear extremely simple, especially in situation comedies and dramas with only one or two plotlines. Since the 1980s, dramas with multiple storylines have been praised as introducing complexity into narrative television. I shall argue, however, that good situation comedies and “simple” dramas often in fact also have an underlying complexity. Indeed, many of the interesting aspects of storytelling are hidden in television in a way that they are not in most other arts. We watch television via single episodes, and those episodes may be unremarkable. Yet television is structured in ways that become apparent only if we take the long view. Multiple-episode programs structure narratives within episodes, across seasons, and across a potentially lengthy succession of seasons. To some extent, both classical films and television programs hide their own cleverness in a show of simplicity. In television particularly, the complexity fades into the tenuous connections across a series. Similarly, the virtues of the individual episode— compact exposition, swift progression from cause to effect, establishment of material for future entries in the series—make little impression unless one pays keen attention or undertakes actual analysis, either of the episode or across the season. My first chapter tackles the issue of how one might do that sort of close narrative analysis within episodes ..." (Preface, page ix-x)
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