Earlier this year, I touched upon several components of storytelling structure.
I definitely want to talk more about storytelling structure (and other components of story structure), but I also wish to talk about conteXt versus conteNt. Content refers to the information within a thing that is taken at face value. Context is the surrounding set of circumstances that gives the thing itself more clarity and nuanced meaning.
The West, for example, is generally content-oriented, while Eastern cultures are usually context-oriented. These perspectives and lenses through which cultures experience events and relationships and people…also inform structure.
Let me first illustrate the difference between content-oriented and context-oriented cultures with an example that someone once shared with me. The example is business cards.
In a content-oriented culture like the West, people exchange business cards to share information. That information is on the card in the form of the person’s name, job title, and means of contact. As a result, one likely hands out business cards only to those who want to be able to contact them. In the West, it’s also perfectly fine to hand out a card casually with one hand or receive a business card with one hand and then casually put it away, as long as you preserve the information on the card. You can even write on the card to put down notes, should you desire, and this won’t be an offense, because the card is about its content. The priority is direct and explicit messages.
In context-oriented cultures such as East Asia, business cards are not only about the information on the card but also an embodiment of the relationship you have begun. The card symbolizes the person’s identity, and you must treat it as such. Certain countries will prefer business cards in their local language, which signifies that you value their needs and make them a priority. In Japan, folks hand the card over with both hands, and the receiving party accepts it with both hands. In Korea, people hand the card OVER with one hand, but the other hand is on the proffering wrist, thereby signifying two hands. In other words, the specifics of how to exchange a card vary by the culture’s standards of respect. Upon receipt, people read the card very carefully or demonstrate that they’ve absorbed the information on the card as a sign of respect for the person and their identity. And then, they must place the card face up on the desk in front of them or into a card holder. People must never write upon the card itself without permission, as doing so is disrespectful and sends the message that they think it (and therefore the person) is garbage. There is a lot of “reading between the lines.”
This is one example of how cultural context defines an object and, consequently, the movement surrounding it.
Cultural context informs everything, including storytelling structures.
In the Western storytelling structure, the story pivots around a conflict and results in a climax. There is a cause-and-effect relationship played out in story events. In the Western structure, there is literally a resolution.
In the Eastern storytelling structure, the story pivots around a twist and is often absent from a conflict. There exists a change in perspective, not only in the characters but from the reader, resulting in a re-evaluation of what the story was all along. There is rarely a clear resolution or closure.
Cultural context: Is the personal also political?
In my freshman year of university, I experienced significant learning curves in various areas. My sheltered person received a million wake-up calls from all the different people I met from different walks of life.
I brought a Bible, for instance, to college. I put it on the bookshelf. My roommate told me she was super wary of me because of that Bible. But then she realized I never opened it, not even once. She told me this later that year, laughing. “Why’d you even bring that with you to college? It’s clearly not important.”
I don’t know, I told her. I brought it because I thought I had to? Because it was the kind of talisman people in my childhood town had? People had Bibles in their homes, and it made you belong? Why did I bring it? And right then, I picked it up and dumped it down the garbage chute.
The Bible was out of context. And the content was not relevant. I now live a Jewish life. I have not owned a Bible since. The last time I personally saw a Bible was in the drawer of a hotel nightstand.
My undergraduate experience was and is the kind of university where, no matter how liberal or progressive you are, you will find someone who leans even farther to the left. I had a friend in my junior year who didn’t believe in prisons and believed all prisoners should be set free.
I asked her, “Even murderers?”
Her answer was yes.
“Come on,” I told her.
So, when she followed up on the conversation later with the statement that nothing is private, insisting, “Absolutely every personal thing is political,” I considered it with caution.
Decades later, I became a memoirist, and yeah, everything personal is political, at least for me.
Life is a twisting, winding road that sometimes circles back on itself.
Culture informs most everything (I have yet to come across something that culture does not inform, but I’ve left some wiggle room in case I do). The personal is political. The political is personal. How we read is informed by our politics.
Culture and storytelling
There are folks who get straight to the point when it comes to storytelling. There are folks who meander a bit until the end, when the entire picture comes into focus and every segue suddenly becomes meaningful, like when my Sifu and friend Doug Jones talked about his journey towards becoming a Black Kungfu Cowboy. His is an entertaining story sprinkled with what first appear to be non sequiturs that at the end meaningfully highlight what the intersection of horsemanship and kungfu mean to him and his identity as a Black man. But you don’t know that when he’s talking about how he found each of his horses.
When it comes to storytelling, culture is not only about the content. A story can be about immigration, single parenthood, or whatever it is that makes up who the writer is. But the writer's identity also informs the way the story is told, which includes the timeline, pacing, sequencing, diction, perspective, and a multitude of other craft elements.
For a short while, I was a grad student in a master’s program focusing on urban education. One of the things we learned was about different learning styles and how they were informed by cultural context. Some students came from oral storytelling backgrounds, and we were told that their way of learning might be more circuitous than that of those who did not. The answer might not come straight away. We as teachers must be aware of and facilitate these different learning paths.
It’s also important to note that oral storytelling is both rooted in cultural ancestry as well as resistance to oppression; where written documents might incriminate, the spoken word cannot be traced or destroyed. And so in some cultures, like African American and Native American or Indigenous cultures, challenged by systemic structures that sought to quash their communities, oral storytelling and its structures are an act of defiance. Telling such a writer who writes with an oral storytelling structure that their “story doesn’t make sense” in a workshop is a particularly destructive comment.
A workshop is for early drafts of creative work. A workshop is where the work and the writer are most vulnerable. A workshop should be a safe space for writing.
Yes, writers should be kind. But sometimes, we err on the side of politeness. And that, too, can harm a writer or writing. Politeness creates distance. And it can be dismissive.
We must become knowledgeable. That knowledge needs to begin with our own biases.
By bias, I don’t mean racism. I mean the perspective with which we naturally see the world. It means even the way we are used to hearing stories told.
(To note: oral storytelling isn’t necessarily split between West and East; Ireland for example has a history of oral narratives, where the seanchaí were the traditional Irish keepers of story, traveling to villages to tell old myths and communicate news).
Consequences of cultural context in workshop
In an American writing workshop setting, whose story will likely be favored?
The one who is best and most easily understood. The one whose style is most familiar.
It is up to the reader in workshops to be knowledgeable about (or aware of) “alternative” (or less familiar) structures. Part of being in a workshop is to improve one’s own writing through bettering the work of others. Part of being in a workshop is to better the work at hand and not to impose biases upon the work. Part of learning not to impose biases is becoming aware of structures and craft elements that extend beyond one’s personal comfort zone. Part of a personal comfort zone is a person’s origin culture, which informs their cultural context.
And I put “alternative” in quotes, because what is alternative from one perspective is not alternative to another. For instance, I did a speech on Eastern vs Western storytelling structures at a university class in Seoul, South Korea, once. In that class, of course, students were far more familiar with the Eastern structure. And were fascinated by the Western structure. In the U.S., it’s the opposite, with most students learning Eastern storytelling structure for the first time. “Alternative” is subjective and a matter of perspective.
In an American-based writing workshop, the most unchallenged way to tell a story is likely through the Western storytelling structure, which typically consists of a three- or five-stage narrative, including a beginning, a climax, and an end. The one on which superhero stories are based. The one that Hollywood loves. A completely legitimate structure and one that, even if oft-used, still enables experimentation and innovation. However, when a story’s framing consists of three or five acts and focuses on conflict and climax, there will likely be fewer questions. There will likely be more helpful critique that advances the writing.
Again, in an American-based workshop, an Eastern storytelling structure might receive feedback along the lines of, “But there is no conflict.” And there is a strong chance the workshop discussion might stall there, when the story is not meant to have conflict at all.
And other non-Western structures, too, might receive feedback having to do with timelines or diction or other elements that might feel so unfamiliar that they engender discomfort, which then might breed dissent and criticism versus critique.
Here too, knowledge of craft helps. To not critique work on its content, but its ability to tell a story effectively.
Despite the various storytelling structures, the core elements of an effective narrative remain the same. Does each part of a story have three craft-based reasons to exist? Three craft-based reasons to propel the story forward? (I’ll talk about this later in a subsequent post).
Instead of asking, “Why does Ben always answer the phone on the first ring or not at all—I don’t think this would really happen or that Beb would do this,” ask:
What does this detail do for the story? Does it contribute to tension? What does this detail reveal about character? Does it do more than reveal character? Does it affect theme? Does it contribute to metaphor? And if it does not, how can it connect to the story more? How can it amplify the story or character or theme or landscape or mood or tone, etc., etc., etc.? Or is it there for no reason at all?
My personal quest to go beyond my comfort zone
I’ve discussed Western storytelling structure, which is based on Greek plays and now very much informs blockbuster films. Robert McKee’s iconic book, Story, upholds much of Western storytelling structure.
I’ve discussed Eastern storytelling structure, with the idea of a twist rather than a climax.
Full transparency: I have an innate understanding of the Western storytelling structure, like so many of us who’ve grown up in the West. I also have an inherent knowledge of the Eastern storytelling structure, despite growing up in the West.
Discovering the Eastern storytelling structure was a balm for me. Here was a name and an official breakdown of the way I naturally absorb stories! Although I was born and raised in the United States, I was steeped in Korean culture, thanks to Korean-born parents who shared stories with me in their own unique way. Even the recounting of anecdotes was often done with a “twist” and a silent reckoning as opposed to a conflict and resolution.
And because the Eastern storytelling structure isn’t taught in schools like Aristotle and Freytag often are, I had no idea there was a word for it. When I came upon kishōtenketsu (or in Korean, gi seung jeon gyeol), I’d finally learned a name for what I was doing and what I was trying to achieve. It was validation.
And so, this personal quest and the sharing of this information as I delve into research about various world story structures is also about hoping to validate how people write. And to mitigate any biases I may have as a reader and instructor.
To be clear, when it comes to structures outside of the Western and Eastern storytelling structures, I’m not speaking from a place of authority or even authenticity. I’m speaking from a place of a learner, trying to share with other learners.
For example, I’ve some exposure to Indigenous storytelling structures, but purely from a reader and student standpoint.
My undergraduate focus was on “Native American literature” (it and not Indigenous Literature was what it was called back in the 1990s), and my thesis was on Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.
What I know now but did not know then (and would have loved to have known) is that Almanac of the Dead follows an Indigenous storytelling structure.
But pause for a moment: I want to make clear that not all Indigenous stories or Black stories follow their traditional structures. These are about traditions, much like Eastern storytelling structures, and how not all Asian Americans write in this way.
Back to Almanac of the Dead.
I want to talk about it experientially, in that I was utterly confused by Almanac of the Dead. Why was she skipping around in time? Who was telling the story? Why did the narrator change? Why weren’t things sequenced? Why were there twenty main characters?
Gah.
In the same way I was initially confused and flummoxed by William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury’s fragmented, non-linear, stream-of-consciousness, I was also overwhelmed by Silko’s storytelling.
I was overwhelmed because of my biases. My past experiences. My cultural context.
I’ll stop here for now, and I’ll expound a bit on oral storytelling structures in the future.
This was super illuminating, thank! I wonder how much of eastern influences entered my writing but got shut down by western teachers, since I was never aware that that was an “approved” way of storytelling. Is this why I love twist endings so much because it resonates with something much deeper in my subconscious? Answers I’ll never get….