Creative Blockage in the Digital Storytelling Age
Joe Lambert, in his Digital Storytelling Cookbook, discusses the “olden days” of epigrammatic storytelling (meaning, the sharing of little stories with folksy proverbs at the end – which, if you’re Frank Capra, you build into entire movies, right?)
Lambert goes on to discuss why it’s so hard to tell stories nowadays:
“…we are bombarded with millions of indigestible, literally unmemorable, story fragments every time we pick up a phone, bump into a friend, watch TV, listen to the radio, read a book or a newspaper, or browse the Web. We cannot process these into epigrams, recite and retain them, and so they become a jumble of fragments that actually inhibit our ability to construct a coherent story.”
I believe we really are faced with information overload in the digital age. A fellow student asked me during Hanson Hosein’s Storytelling class last night how I come up with a story idea, and the first thing I could think about was the converse; how I more often than not DON’T come up with a story. I have creative blockage nine times out of ten. I think this stems from the glut of material we are bombarded with, and as a self-proclaimed media junkie, I’m especially subject to such overload. Perhaps that’s why my artistic creations are often abstract. Perhaps the popularity of abstract art in the later part of the 20th century, particularly Pop Art and post-modernism (I’m looking at you, Andy Warhol) combined with the MTV age is just an inevitable natural response to the tidal wave of media consumed by the last few generations (TV, radio, and print in particular), as well, of course, a big part of it itself. There is just so much out there now, we’re saturated in our own blood, wounded with the shrapnel and bleeding from the blast generated by this narratological H-bomb dropped by The Mass Media. As far as I’m concerned, this saturation has stunted our storytelling capabilities. But, it also presents a challenge, the challenge to sift and filter and overcome, and with that challenge, the potential to truly shine.
So, how do you overcome your creative blockage?
Quotation above taken from Joe Lambert’s The Digital Storytelling Cookbook, Digital Diner Press, Feb. 2007
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
Subscribe to Comments
Follow us on Twitter
Get email updates
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
hrhmedia
Your point of using an abstract approach to your creations Matt is why I’ve made reference to Radiohead twice regarding your work. After their immensely successful “Ok, Computer” the band pretty much declared the death of melody, feeling like it had all been said and done, and followed with two relatively abstract pieces of work.
We truly are saturated, which is why we need to rise to the challenge of breaking through the noise: through originality, compelling stories, and maybe just enough abstractness to shock us into attention. The film you showed us last night hit all three notes quite nicely.
Jan 23rd, 2009
ivsyd
As for me, all that oversaturation doesn’t necessarily lead to the creative blockage (or maybe I’m just not overloaded enough since I don’t even have a TV at home). As for me, the more information you absorb, the more raw material you’ve got to work with, and, as the result, you have much more topics to choose from.
The statement about saturation that has stunted our storytelling capabilities is not accurate enough for me.
It works that way when you try to come up with something new, never seen before. To do that you have to compare it to other stories and that’s exactly where the trap is. Your mind sticks to other ideas and it gets twice harder to create something different.
The trick here is to tell your story, tell it your own unique way, just let it flow.
Jan 27th, 2009
Brook Ellingwood
I think there’s a cross-over here with Adri’s post on mixing the personal and professional. Creative storytelling has to have some personal connection. If it doesn’t, the lack will be obvious. To create the most professional work, you have to put some of your personal self into it. And that, frankly, can be a very frightening boundary to cross.
Jan 27th, 2009
Matthew "Mattso" Stringer
I believe the some of the best creative endeavors require stepping in to that space, Brook, going where you’ve never gone before. Then you have a revelatory experience and you can share something truly new with the world. Or, as Joseph Campbell would put it, stop listening the secondary organ (the brain), but listen the body, and it will tell you what your brain needs to know.
Feb 10th, 2009
Reply to “Creative Blockage in the Digital Storytelling Age”