"This collection of seventeen contributions provides a small but significant window into some of the themes that, in our view, will define research on narrative in the coming years. Some of these themes have already started taking center stage— for example, the diversification of methodological to
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ols, concepts, and contexts in the study of identities in narratives. Others are relatively new, such as the investigation of how mediated communication has changed storytelling practices and our conception of narrative. Yet other questions were already central to narrative research but have taken new directions—for instance, the study of how narratives participate in the construction of the moral order, and the different roles that truth and deception play in varying social practices. What emerges from the chapters in this book is a common emphasis on contexts and practices, a close attention to differences rather than an assumption of homogeneity. These elements confirm a welcome opening up of the field to the realities of postmodern societies." (Introduction, page 5-6)
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"Story Circle is the first collection ever devoted to a comprehensive international study of the digital storytelling movement, exploring subjects of central importance on the emergent and ever-shifting digital landscape. It covers consumer-generated content, memory grids, the digital storytelling y
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outh movement, participatory public history, audience reception, videoblogging and microdocumentary. It pinpoints who is telling what stories where, on what terms, and what they look and sound like. And it explores the boundaries of digital storytelling from China and Brazil to Western Europe and Australia." (Publisher description)
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"This book reveals the true impact of stories on our lives and how stories can create feelings of hope, take away psychological distress and even stimulate the immune system. It contains over 90 short stories, and allows readers to understand the patterns storytellers use to captivate attention and
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how truths are often encapsulated in stories." (Publisher description)
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"Beginning with wonderful tips and advice about the art and presentation of storytelling, this is a complete resource about how to build a storytelling career. Storytellers come to their careers centered on the stories they love and soon realize that in order to make a living at what they love, they
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must build a business. This in-depth book tells them just how and what to do in every detail, from choosing a sound system to building a website to using podcasts and setting up an office. Resource lists and tried and true ideas abound as the author shares her marketing and business success story throughout. Each chapter is a story in itself, beginning and ending with different traditional folktale openings and closings. There is even a chapter on how to plan for retirement." (Publisher description)
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"Eine Geschichte zu erzählen ist grundsätzlich etwas Einfaches, das alle kennen und mit dem sich starke Gefühle hervorrufen und Erkenntnisse herbeiführen lassen. Komplizierter ist die Arbeit mit Geschichten im Rahmen der Tätigkeit von Organisationen, wenn damit zu Reflektionen angeregt, Gemeins
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chaften gebildet, praktisches Wissen vermittelt oder aus Erfahrungen gelernt werden soll. Dieses Handbuch soll der DEZA und ihren Mitarbeitenden und Partnern Denkanstöße und praktische Tipps liefern. Das vorliegende Material soll dazu beitragen, dass Sie die Fähigkeiten und das Vertrauen entwickeln, die zum Geschichtenerzählen und zur Moderation beim Geschichtenerzählen wichtig sind. Zudem hilft es möglicherweise bei der Entwicklung komplexerer Methoden und Programme im Bereich von Wissensaustausch, Organisationsentwicklung und Kommunikation. Konkret enthält das Handbuch folgende Elemente: Tipps, Strukturvorlagen und Instrumente, die Ihnen helfen, sich Erfahrungen in Erinnerung zu rufen, diese mit andern zu teilen und sie zu nutzen; Überlegungen zu den praktischen und emotionalen Aspekten des Geschichtenerzählens; Überlegungen zu den Gefahren einer Institutionalisierung dieser Ansätze; Einblicke in die Erfahrungen der DEZA bei der Arbeit mit Geschichten. Storytelling eignet sich nicht für jede Situation. Die Methoden sollten durch erfahrene Personen sorgfältig ausgewählt und auf Arbeitskontext und -ziele abgestimmt werden. Gewisse Methoden wie der konsequente Einbezug des Geschichtenerzählens in die Kernabläufe einer Organisation, zum Beispiel in Evaluationen, erfordern Geduld und eine langfristige Unterstützung durch das Management. Nur so kann der geeignete Ansatz mittels Trial-and-Error-Verfahren gefunden werden. Das Handbuch soll in erster Linie Möglichkeiten eröffnen und nicht definieren. Es soll Sie dazu motivieren, Ihr eigenes Repertoire zu entwickeln." (Einleitung, Seite 6)
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"The act of telling a story is a deceptively simple and familiar process, a way to evoke powerful emotions and insights. By contrast, working with stories in organisational settings – to aid reflection, build communities, transfer practical lear-ning or capitalize experiences – is more complicat
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ed. This Guide was designed to be both thought provoking and of some practical use to SDC and its collaborators and partners. The materials contained here should help you develop competence and confidence as tellers or facilitators of telling and may also support the development of more complex methodologies and programmes involving knowledge sharing, change and communication. In it you will find: tips, templates and tools to help you find, share and capitalize experience; reflections on the practical and the emotional aspects of story telling; consideration of the challenges and risks in institutionalising these approaches; illustrations from SDC’s experience so far of putting stories to work." (Introduction, page 6)
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"As a concept, storytelling has won a decisive foothold in the debate on how brands of the future will be shaped. Yet, there is still a conspicuous lack of critical insight as to how and why storytelling can make a difference. For most companies, storytelling remains an abstract concept, at best res
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erved for PR and advertising executives, at worst, wishy-washy claptrap with no real value: What's the point of telling stories anyway? What makes a good story? And how do you go about telling it so that it supports the company brand? As a concept, storytelling has won a decisive foothold in the debate on how brands of the future will be shaped. Concrete answers are few and far between, and the debate for now is largely academic. The aim of this book is to make storytelling tangible. In the following chapters, we hope to turn abstract notions of storytelling into practical tools by giving real-life examples of how storytelling can be used as an effective branding tool. This book is written for those of you who are fed up with lofty talk, and for those of you who are interested in using storytelling as a branding tool within your company." (Page 15)
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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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"This book contains 50 stories, all of which have been specifically chosen to help you deal with the difficult and complex process of change. Some of the stories have been lent by other authors, some are my own creation, some were developed by participants during storytelling workshops and some have
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been re-told or adapted to address a particular aspect of change. As with my previous books, there is a ‘moral’ attached to the bottom of each story. In some situations you may feel it appropriate to disclose the suggested moral to your listener(s), but in others it may be more appropriate to allow them to reflect and formulate their own understanding. There is a danger of being over-prescriptive when sharing the meanings of stories; they always contain more than one meaning, as I have found on many occasions – and there’s usually at least one that you never thought of! There is also guidance in this book on how you might use the stories to promote reflection and meaningful discussion." (Publisher description)
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"[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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"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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"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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"In fact this paperback is about narration and about text in whatever form: spoken, written or printed. Or even better, this book is about the importance of narrative art. It therefore invests all kinds of storytelling, not only the person-to-person oral tradition, but also the mediated forms of sto
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rytelling. Is taken for granted that the radio is giving an extra dimension to the spoken word, like books are giving an extra dimension to the printed word, or the cinema or television are connecting texts and visuals again, like woodcut printings have done in the past. Stories from the oral tradition found their way to the mass media like movies, radio and television. Therefore a wide variety of media will be discussed in this book without showing any preference for one medium or another. The focus of interest is more on storytelling then on de media used to tell stories. It is about the athletics of words and the flexible relatedness between the various media. All these media make use of characters to present stories. Therefore characters with stereotyped traits are present in every medium that makes use of narrative or dramatic elements like comic books, photo novels and soap operas. Mass media have been taking over the role of traditional storytelling. Nowadays, it seems as if instead of listening to an individual storyteller, the global community sits down and have stories told by their favourite radio plays and television series like situation comedies and soap series. Some social scientists strongly reject this change in media consumption. They regret the changing patterns in spending leisure time. They regret for example the supposed decline of reading habits which has been considered as an effect of changing media consumption. And they are not the only ones to regret this. On the one hand there are the educationalists worrying about the latest statistics on literacy rates. These figures certainly do not show any worldwide improvements in literacy and numeracy. And there are the publishers too, who regret the declining reading habits. On a global scale the selling of books and other printed matter is at a decline. With an expanding media market, people are spending their leisure time in a more varied way leaving them less time to read. However, despite this conclusion the educational system in whatever country cannot do without a structured transfer of knowledge. And it seems that the most effective medium within the educational system still is the written word, being presented to the people by printed materials. Learning children as well as adults to read and write is the main preoccupation of as many multilateral aid organisations as national governments." (Pages 10-11)
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