Re: Techwhirlers are storytellers?

[MAGGIE SECARA <SECARAM -at- MAINSAVER -dot- COM>]

I once explained to my boss that I'm really the "senior staff psychic"
because "so often the job is to take what you wrote and re-write it so it
says what you thought you meant to say."

Or something like that. :)

... what a silly techwhirly day, said Alice.

Maggie
secaram -at- mainsaver -dot- com

A Compendium of Common Knowledge
http://ren.dm.net


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Geoff Hart [SMTP:Geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 1999 6:50 AM
> To:   TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject:      Techwhirlers are storytellers?
>
> Justin Soles <<...realised that a lot of what we do in technical
> writing is just that: storytelling. We may frame and present it
> in different terms,...  but the focus is in engaging our reader /
> viewer / audience, having them resolve a particular conflict
> and move forward towards a conclusion. George Lucas
> may have a wider scope, better special effects and a bigger
> budget, but the idea of telling a story to educate, illustrate and
> demonstrate is the same.>>
>
> It's an interesting notion, particularly the idea of engaging our
> readers, but the vast majority of what we do is completely
> alien to storytelling techniques because our work emphasizes
> interaction with something or someone else; by contrast,
> whereas storytelling is (to be simplistic*) an entirely passive
> activity for the audience, and the audience rarely goes out
> and accomplishes some task based on the story they've heard.
> I think that it would be more accurate to say that technical
> communication borrows some tools (parable, metaphor,
> suspense and resolution) from storytelling, and adapts them to
> an entirely different context.
>
> There _are_ contexts in which the storytelling comparison
> becomes particularly appropriate; user manuals for plot-based
> computer games, for example, rely to a greate or lesser extent
> on a narrative to set the scene and draw you in, and children's
> software uses similar techniques sometimes. But it's hard to
> see how you'd do that with (say) a spreadsheet: "And then it
> was that Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsi did battle with Excel,
> cleaving with Stormbringer until binary blood ran down his
> mighty thews and not a cell remained intact. But when he was
> done, a single VBA macro remained, and it was to cause him
> much grief later." <g>
>
> * Let me qualify that: I've certainly seen people like Jane
> Yolen tell a story that sucks you right in and leaves you dry-
> mouthed at the end because your mouth has fallen open
> during the telling of the tale. In some cases, this is because
> the storyteller actively invites audience response (and thus
> makes the story far more interactive) and does things like
> making eye contact in a way that let you interact with her.
> I've even seen her write stories (e.g., the movie version of
> _The Devil's Arithmetic_) that leave you so moved that you
> can't help but take action afterwards. But on the whole,
> storytelling goes one way (from the teller to the audience) and
> invites a passive response.
>
>
> --Geoff Hart @8^{)}     Pointe-Claire, Quebec
> geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
>
> "Patience comes to those who wait."--Anon.
>
>
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> =
>


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