“Thinking About Story and Applying Story Maps”
by Jason Ohler
Overview
These chapters introduce “Thinking About Story” and “Applying Story Maps,” and explains how a digital story should consist of three parts – story core, story mapping and story types – in order to effectively engage the storyteller’s audience. Storytelling has such a rich history that it still thrives in today’s digital world. Whether the story is told in books, movies, jokes, digital stories, or orally, the human desire for a good story should never go extinct. In these chapters, the key for telling a successful digital story depends on specific guidelines set within the development of a story core and story map that the storyteller has followed.
In Chapter 5, “Thinking About Story,” introducing the story core helps students concentrate on the value of their experiences by constructing effective ways to materialize those events into a potentially powerful story. The basic idea of a story core involves a main character, which goes through a transformation. Whether the character resists change, is challenged by circumstances to keep from changing, there must be a tipping point – or “tension-resolution dynamic” – in order to have forward motion or internal rhythm so the audience can make connections.
Tension-resolution dynamics usually works well in sports stories: i.e., a talented football player in the 1960s is kept on the sidelines because of his race, but he keeps his wits, trying his hardest despite the circumstances; he reaches a tipping point, realizing he must voice his concerns on the inequality in order to succeed, and eventually he surpasses even his own expectations.
