Oh yea, I almost forgot, mystery boxes.

Well, by now we’ve discussed narrative hooks to death so I’ll spare you that. Instead I’ll leave it to J.J. Abrams, creator of Lost, Fringe, Cloverfield and the most recent Star Trek to explain the importance of unanswered questions.

It has been fun guys, enjoy and be certain to join us again for next season in 93 Studios.

“The Storyteller lives in a dark place, the storyteller lives in the urges that people don’t want to talk about.” -Joss Whedon

Joss Whedon is the creator of Buffy, Firefly, Dr. Horrible and most recently Dollhouse. He is a man who has established a massive cult following.

In the clip above he describes the dark places that storytellers sometimes go to find their inspiration. It’s a strong element of a wider point, that great storytelling means finding the truth buried in the tale. For Joss, when making Dollhouse, his truth was that those things we hide away from may not need to be hidden after all. In a story like Pixar’s Up, the truth is that love can transcend obsession if we let it.

Each of these stories arrive at their truths in wildly different ways but what binds them is that they seek to illustrate a point, to reward the audiences patience with the satisfaction of learning something about themselves through the characters.

Whether your story is a 10 line fable or a major motion movie, decide what truth you are trying to relate. Go into your own dark place and see where your story was born and build it with that knowledge in toe. Some of the best stories are personal stories, not necessarily about us directly, but illustrations of some truth that we need to know.

Here is a look at Firefly and Dr. Horrible, two other stories that Joss has worked on.

Stories touch our world in a number of ways, if nothing else, I hope this exploration of stories has taught you that. As we close in on the end, I wanted to give you a peek at the effect that stories have on a profession that you might not think has anything to do with storytelling – psychology.

This article by Miller Mair explores the purpose of storytelling in psychology, some reasons to believe that psychologists are – at their core – storytellers, and some examples of psychologists who have exemplified the art of the story.

If Carl Jung lived today, I think he would get along with Miller.

Here’s an excerpt,

At every stage of psychological work we tell tales of what we are up to and what we suppose we have found. In every telling of a psychological tale we have to speak in some way. As psychologists we usually choose the conventions of psychological story telling that are accepted by our peers and which are sober enough to suggest that the tale is not just some quirky expression of a particular person’s concerns.

Our implicit belief has been that we are really reporting on some aspect of what is so, rather than telling stories in particular, stylised, ways to meet the conventional dictates of our group. We have been led to a position of blindness, supposing that psychological science is chipping away, in impersonal and unbiased ways, at the reality of things and events. We have not been encouraged to suppose that we are choosing to tell tales in particular ways, for particular ends, and for the approval of particular audiences.

What other professions do you believe that storytelling touches? What other professions do you think that it should touch?

“My stories run up and bite me on the leg-I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.” -Ray Bradbury

We are nearing the final stretch, and I still have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. Since by now you know just about everything you can know about storytelling, you’re primed to read an incredibly large document that details even more storytelling goodness.

This particular FAQ by Tim Sheppard is geared towards oral storytellers, but many of his tips can be translated across other storytelling forms. Pay special attention to the resources section, there is a lot of great information there for people who want to take their storytelling and make a career of it.

As for the video, it’s of Cullen Wood telling a story of a wide-mouth frog. Read the FAQ and see which elements of storytelling that she uses. Considering how long the FAQ is, this could be a productive afternoon for you.

This one goes out to prop comedians and children’s storytellers the world over, and it hearkens back to practice. If your story has props, gags or other elements that could muddle the performance be sure to prepare them in advance. It’s surprising how many times the clever set that you thought would go off without a hitch falls flat on its face because you misplaced something on stage or a piece of equipment failed to work.

I Fenced for many years and one of the things I learned was that no matter what condition you thought your equipment was in, it was guaranteed to break the night before a tournament. Understand that Murphy smiles down on all performers; prepare for his arrival in advance.

Think about it, do you think gigantic couches just appear on stage with Gallagher? No,I think not.

You know we’re arriving near the end of this story when the best advice I can give you is to play Charades. It’s fun, you don’t need any equipment and it might just make you a better storyteller.

Yup, Charades can help you tell better stories, as can a host of other games from your childhood.

Someone clever, I think it was Picasso, said that children are born creative and only lose it as they grow older. That might explain why children are such great storytellers. Even without two real world experiences to rub together, they manage to put together epic tales of magic and mystery.

I want you to start thinking like a child, or at the very least playing enough children’s games that you begin to revert.

Need some help? Here is a list of storytelling games for you to try out.

McSweeney’s is a publishing house, they make books.

McSweeney’s was founded by Dave Eggers, who is an author and clever, clever guy.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency is a daily literature and humor site created by McSweeney’s publishing.

Why should you read it? Quite simply, it’s very good, it’s very funny and it gives you a clear look at how good stories are told. Here’s your challenge for the day, take some time to read McSweeney’s and tell me what you think in the comments.

“Comics is a powerful idea, but an idea that’s been squandered, ignored and misunderstood for generations. No art form has lived in a smaller box than comics for the last hundred years. It’s time for comics to finally grow up and find the art beneath the craft.” -Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud is a cartoonist and arguably one of the most renowned cartoon theorists on the planet. He is well known for penning the Creator’s Bill of Rights in 1988, a document that seeks to protect comic book creators from unfair business practices. There is no better person to introduce you to storytelling in comic books.

I’m leaving you with two videos. The first is from a TED talk that Scott gave, where he discusses the magic of comics as a medium. The video below is from the second episode of “Adventures Into Digital Comics” where Scott and others talk about comic books as a storytelling medium.

Every few segments I have to stop writing. Why? There is something that happens to writers when they start pushing their story too hard – the story begins to push back and they begin to take shortcuts. For some people, this comes after 15 minutes, for others it can take 15 hours, but you can always tell when you’re starting to phone it in.

The way I deal with it is by putting the story away.

There is some scientific basis for this, multiple studies including this one show that time and sleep can help people overcome creative problems. Dr. Sara Mednick of the University of California, San Diego notes, “We found that—for creative problems that you’ve already been working on—the passage of time is enough to find solutions. However, for new problems, only REM sleep enhances creativity.”

Putting your stories away also gives you the opportunity to do something else and gain some perspective. Often the answer to our blocks are staring right at us, but we are only able to see them when we look at them sideways.

Begin to cultivate some intuition on how hard you can really push yourself and realize that sometimes the best thing you can do for a story is to stop looking at it for a while.

I’m going to end this segment with one more nugget of wisdom from writer Stephen Cannell, but before that – remember that Stephen Spielberg quote from a while back? The one that says that most modern stories are giant beginnings without a middle or end. Well, it’s true but maybe not in the way that Stephen was talking about.

We are all our own harshest critics, and most of the time the first draft of whatever it is that you’re putting together is going to be terrible. That’s why I suggest writing much more than you can ever actually use. That way, you can go back and edit it down into something that makes sense. The fact that brilliant stories don’t spring fully formed from your brow is not a problem, it makes you human, that is all.

The problem, however, is if you use that as an excuse not to finish. A half-completed story does you no good. Not only did you not learn the lessons you needed to transform it into something great, but every bit of effort you put into the process of putting it together is wasted. Not the mention the psychological ramifications of accepting that you “failed” the story.

Sometimes you need to let it go and start over, but that doesn’t mean tossing all your hard work away, it means excising the parts that work and evolving them into something better. Waste nothing.

I promised you an excerpt, so here it goes,

When I was twenty-five and writing spec scripts that weren’t selling, I was also writing a lot of unfinished manuscripts. I’d get into them and they would stink and I would become discouraged and stop… YOU GET NOTHING FROM AN UNFINISHED PROJECT, AND YOU LEARN NOTHING. I made another rule for myself; I promised I’d never again start writing something that I didn’t finish.

The very next idea I got was for a spec script for the television series Mission Impossible. I still remember the title I came up with: THE WORLD BANK IS BEING ROBBED. I thought, come on! The World Bank? How cool is that? Nobody’s done the World Bank, perfect for Mission Impossible. I started the script without fully working out my story. I got into it, and I realized that at its core, the World Bank was just a bank. Let’s face it, banks are essentially dull. I was ten pages into a caper about accountants. Ugggh. I started to throw it in the trash and do something else, when I remembered my new rule. I decided I was going to make myself finish the thing all the way to FADE OUT.

You know, there are a surprisingly large number of writers named Stephen. I wonder why? Think about that as you watch Mr. Cannell discuss what might be causing the blocks in your stories.