Vad behövs i en story?

En del ur en bild jag tog i projektet Väggkalendern Sagoland.

Det kan vara lite farligt att som Storyteller göra kopplingar till sagor – vi är inga Sagoberättare. Däremot är sagans värld ofta väldigt tydlig i sin berättarteknik. Att bygga stories enligt dramaturgiska modeller är vad vi gör. Det finns olika varianter på modeller som ser ungefär likadana ut. Aktantmodellen är nog den mest kända. På engelska kallas den för just Fairytale model. 

Här är ett utdrag ur en rapport jag skrev på Honda under min LIA-period där. Detta handlar just om vad en story behöver.

Stories can be told in various ways but always need four elements to be interesting.

• The message
• The conflict
• The characters
• The plot

The message is the ideological or moral statement which is needed because other ways there is no need to tell the story. Simply put, what is it the story wants to tell its listener? A story needs meaning to be interesting. The conflict is the driving force in a good story. The conflict is ever so important when building an interesting story. There must be a threat to harmony so that we can engage in the story. When it comes to company stories it is also of importance to make the story trustworthy. Without the conflict the story will only seem like the company is bragging. Also, we cannot understand where the values have sprung from. If there was never a problem and everything was always harmoniously flowing, how come we need those guidelines? We need to see the salvation of the problem. The listener must identify with the conflict and also with the head character.

To play out the plot in which the message will be revealed we need a cast of characters. A character does not need to be a physical individual. It can just as well be a group of people or a state of mind. There are different ways of naming the needed characters but their roles are always similar. I find the model called the fairytale model most easy to understand since we quickly can refer to how the classical fairytale is built. The classical casting contains a hero and his opposing adversary. The hero has a goal and the adversary works against him. The hero does not need to be a classical fairytale hero. The important thing is that this character is the head character and that he or she undergoes some sort of personal development during the story. The hero probably has one or several supporters. Somebody is the beneficiary of a lucky outcome from the story and somebody is the benefactor who makes the story possible. This is a very short and simplified description of the content of a story.

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