By listening to Ira Glass’ stories on storytelling, I was able to learn exactly what audio storytelling is. With so much of our lives today being online, audio plays a huge role in telling a story or getting a point across. The four-part series teaches so much about the importance of sound or audio in a story.
Part 1
In part 1, Glass discusses the building blocks of a good story, which I had never thought about before, but looking back, I can understand it based off my life experiences. The building blocks he talks about are the anecdote, or the story itself, and the moment of reflection, or the point of the story. He mentions that often times, there can be amazing characters and you can be so interested in a story, and then there is no moment of reflection. The ending of the story was predictable, or the story really has no meaning to it. The opposite can also happen. Glass talks about how when we are beginner-level storytellers, we can have a hard time with the building blocks. We may have a point to make, but no story to go with it. Both of the building blocks are necessary to good storytelling.
Part 2
Next, Glass talks about how to find a decent story, and that often takes more time to find one, than to turn it into a digital story. He mentions his job, where all he does is look for good stories. One of the other point he makes is that as soon as you put something on tape, it is trying to be bad. We have to destroy the story that we found, and turn it into the story we want it to be. A story is only as good as the amount of work put into it. I really liked this idea because it teaches you that every single component of a story is important to making it what it is. If you take the audio out of a story, you are missing a whole chunk of it!
part 3
Third, we hear about what it means to have good taste, and that we do something because we have good taste. When we do something creative, we go through a phase where we strive to create in a way that is better than what we are currently creating. The advice he gave was to do a lot of work to help get through it. He proves his point by criticizing one of his own works from 20 years ago, knowing that it wasn’t his best.
part 4
Lastly, Glass discusses two common errors that beginners make: Talking like the people on TV & focusing too much on ourselves. With the first error, Glass makes the point that we sound more compelling the more human-like our voice sounds, so we shouldn’t try to imitate the voice of another on TV, who we think sounds the way a person on TV should sound. He says the more you are actually like your own self, the better off you are. Then he talks about how nobody wants to hear the storyteller talk about themselves. Typically, a story has a different main character, or when it is the storyteller, we want to see how the interact with others, not just the thoughts in their head.
Wrapping it up
I found the stories from Ira Glass to be very insightful and interesting. It is clear that Glass has some credibility when discussing storytelling, specifically with audio. There were four main things discussed, first being the building blocks of a good story, which are a good anecdote and the moment of reflection. Next was how to find a decent story, followed by what it means to have good taste, and ending with two common errors beginners make, which are talking about themselves too much in a story and being yourself.