Talesmanship

A good tale is good even when the talesman mumbles

Skin & Bones

In this our degraded age, when the Artists have conquered and storytelling lies abandoned in disrepute, we have to make an effort to see through the pretty surface of a tale and judge it by its bones as well.

In written tales, we have to look beneath the apt word, clever phrase, the well-shaped paragraph. In movies, we have to look beneath the appealing stars, pretty photography, spectacular special effects, stirring music and sound design. In stage plays, we have to look beneath the electric acting, our connection with those onstage, the moving speeches. In radio drama, we have to look beneath the great voices and moods our imagination builds off the sound effects and music. In television we have to look beneath the bonds we form with the characters and attractive stars we visit episode after episode. In oral storytelling, we have to look beneath the voice, facial expressions, and performance of the storyteller.

Beneath all these lies the tale itself.

The Tale Itself

The tale itself has no skin. It can thus be expressed in any number of ways or take on any number of skins. It can be stretched out long or squeezed down tight. It can shape itself into a written story, a movie, play, radio drama. All these are but the media that bring the tale to us. All these are but skin and there is beauty in skin, but in the end what appeals most to us in skin is the flesh and bones that lie beneath it, and give the skin its shape.

The Test

The true test for a tale’s quality is to think of it with the least adorned skin we can imagine. Not perhaps a skin ugly or repellant, but rather bland, common, a skin that has no special appeal of its own, so that it does not distract us from the tale that lies beneath. The movie shot by beginners with no budget, acted out by competent but uncharismatic performers. The story written with no clever phrases. The stage play with minimal sets and props, in a bare theater, performed by mediocre actors with no great speeches to deliver.

The art of talesmanship consists not in how the talesman mounts and presents each scene or each part of his scenes. It lies rather in what scenes and parts of scenes he chooses to tell us, in what order he arranges his scenes, and how long he spins them out or condenses them. It lies in what tale he chooses, and whom he chooses as his hero, and in the place and mood from which he looks at the events in his tale. (Does he look back or forward at the events? Does he present them as happy or sad, thrilling or repulsive? Does he consider the end of his tale to tell of some good thing or evil?)

The Paragraph

For any tale we read, or see, or hear, we can sum it up in a few words of our own, at most a few sentences. If we do that, we will begin to know the tale in its boniest sense. This is the first step toward knowing what works best for us in tales, and how to judge talesmen not as poets but as storytellers.

(Composed with pen on paper Wednesday 30 January 2008)