While walking the path of improving my storytelling, walking down several paths that led to a dead-ends, I've today have a few rules I try to follow as my main strategy. Always trying to improve, some of these rules probably will change in time, but I feel that they are fairly universal and apply to other areas than just storytelling.
First of: Kill Your Ego
Everybody wants to be successful in what they do, but we focus more on ourselves and on how we will be perceived rather on what our goal and the quality of our work. What we seem to forget is that it is only by being good at our craft that we will be seen as being good at what we do.
When experiencing a story, either on screen or in a book, every second we think about the writer, director or someone else whose taken part of the process, is a second we are not fully engaged in the story. Every second we think about a structural element is a second that the story gets worse.
As storytellers we are not gods, we are slaves to the story.
The theme or concept of a story needs to be something that interests us for us to fully dedicate to the story. But the concept is not the story. It is only the starting point. For the story to be successful it needs to reach its audience and move them. This should be the goal.
Between the the starting point and the goal is where the the real work lies, in how to to reach the audience and move them emotionally. For a story to be successfully told, everybody and everything participating in telling the story should be pulling in the same direction towards a great experience for the audience, not towards their own ego.
The question of individuality and personal style always comes up when I mention killing the ego. Personality is something that only comes naturally when we are not trying. If we try to have a "personal style" we are not showing who we really are, we're only trying to show a picture of who we want others to think we are. We have all had different lives and experiences, so who we are is who we are already with out trying. As long as we're not copying someone else, or try to follow a norm of what currently is perceived as artistic and creative, we will have a individual and personal style.
One last reason for killing the ego is that it decreases the fear of failure.
The fear of failure is what's holding most people back from reaching towards what they want in life, the fear of looking bad, the fear of hurting our ego. But by removing our ego from the process it can not be hurt. By moving the focus from ourselves and instead focusing on finding and experiencing the path to the goal, it is easier to accept that one path may be wrong and that we need to take another. It is not we who are flawed just the path. Even though the path may have been wrong it still moved us forward and helped us develop as a people.
This has been the first part of a series on the rules i try to follow when i tell a story. I hope you've found it helpful and will return for the following parts.
Thank you for reading!
Peter Hertzberg
First of: Kill Your Ego
Everybody wants to be successful in what they do, but we focus more on ourselves and on how we will be perceived rather on what our goal and the quality of our work. What we seem to forget is that it is only by being good at our craft that we will be seen as being good at what we do.
When experiencing a story, either on screen or in a book, every second we think about the writer, director or someone else whose taken part of the process, is a second we are not fully engaged in the story. Every second we think about a structural element is a second that the story gets worse.
As storytellers we are not gods, we are slaves to the story.
The theme or concept of a story needs to be something that interests us for us to fully dedicate to the story. But the concept is not the story. It is only the starting point. For the story to be successful it needs to reach its audience and move them. This should be the goal.
Between the the starting point and the goal is where the the real work lies, in how to to reach the audience and move them emotionally. For a story to be successfully told, everybody and everything participating in telling the story should be pulling in the same direction towards a great experience for the audience, not towards their own ego.
The question of individuality and personal style always comes up when I mention killing the ego. Personality is something that only comes naturally when we are not trying. If we try to have a "personal style" we are not showing who we really are, we're only trying to show a picture of who we want others to think we are. We have all had different lives and experiences, so who we are is who we are already with out trying. As long as we're not copying someone else, or try to follow a norm of what currently is perceived as artistic and creative, we will have a individual and personal style.
One last reason for killing the ego is that it decreases the fear of failure.
The fear of failure is what's holding most people back from reaching towards what they want in life, the fear of looking bad, the fear of hurting our ego. But by removing our ego from the process it can not be hurt. By moving the focus from ourselves and instead focusing on finding and experiencing the path to the goal, it is easier to accept that one path may be wrong and that we need to take another. It is not we who are flawed just the path. Even though the path may have been wrong it still moved us forward and helped us develop as a people.
This has been the first part of a series on the rules i try to follow when i tell a story. I hope you've found it helpful and will return for the following parts.
Thank you for reading!
Peter Hertzberg
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