Thoughts on Glass

I found Ira Glass's tips on good storytelling quite helpful.



In the first video, Mr. Glass spoke on thinking outside the conventional methods of storytelling we are taught in high school. He said to get away from the idea that all stories start with a topic sentence and then branch out into supporting ideas. Rather, good stories in their "purest form" have one sequence of action leading to another.



Another point he got across to me was that failure is almost key in this area. You have to be able to try a lot of different things in order to see what works and what doesn't. Once you get into creating something for the first few times it probably isn't going to be great. Hopefully, your "taste" allows you to see that what you're doing could be better.


What I really found interesting where his thoughts on not just imitating what is already out there. In other words instead of trying to sound like someone on TV or the radio, inevitably you are going to sound more human if you just be yourself. As Mr. Glass pointed out, "the TV networks already have Ted Coppel. They don't want your impersonation of Ted Coppel."

-- Matt