I take little notes on my desk, those little sticky kind, during stories when I get ideas to share here. These are the sticky notes from today’s class:
- We cannot get too many details. We just can’t.
- We must keep our problem simple. We just must.
- When we get our problem stated, about 10-15 minutes into the story, since it is unplanned, we can call it an emergent structure. This newly emerged structure is not tied to any other agenda or on some list or some group of words that someone “needs the students to know”.
- This emergent structure keeps the story going on its strong new shoulders, driving it forward.
- We cannot riff off of the problem. The kids will get lost. So to keep them from getting confused, we stay with the problem as we go through the story. The actors act, change locations, the story develops in its own way via the questioning process, but the structure that emerged at the formulation of the problem literally carries the story on its back through to the end of the story, without sidebar conversations.
So the illness, the clanging chains, are any pre-targeted structures or, worse, structures that are pre-planned and designed to teach some grammar point. Those structures are TPRS quicksand. But there is everything right with repeating an emergent structure after its natural emergence in a story.
I ‘m even going to go back to the PQA pitch counters but to count emergent structure reps. How may new structures get into a story? My guess is one or two, if we are going to keep it under 25 minutes. Maybe three. (The more things change, the more they stay the same, right?)
So to summarize:
- Keep the story short, around 25 min. if you can.
- Minimize the details so that you can reach that goal.
- Wait until an emergent structure appears, usually when you figure out with the class what the problem is.
- Then, after you know what the problem is, ride it to the end of the story.
- Remember that we are working with an emergent structure, and not one tied to a list. When we start from a preplanned structure, unless it is a Matava or Tripp script, we snuff the interest in the story out.
Basically, all this means is to keep it all simple. Stay in bounds. Drive the story forward. Allow in only one or two new structures. If some kid wants to take the story somewhere else, don’t allow that. Just keep driving the story forward.
It’s like in a water park on the Lazy River when there are 50 yellow inner tubes. You touch five but get on one. Get on the one you get, which usually emerges when you ask for a problem, and ride that one around the Lazy River. You can’t ride five, because the kids can’t grasp all that language. You pick one and you stay with it. Maybe another one emerges in the failed location, then you can keep a hand on it. Then maybe a third, so you grab it with your other had and hold it close to the tube you are riding. But that’s all the hands you have. The main tube you are in is the main target that emerged in the problem. That’s your means of conveyance safely to the end of the story. Maybe grabbing hold of two extra tubes. That’s it. Too many inner tubes/emergent structures, and the kids can’t understand.
That’s the long version. The short version is “Stay in bounds and limit your structures and be concise when you ask a story and move it on down the line to a successful ending.”