Ira Glass on Storytelling

We were assigned to watch two short YouTube videos in which broadcaster and radio personality Ira Glass details his thoughts about the structure and the production of what he feels are great stories. In the first video he focuses on the structure of engaging, entertaining stories, and tells us that we ought to steer clear of traditional plot structures (e.g. beginning, middle, and end, in that order). I tend to agree, as I'm reminded of several films that I deeply admire which feature these unconventional arrangements in their storytelling (Quentin Tarantino's films are coming to mind at the moment).

I also appreciated Glass's idea of encouraging writers to begin their stories "in the middle" of the plot and to go from there as an example of departing from traditional plot structures. For students, I think this would be helpful to any extent that it gives them a sense of freedom with their writing; if they are assured that they aren't being asked to produce a piece of writing that amounts to a structural "carbon copy" of that of the student next to them, then they might feel more free to create something that is both meaningful and aesthetically pleasing to them.

I'm not sure if this is what Glass intended for viewers like me to derive from his comments, but at one point in part one of the video Glass provided an example of a story about an old man. This old man woke up, got out of bed, walked down the hall, and presumably did other things as the story progressed, and at that point Glass proclaimed "That is a good story because it is suspenseful" (any paraphrasing is my own, by the way).

Listening to Glass I found myself thinking something different; his "mini-story" was suspenseful and engaging because he was reading it out loud! Even the mild voice inflection that Glass exhibited in this case added something unique and potentially powerful to it. I then considered along these lines how it might benefit my students to read their stories out loud to themselves and hear the reading played back to them (podcast!). This could lead students to new experiments and discoveries with figurative language, tone, mood, and even "palatability" in their writing! This is an avenue that I could travel with my students even without having quick access to advanced technological resources.