Saturday, July 18, 2015

Nouns to Verbs

Re-framing the nouns Beginning, Middle and End to the verbs To Place, To Reveal, To Relate is evocative.  It seems to intersect but not align completely with the traditional notion of Beginning Middle and End.  When unpacking "to reveal" it is full of rich possibilities: revealing the challenge, character, conflict (inner and outer), attempts to meet challenge, and does it also include revealing how the character ultimately succeeds in meeting the challenge? When thinking of the storyteller on the threshold between the world of the audience and the world of the story it seems To Place and To Relate phases are a little closer to the world of the audience and when in the Revealing stage a little closer to the world of the story.

When in the Revealing stage, how do you organize the story bits without reverting consciously or unconsciously back to the Beginning Middle and End (noun) framework?  Thinking out loud here... - for the hero's journey - keeping the verbs as the engine of the story - might look something like - challenged, choose, attempt, fail, helped, learn, succeed, transformed...is that in the ball park?  How about for other story motifs?

The image of the garden is a rich one. planting seeds that take root, growing and blooming, plucking bloom to take away.

Also, I think the verbs "placing" and "orienteering" are an important substitute/alternative to the noun "setting."

1 comment:

  1. Even though they are still nouns, I felt a strong connection to the terminology we learned in the previous linguistics class: orientation clause, narrative clause and evaluation clause. However, I do understand the power of turning them to verbs. Did you use those words in helping you develop your story?

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