Reading and Writing in a Digital Age

BE YOURSELF. Always. When you’re writing, creating an audio essay, meeting someone new. Zinsser suggests it, Glass suggests it, your guidance counselor suggests it. There’s no better way to go about things in life. This advice applies to those of us making recordings that only involve our voice and those of us interviewing a number of people. Of course, it’s a lot easier when we’re interviewing others because, well, what do they care what they sound like? In most cases they will be their genuine selves and that genuineness will help to make a great audio essay (hopefully). Sometimes when I’m interviewing friends they fall into the, “Oh God, this is so stressful. SO MUCH PRESSURE JACKY. OMG ARE YOU RECORDING?! *insert nervous giggle* STOP STOP I WASN’T READY LET ME PRACTICE!!!” So I have to go on to tell them to relax, it will be fine, no one will care if your voice is obnoxious, just tell me what you’re thinking. They proceed to tell me what it is they’d like to achieve if failing wasn’t an option and it goes great. That sense of unexpectedness both in the nature of the question and unrehearsed manner in which they deliver their response, is what Ira suggests, makes an interesting radio segment. I don’t think we can go wrong with this piece of advice and although it applies more to the people narrating their own story, it also helps when we bump into the occasional nervous friend. Kudos to you Ira Glass.

To me, Ira Glass’s most compelling advice is on Part One, basically the entire five minutes of it starting around 0:35.

Glass mentions that there are two essences of successful radio stories: anecdotes and the reason for telling the anecdotes. I think there is incredible merit in the use of anecdotes, the way it presents a story and how an idea can be express through its usage. The efficacy becomes explicit when he gave the narration of a person doing his morning routine. Even though the content is superbly boring, the way it is narrated, the way it follows a logical sequence of events creates suspense and leads the listener on to want to discover to more. Glass calls this, in my paraphrase, presenting questions in narrative form and answering them continuously.

I often find myself writing ponderously on perhaps interesting things, but I tend not to be able to present it with life.  It always comes out dry because mostly I just state the facts. There is substance, but I couldn’t achieve an elegant flow.  And anecdotes can fix that. I realized even I listened to Ira Glass’s radio show that I like stories just as much he do. I don’t want to listen to a fact report. The more significant point though is that the story should always have a purpose. I believe this can be achieve by clearly stating it towards the end or implied by a sudden twist in plot.

Hopefully I can apply this advice to my audio-essay, linking different voices together with a logical, and almost anecdotic sequence.

For all you Redditors out there, Ira Glass is doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit tomorrow starting at 12pm! Might be some interesting tidbits when it comes out.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/ (Look under “Upcoming AMAs”)

For as long as I’ve studied drama, I’ve always taken the approach that you build your story around your characters, and that – like Ibsen – you don’t write a word until every character is fleshed out to the last detail. (There’s always that chance that you’ll uncover some new facet of a character as you write – which is a wonderful experience, and should usually be taken into account if the thought is organic – but I digress.) You’re going to have characters no matter what story you try to tell, and they’re instrumental to providing a plot that’s both thought-out and progresses naturally. When Ira Glass brought up the word “drama,” it cemented my notion that character is one of the larger parts in storytelling as well. He says: “It’s a drama. It’s like people interacting, conflicting, getting along, liking each other, and hating each other, and they’re like, laughing, you know, just like, you want all the things that happen between people…” (Part 4, 2:22-2:30). Character’s pretty important.

If two characters get into a fight, leaving one dead and the other trying to cover up the deed, having a witness character there provides ample drama. Look on TV, there’s endless love triangles to fuel the season’s plot forward. The best part about it is that you don’t even need something huge like a murder, or an affair, to spark a story. It can be something as small as a man wearing a green hat. Why does he wear that hat? Why that hat specifically? Does he only wear it on Tuesdays? Who gave him the hat? Endless stories. Endless drama.

“It’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually gonna catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making is going to be as good as your ambitions.” (1:57 – 2:05) part 3

This is probably my least favorite, yet most necessary advice I faced in Ira Glass’s interview.

Ira Glass talks about how poor the product maybe you should continue and ensures that everyone goes through that stage and you having a taste for it is good enough for you to become good at it only if you constantly do huge volume of works to close the gap between your ideals and reality.

Yes, we all know that “failure is the mother of success” and that “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” but does it have to follow a “Schedule?”

When you think of creative work, you mostly think of waiting for a great idea to suddenly pop up while living your daily life. You normally don’t think of actually having to go through series of drudgery work following a schedule to do anything with “creativity.”

I’m more of a wait-for-the-perfect-idea-then-devote-all-of-your-hours-into-the-project kind of person. Working in a timed setting, I am scared to start anything unless it seems the most appropriate. It always feels like you just don’t have enough time to make mistakes. But then going through the possible ideas or searching for inspiration takes too much time and the result is never good, as you wanted it to be.

It was quite a shocker to hear that the only way to overcome it is doing the exact thing you want to avoid the most. It always felt like working on a timed bases never allows you to really devote yourself into it, forcing you to move on after time ends. But then I guess nothing would be really accomplished if it weren’t timed. And sometimes you need to push yourself to doing stuff unless you’ll only think of it not actually putting your fingers on to it.