Imagine science ignoring some aspect of life as omnipresent as water or breathing, or an industry exceeding 250 Billion dollars a year, with no science supporting it. There would be a huge blind spot in the body of science. That's the story with STORY and the story business.
The StoryCon meeting is being held in Palm Springs California, September 25-29, 2002. It brings together, for the first time, to discuss the emergence of a science of story, experts from the diverse world of story, including novelists, screenwriters, neuroscientists mythologists, psychologists and corporate consultants.
Most of these speakers teach seminars and courses at fairly basic levels, primarily to people within their own fields. The summit meeting provides, for the first time, a forum where the experts can present advanced ideas to fellow experts and to people who have already attended the basic seminars.
StoryCon meeting founder/organizer, Rob Kall, explained the idea for the meeting "In addition to books and movies, TV, magazines and newspapers, stories play such a powerful role in changing individuals, cultures, communities and politics, and in business through branding, advertising, and establishing corporate culture. It's amazing that we've gone so long, probably more than 100,000 years, creating and telling stories, without developing a science that identifies the key ingredients that make stories work. It's only the last 100 years that pharmacology began studying the naturally occurring herbal remedies that have led to scientifically strengthened drugs. A science of story-- Storyology-- with ideas about story anatomy, story psychology, technologies, theories, models and techniques based on these elements, has the potential to help movie makers and novelists make even better stories, but also to enable healers and politicians to get a better handle on using stories to make the world a better place."
The goal is to take story from an art/craft to the next level, birthing a hybrid art/craft/science with agreed upon terminology, parameters, and dimensions, while providing meeting content which stimulates and satisfies both speakers and attendees with advanced, beyond-the-basics practical and visionary presentations.
Some of the story science topics the meeting will be covering include:
-Crystallizing a Science of Story: Definitions, issues/ controversial areas, risks, promise, finding common ground -story technologies, such as Software programs designed to help writers build stories, with artificial intelligence prompting the writer to tap unconscious resources for creative elements -Story Structure; elements, dimensions, dynamics -The psychophysiological Experience of Story -Ethics; How Stories Create and Change Our World -Character, arcs, transformation -Applications of Story in health, science, business, education, politics, law - building cross disciplinary models, finding concensus issues of controversy and opportunities
Major corporations spend millions of dollars every year sending employees to courses on story telling and structure. David Snowden (a StoryCon speaker, as are all the experts mentioned in this article,) of IBM, studies corporate culture and interaction patterns to understand and design more effective work interaction structures. IBM has patented some of Snowden's story-driven research techniques. Richard Stone and Doug Lippman consult with corporations to develop stories which help define corporate culture, identity or develop sales presentation and closing strategies.
With a single movie costing up to $200 million, studio executives hire Hollywood "story docs." Top "story docs" like David Freeman, Michael Hauge and Linda Seger have consulted on scripts for Disney, Dreamworks, MGM, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and New Line. They evaluate and fine tune scripts so the plot lines, character arcs, scene vectors, twists, reversals, audience emotional response patterns, mythic archetypes, hero's journey phases, story trance and a host of other story parameters are all tweaked for maximum story success.
The creation of a a science of story is controversial. Many writers and critics argue that story Creation is an art, that reductionist science will take it apart and create formulaic commercial stories. This is a real risk the StoryCon meeting will discuss.
Meeting organizer Rob Kall is a writer, inventor and organizer of advanced, beyond the basics meetings which bring together knowledge leaders in newly emerging fields. He has written non-fiction articles for national publications such as Commondreams.org, Success, Writers Digest, Family Health, Omni, Chiropractic Journal and others. He is also founder organizer of the Futurehealth (www.futurehealth.org) Winter Brain Meeting, going into its 11th year, and the Optimal Functioning and Positive psychology Meeting, going into it's sixth year.
Information about the meeting can be found at http://www.storycon.org
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