APA 11/07/2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6widp8-Pds&feature=youtu.be

I’d like to tell you the story of a 6-year-old girl, a journalist and an ill-fated Princess Castle.

Once upon a time there was a young fairy princess without a castle, so she put together her site development plan, a list of likely variances, and marched down to her city’s planning and development department to get approval. However, the mean old city official denied her plans and wouldn’t even recommend them to planning and zoning, in part because there’s no agricultural zoning within the city limits – so what’s she gonna do with all those unicorns?

Around my house these are the sort of stories we tell, mostly because Sophie, my 6 year old, gets stuck hanging out with me at city meetings I have to cover for the newspaper. She likes a good story before bed and what’s better than dreaming big, castles and unicorns, or maybe, more relevant to this discussion, what about dreaming about say a new library project, or just trying to get site certification – so you’re ready when the next big project comes along.

And I think that’s what’s brought us all together today. I love to tell stories, and planners are not just technocrats, fussing about with development text – planners are storytellers too. Or at least that’s what I believe they should be.

And not in that cynical, storyteller equals liar sort of way.

If a project’s ever going to happen there are stories that have to be told to connect the vision to the place, people to the project.

Ultimately, when you consider public projects, where there are many stakeholders who need to get behind it, you’re going to have to tell them a story, a short one, one that quickly moves through the important data to get to the conflict, the hero (that’s you), and the resolution. And it’s that conflict and resolution that will sell the vision.

Kurt Vonnegut, a favorite author of mine, left us eight rules of short story telling.

The final rule, because rules aren’t any fun if you feel you have to follow them in order, is: “give your [audience] as much information as possible, as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. [They] should have such complete understanding of what’s going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.”

For all of you, that audience is most likely people you talk to, not readers. Like the residents you’re going to engage and try to convince that the new high-rise-princess-castle being built next to their single family home is a really great idea.

In 1959 Ray and Charles Eames created a film for the American National Exhibition in Moscow, where they were explicitly asked to create something to improve political relations between the US and Russia. So the Eames told a story about how people are drawn together and the development of cities.

Specifically, the Eames’ used narration and more than 2,200 iconic photos of cities and people in both Russia and the United States to tell the story of the commonalities between the two peoples, at a time when both nations were in the depths of the cold war.

If you think you’ve got some opposition to overcome in your project just consider that perspective.

The film begins with the heavens and the narrator saying: “The same stars that shine down on Russia shine down on the United States…this is the land, it has many contrasts…but people live on this land and, as in Russia, they are drawn together in towns and cities.”

The story begins very broadly, sort of how you might look at the impact of a project on the community at large, before whittling down to the specific neighborhood being impacted. The four and a half minute film takes us from this light-year-away-view down to the exacting similarities of daily life rapidly.

That’s also one of Vonnegut’s rules: “Start as close to the end as possible.”

In the world of civic projects this doesn’t mean that you should keep your story about an upcoming project secret, waiting until you’re just about to put shovels in the ground. What it means is, when you’re telling people your story, you know, trying to tell them the story that’s going to get them to suspend reality of their daily grind, and buy into the vision you have, of that high-rise-princess-castle – you need to leave the past behind.

Another of Vonnegut’s rules, the first rule in fact, is: “Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”

By beginning with forward motion, vision, you’re avoiding bogging your audience down with past arguments that will grind their potential enthusiasm to a halt. Often, the very audiences you’re addressing are the same people who originally thought up those roadblocks; so unless you’re looking to have them tell you a story, skip it.

Speaking of audience, Vonnegut suggests that we craft our story for one person, as he puts it: “If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

For our concern, that means foregoing the one-story-fits-all model of talking to stakeholders. Remember, no matter how popular 50 Shades of Grey may be, some people just aren’t going to trade The Marriage Plot for it.

To that point, The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling said one of his biggest problems in storytelling is to provide a different voice from his own for characters. He said, “If you close your eyes to who’s speaking, and just listen, you can’t tell the difference between any of my characters, that’s something I work hard at licking.”

Author Christopher Hitchens makes a similar point, suggesting that this is particularly important, not to go for a one-size-fits-all answer. Hitch said: ”When I write I try to write as if I’m talking to someone, and if I’m told that a reader felt personally addressed, then I think I got it right.”

But you might be thinking, I don’t have any characters in the story I’m trying to tell. I just want to get this building built. It’s a damn good idea and so on.

Thing is, there’s always a character in every story, but it might not be a person at all. It may be the building. It may be the voice of the opposition. It might likely be the neighborhood itself that your project is going into.

Vonnegut has advice about characters as well; in fact four of his eight rules deal primarily with them.

Here are two that really apply: give the reader at least one character he or she can root for (such as a great project) and every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water (or in our case, maybe a water fountain).

And that’s it, that’s most of Vonnegut’s rules for short story telling applied to your world. If I could offer one last thought, it’s this. Step away from the jargon laden planning documents for a moment and consider practicing the art of story telling, just for a little while. It will change your way of thinking and how the people around you understand your ideas.