There is a significant difference between stories and tales. A tale is merely a statement; a linear progression from one event to the next culminating in one singular outcome. It can be thrown out immediately and disregarded as a one-time occurrence primarily because it has relatively little to stand on. A story, however, offers much more to an audience member.
The Development of Stories
This Fall I began teaching Story Development at the California Institute of the Arts in their much-vaunted Character Animation program (from which I am a proud alum). Personally it has been a blast for me as I get the opportunity to talk about my life’s obsession to a relatively captive audience. One of the things I’ve really been trying to communicate to them is this idea of the difference between a story and a tale.
Story Trumps the Tale
In sharp contrast to a tale, a story is an argument; a course of logical and emotional reasoning aimed at proving that a particular approach is either a good one, or a bad one. Because it is an argument it can be applied to all kinds of similar and not-so-similar situations. Whereas a tale can quickly be disregarded and ultimately forgotten because of the proliferance of exceptions, a well argued-story must be accepted by an audience member as one possible truth.
An argument’s ultimate goal after all is tell some truth, of relaying some meaning to an audience.
This is where the power of stories lies.
Stories as Arguments
As way of example, I put together a string of movie clips proving this notion that truly wonderful films are a result of the filmmaker trying to argue a particular meaning. Spoiler Alerts abound for the films Fight Club and The Sixth Sense - if you haven’t seen these films and still want to be surprised, don’t click play and please stop reading!
You cannot possibly come away from The Shawshank Redemption without the understanding that no matter what your situation, there is always hope. It is what Stephen King and Frank Darabont were trying to communicate to you through the method of storytelling - there was intention behind their creation.
Likewise you can’t watch Fight Club and not believe that sometimes anarchy and self-destruction is the only answer. David Fincher certainly has a point of view about the hopeless reality of life and more often than not executes it brilliantly. Walt Disney’s Pinnochio is less subtle about the meaning behind it all — just do the right thing.
But it is in that climactic clip from The Sixth Sense that we can clearly see how meaningful stories work on all levels.
Malcom had been fooling himself (as many Main Characters do) into believing that what he saw and what he perceived as being reality was in fact, real. It was only by working his way through the story and allowing the influence of Cole into his life that he finally understood what was really going on. The truly great thing about this story was that this understanding was reflected not only in Malcom’s personal throughline but in the larger story as a whole. Many of the characters in the film (Malcom included) perceived Cole’s outlandish actions as symptomatic of a heavily disturbed mental psychosis. Cole must be a victim of some sort of child abuse or he’s acting out because his father is gone…he couldn’t possibly be seeing real ghosts.
As it turns out, they were dead wrong.
Both throughlines of perception were shown to be deception, deliberate or otherwise.
See, when people talk about the importance of story, of creating narrative that matters, what they are looking for is some way of bringing meaning into the piece. It has to be in there from the beginning as the parts necessary to bring about that meaning need to be carefully designed. The Sixth Sense was such a film. And it made a wonderfully powerful argument that maybe we should look beyond what we see to what really is.
SOURCE: This concept of a difference between a story and a tale comes from the Dramatica theory of story. If you are interested in reading more about it, you can visit the original definition of this concept there.
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Dan Caylor // Sep 29, 2008 at 9:55 am
Fantastic post again Jim. I’m subcribed to about 50 blogs, but yours is one of three I look forward to seeing the little, “new posts” thing beside.
I was down at Cal Arts this past Friday to take a tour of the school, and get some feedback on my portfolio which I’ll be submitting this coming December. I had dinner in the cafeteria with a couple of your students, and once they mentioned your name I lit up. I wasn’t aware you were teaching there, but I hope you’re sticking around for a while. I’d love to be in your class someday
2 Jim // Sep 29, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Hey Dan - thanks for the comment. Good luck with the portfolio and hopefully we’ll both be there in ‘09.
3 Tomas Jech // Sep 30, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Jim,
I am a recent graduate from a no-name liberal-arts state school in Ohio. I studied animation there, but my by chance I happened to meet a professor who tutored me a great deal in written argument.
Recently I have been reading and studying story and I am often struck by the structural similarities between storytelling and academic argument. I think both fields could benefit vastly from interacting. I invite you to take a look at my humble blog, where I’ve synthesized the work of John Truby with that of my professor, Neil Browne:
http://tomjech.com/blog/2008/02/21/the-anatomy-of-story/
I have more recently written on the subject, but have not posted yet. In fact, I have been inspired by points from your blog in the past. Thank you for writing, I will be sure to keep reading.
-Tom Jech
4 Simon Morice // Oct 4, 2008 at 3:56 am
Exposure to Dramatica has opened up a new territory to me. I have become fascinated by the origins of story - like marriage and religion it’s a common human phenomenon. But how did it get going?
I suspect that it meets some very deep human needs. For example, in a culture which has no writing it’s a way of preserving the history of that culture. The fact that a full story makes an argument will serve to teach the audience the validity or otherwise of the actions taken by heroes and fools in the past. It exceeds the ’so what, who cares’ test because it explains the logical and emotional reasons for those actions and how they relate to the result.
But it’s possible that story is also a prototype for the video game. A properly (according to Dramatica) constructed story allows rehearsal. The audience can rehearse their own response to the problems in the story within a virtual environment where it’s safe to practise. It does this in a way which engages the cognitive resources which we bring to bear on the problems which we face - emotion and logic.
So I believe that story serves purposes which became necessary as we humans and our society became more sophisticated.
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