Welcome to Exploratory Story

Welcome to Exploratory Story.

I am Ryan and I want to master the craft of storytelling.

The main purpose of this blog is to record everything I learn about stories. I will explain more about the reason for this blog in a moment, but first there is an extremely important question to answer.

What is a story?

If I am dedicating an entire blog to stories, I must define what I believe makes a story. There are two main points I want to make:

1. A story has a purpose. 

    If a story has no purpose, then it is a boring series of events. Primarily, a story’s purpose is to teach a lesson.

    This is an idea that has been around forever, but really drilled itself into my brain reading and listening to Brian McDonald. He and Jesse Bryan had a great way to demonstrate the importance of purpose in storytelling. Think of The Tortoise and the Hare. What is the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of The Tortoise and the Hare? 

Slow and steady wins the race. 

    Of course. Now think, when was the last time you heard the story of The Tortoise and the Hare? Has it been a long time? For most of us, it's been years, maybe even decades. I remember hearing it at some point in elementary school. Yet that moral lesson is still burned in my head. Good stories have a purpose.

2. A story can come in many forms.

    Stories are everywhere. We find them in movies, books, television, or in simple daily conversations. Just a few weeks ago, I was at a wedding and heard an incredible best man’s speech. The best man and groom were brothers. The best man told a story from their childhood. After trying to build their own skateboard ramp, the (then 8-year-old) groom ended up in the hospital. Big surprise. The whole time they were in the emergency room, the groom was causing a scene. There was a whole lot of drama around his injury. Yet in the end, the injury turned out to be a minor bruise. Throughout the whole story, the entire crowd was laughing. After telling the story, the best man brought us back to the wedding by telling us how that experience showed him his brother would need a very patient bride. This, of course, got another kick out of the crowd. I couldn't help but notice how the speech had impeccable story structure, and served a purpose. Stories are everywhere.

So with that in mind, I will be using this blog to analyze all kinds of content and media.

Blog posts will analyze:

• Classic Films, using AFI’s 100 as a guideline.

• New movie releases and popular films.

• Literary classics

• Children’s books, because they are faster to read and often have an incredibly clear purpose.

• TV Series, including but not limited to anime

• Video Games (yes, games can also tell stories)

• Any given story I hear from my strange neighbor

Going back to the purpose of this blog.

    This is a personal blog. My goal is to share everything I learn in order to track my own personal growth and development as a storyteller. So it is important to know that I could be wrong. I could misinterpret classics. Or I could be right, but you disagree. But the point is not to start a debate about what I think I know. The objective is to record my story knowledge. As I learn more, hopefully this blog will show progress in my ability to “see” stories.

So with that said, thank you for coming to my blog. I am happy you get to see a little bit into my brain. Please enjoy!