This is a repost of a thread from last April that I wanted us to revisit in August. Some of us may want to do stories this way this year:
Hey Nathaniel just yesterday I was observing Zach and his class was crisp and sharp and I wish I had it on videotape to share here – and during our debrief he spontaneously said that he felt that the clutter of stories was largely due to all the detail gathering at the beginning of the story.
And then – and I am not making this up – a student in 8th period (right after I observed Zach’s class) said exactly the same thing! Almost word for word. And I have it on videotape – it’s on the 25′ video I made for Emily yesterday. We were trying for a 25 minute story for Emily and this kid just blurts out like he was sad about it that we never get a 25 minute story because of all those early details.
What you say Nathaniel takes this topic to a whole new level, here:
…this way the students get a sense of wrapping it up. The idea is that the story can always be extended (time wise) by going back through it again and again adding a few new questions each time. So the time is extended, but the plot is not. It is bulked up from within….
This is a powerful thing to say. It’s an astounding thing. It made me scratch my head like for real, like in a cartoon or something. It says that if we were to go against everything we’ve ever learned about storytelling in terms of trying to add in details, and instead keep the beast nice and trim and well fed but not overfed, then we will not only get a nice sense of closure on the story during one class period but also end up with a nice sleek and understandable story.
I find that idea amazing. I will include this entire 25 minute story thing in my new April book. The “25 Minute Story”. It has a ring to it.
What you do is challenge the class by asking them if they think they can do a story in 25 minutes or less. Of course they are kids so they get all up in arms and say, “Of course we can!”
And they can’t, because the culture of TPRS stories is to always make the story too fat, especially at the beginning like we said above.
It’s up to us as the teachers to feed the dog right. We have to limit the dog’s food intake at the beginning of the class. If we feed the dog too much at the beginning, it will have too much in its stomach and get worms and fat and shit like that.
Tina Hargaden said this on that topic here yesterday:
…I used to really subscribe to the bizarre, exaggerated, and personal idea, and my stories were wild thickets of details like exactly how many hairs a character had on their left foot versus their right foot. But that is not really needed because how many actual stories have that level of detail? Unless foot hair is that important in the story, which is not outside the realm of possibility, I guess….
Watch the kids get totally into it. The timer will take over and the class will act like they just won the game if they get in under the 25 minutes before the end of the class period. They do the high fives on the way out of the room, the whole thing.
If you do this with your classes please report back here with the results. I’ll be writing my book this month but I bet it is an interesting discussion.
(I will time stamp this 25 Minute Story discussion for August so we can revisit it, and perhaps have healthier and slimmer dogs next year in our classroom. We won’t be in such deep dog doo doo next year if we do 25 minutes stories.)