Ken Dancyger - Storytelling for Film and Television: From First Word to Last Frame

Stories serve multiple purposes for their audience. At a general level stories have always been used to convey lessons how to conduct yourself in a community, a society, a group. Stories very often are used to promote cohesion. The Bible is a series of stories, a cautionary tale about the dos and donts of behavior over time. How does a community survive or thrive or die? These lessons deal with personal and group morality and immorality. The stories that resonate most powerfully are simply the road to take going forward and the road(s) that have led to destruction.

The next level of stories is the Fable, essentially told to children. Their goal is again the issue of behavior. In this case, Fables tended to be cautionary tales to prepare the child for decisions needed to proceed safely in the larger world. The idea that not all adults are benevolent, that adults might have an agenda that portends harm, even doom, seems at the heart of Fables. In addition, there also are stories whose messages are more benign, that appearances can be deceiving and that the real self beneath ones appearance might promise a better, even loving outcome.

Fables intentions can be positive or negative, but their purpose is to imaginatively pictorialize the road forward for the child. Good and bad exist in the world. A way to frame the purpose of Fables is to move the child into a more complex world ahead. On one level their purpose is to make the child less innocent, less vulnerable to the world.

Stories then are imaginative tales to help acclimatize the individual to the world and to transmit values that would aid the child going forward.

Adults find stories purposeful as well. The full range of human behavior is on display in stories. Looking to William Shakespeare for examples, Romeo and Juliet captures the twin feelings of love and hate and how the presence of one within a family can destroy the other. Macbeth is about ambition extremis and its consequences. Othello is a tale of envy and its consequences. King Lear is about sibling rivalry, ageing, and judgment.

The tone of Shakespeares voyages into human behavior ranges from humorous to tragic. For an audience, you can choose your favorite playwright, novelist, or poet, and those choices will tell you how you feel about the behaviors addressed in those authors stories. Stories tell us a great deal about ourselves.

Stories also tell us about individuals who have affected our lives. Biographies tell stories of power and powerlessness, of coping and overcoming adversities, of success and failure, and all states of being in between. In short, stories true and imagined set the landscape for individuals, families, communities, and nations. Stories tell us of lives lived and lost. They are measuring aids for the self, for families, and for groups who come together through geography, belief, or other values. Stories are nourishment, as critical to internal life as food is for external life.