This week, I completed a Story Lab, in which I watched two separate TED Talks, the links can be found here. The first talk seems to epitomize the first impressions we develop from stories, while the second one delves into the relationships we make with characters.
In the first talk, the idea of a first impression is further discussed, where the speaker notes how she had opinions of a country that had been built up solely from a few stories she had been told, and how when she encountered other people, they already had predispositions based on stories they had been told. This can be broadened to a wider audience to suggest that we often see short amounts of information, and then we make the conclusions ourselves. For example, people often just read the headlines of news articles and believe they know everything about that topic afterwards, as opposed to ever reading the article.
The second talk digs into the connections we make with fictional characters, and why we spend so much time caring about something, even when we know it is false. This is an interesting concept, because it seems to suggest there might be something wrong with the way humans work, as opposed to praising authors for the great characters and plots that they create. An interesting follow-up to this topic would be over what the exact components are that makes a character that audiences fall in love with, and how our knowledge of caring about characters influences how much we care about them (for example, someone might decide to care more about a TV show and it's characters solely because a lot of people they know are interested in the show.)
Overall, the talks were interesting, and I'm looking forward to integrating the lessons into the stories that we create. It will be important to broaden the scope of the stories while at the same time, creating rich, and interesting characters that audiences can connect with.
In the first talk, the idea of a first impression is further discussed, where the speaker notes how she had opinions of a country that had been built up solely from a few stories she had been told, and how when she encountered other people, they already had predispositions based on stories they had been told. This can be broadened to a wider audience to suggest that we often see short amounts of information, and then we make the conclusions ourselves. For example, people often just read the headlines of news articles and believe they know everything about that topic afterwards, as opposed to ever reading the article.
The second talk digs into the connections we make with fictional characters, and why we spend so much time caring about something, even when we know it is false. This is an interesting concept, because it seems to suggest there might be something wrong with the way humans work, as opposed to praising authors for the great characters and plots that they create. An interesting follow-up to this topic would be over what the exact components are that makes a character that audiences fall in love with, and how our knowledge of caring about characters influences how much we care about them (for example, someone might decide to care more about a TV show and it's characters solely because a lot of people they know are interested in the show.)
Overall, the talks were interesting, and I'm looking forward to integrating the lessons into the stories that we create. It will be important to broaden the scope of the stories while at the same time, creating rich, and interesting characters that audiences can connect with.
TED Talks give an interesting perspective on niche topics. Source: Wikimedia Commons
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