Storytelling: Fifth Lecture

PLACE AND TIME
FIFTH LECTURE
sjoerd-jeroen moenandar
moenandar@gmail.com
education | storytelling | culture

EXERCISE 1
2
moenandar@gmail.com http://moenandar.blogspot.com
Close your eyes, take a deep breath and relax
Listen to someone telling a story

EXERCISE 2
3
Describe the place where the story
you’ve just heard took place

oPlace of the
story
oPlace of
storytelling
PLACE
4

PLACE OF STORYTELLING
5
Dunyazad appeared and laid down beneath the bed. In the dead of night
she woke up. She waited patiently until the king had satisfied his lust with
her sister, after which the three of them were wide awake. At that moment,
Dunyazad cleared her throat and said: ‘Sister, if you aren’t sleepy yet, then
tell me one of your beautiful stories […].’
Shehrzad turned to king Syehriyar and asked: ‘Do I have your permission to
tell a story?’
‘Very well.’
‘Listen,’ Shehrzad said gladly.
The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad

PLACE OF THE STORY
6
It has been told to me, happy king, that once upon a time
there was a porter in Baghdad who was a bachelor and
who would remain unmarried. One day, as he stood about
the street leaning idly upon his crate, a woman
approached him […]. With a sweet, friendly voice she said:
“Porter, take up your crate and follow me." The porter
could hardly believe his ears. He picked up his crate and
ran after her. ‘This is a happy day,’ he said to himself. He
followed her till she stopped at the door of a house. There
she knocked and an old man, a Nazarene, opened the
door.
(Thousand and One Night)

PLACE AND FOCALISATOR
7
There was a white apple on the door that I had to take into my
hand and turn before I could enter. On the wall there were
strips with cherries: all the way from up above to down below.
In summer they made me thirsty. One time I triend to take a
few from the paper to eat them, but that wasn’t a great
success. Lime and glue had a sharp taste. […] I remember the
streets: very long and full of stones that fitted each other
smoothly. They resembled black water. The streetlights made
me wet with their yellow water when I passed them. It really
was like that. My Pyjamas were dry […], but I never took them
outside, out of fear for the streetlights. Oh! I was much too
sensible to let them get wet.
(Lawrence Durrell, “The Cherries”)

o Place can make or break your
story
o Place dresses up your plot
o Sucks the reader into the
story (activates the
imagination)
o Everything is meaningful!
• Congruent (crying in the rain)
• Incongruent (Hearing that
your beloved passed away
while everybody is
celebrating New Year’s Eve)
PLACE AND MEANING
8

EXERCISE 3
9
Sit down at a random place. Describe this
place from the point of view of an unreliable
focalisator
E.g.
o Drunk
o Insane
o Liar
o Etc.

o Story time is in the
past in relation to
storytelling time
o Storytelling time
and story time
converge
o Story time is in the
future in relation to
storytelling time
STORY TIME AND STORYTELLING TIME: 3
POSSIBLE RELATIONS
0

STORY TIME IS IN THE PAST IN RELATION
TO STORYTELLING TIME
1
It is said – but only God knows what is hidden and the history of
the ancient peoples – that once upon a time, during the Sassanide
dynasty in China and India, there lived two brothers who were
both kings.
Thousand and One Nights

STORY TIME AND STORYTELLING TIME
CONVERGE
2
Here they know me as ‘Patch’ and tonight Patch
plays a game of poker with Gene Claymore, once a
terrible piece of scum, now respectable and rich
beyond belief. […] Fortunately, Claymore isn’t a
sore loser. The night is getting longer and longer
and so far he didn’t win a single game.
(Jo Duffy, “Memory of Peace”)

STORY TIME IS IN THE FUTURE IN
RELATION TO STORYTELLING TIME
3
On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh,
when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to
answer, a Question will be asked, a question that must
never, ever be answered.
Steven Moffat, The Time of the Doctor

o To focus on the now
of the story instead of
the now of the
storytelling
o To raise the tension
o To suggest a general
truth
USING PRESENT TENSE
4

TO RAISE THE TENSION
5
They came to wake him up in his chair, in the next
room, whether he wanted to see her one more time
before they’d lock the lid of the coffin.
‘What, it’s dark? So suddenly?’
No: half past nine in the morning. But it had
been like that today right from the start: you could
barely see each other. The procession was to leave
at ten o’clock.
Dazed he looks around him.
Luigi Pirandello, “Barefeet on the Grass”

6
There are few persons, even among the calmest
thinkers, who have not occasionally been
startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence
in the supernatural, by coincidences of so
seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere
coincidences, the intellect has been unable to
receive them.
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Mystery of Marie Roget”

oFlashback
oFlashforward
INTERRUPTING THE TEMPORAL FLOW OF
YOUR STORY
7

8
There are few persons, even among the calmest
thinkers, who have not occasionally been
startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence
in the supernatural, by coincidences of so
seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere
coincidences, the intellect has been unable to
receive them.
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Mystery of Marie Roget”

STORY TIME IS IN THE FUTURE IN
RELATION TO STORYTELLING TIME
9
My father who, once I’m born, will be talking excitedly with the blonde
nurse Aletta Jacobs after a few minutes of complete silence, doesn’t notice
that I’ve taken my thumb out of my mouth. The way I will see him in a while,
small, vulnerable, he’d fit right into a story […].
While my mother is busy talking to the social worker, my thoughts slide back
to my father, Mehdi, who grew up under the smoke of a glue factory.
Sometimes, on the playground, he can smell the scent of a blend with which
they make glue, according to the teacher who keeps watch over the
playground. He sticks his nose in the air and breathes deeply. ‘They’re
melting the cow bones,’ he says and continues to gaze over the playground.
(Abdelkader Benali, The Long Awaited)

Storytelling: Fifth Lecture

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