2006 Dunstanburgh Project > Visitors > Storyteller
My life is devoted to my audience.
I sing and write and share with them. I paint and draw the scenes I've seen, and translate kings and peasants and wizards into musical themes.
Time does not hold me. I cross its threshold every time I sing a song.
Every time I tell of far off times to little children sitting in front of fireplaces.
Stories always outlive their characters. They outlive their bards.
The places where stories are made are special spirited realms. Explore a place and you delve into its life, into its stories.
I can bring a place back to life.
Taliesin: The bard of Arthurian legend.
On to Pre Feudal
On to Feudal
On to Post Feudal
Posted at Mar 01/2006 02:07PM:
Tara Laidlaw: Might be a good link between upper class and the lower class - the bard/storyteller figure could perform for both, or be a peasant but be in direct contact with the lord. Also, the bard would be a good way to get into the legends - they travel from castle to castle, town to town, meet people and see events, then take bits and pieces of stories and characters, recobble them, retell them, and those stories grow and spread and eventually become legends.
Posted at Mar 07/2006 12:20PM:
Tara Laidlaw: The traveling bard has to cater to his audience; he has to please them in order to earn his night's keep. How does he best connect with his listeners? Play to their interests - their home, their people, their landscape, the lore they've been hearing their whole lives.
Archetypes are a good starting point, personalities that everyone knows;
Historical Bases work equally well and are perhaps even more entrancing for the grain of truth in their characterizations.
Posted at Mar 07/2006 01:09PM:
Megan Rowe: These are good thoughts here and on the linked pages. Think about adding images to break up the text and to keep your audience interested (google image search is a good place to go), and start thinking about what you will write. Tim has been writing nice "diary entries" as a way to link his characters to their interests - think about explaining the different types of characters from the storyteller's point of view and in his voice instead of in yours.
Posted at Mar 09/2006 03:28PM:
Caroline Feinberg: I just wrote that ditty at the top for you to build off of. I have the feeling that the STORYTELLER should not be a separate entitiy, but rather the common theme throughout our project. That is how we're retelling the history of Dunstanburgh. Right?
Posted at Mar 09/2006 08:41PM:
Tara Laidlaw: Awesome, Caroline - I think it could work well to use the storyteller as the common thread for all of us. In fact, there's one bard in Arthurian legend, Taliesin, who's said to move across time and space, and who might be a good CHARACTER to use if we want something more concrete than just a nameless bard. Thoughts, anyone?
Posted at Mar 09/2006 09:25PM:
Caroline Feinberg: Well, Taliesin is just one form of the many people we're mentioning. Many stories have been written about that- his crossing the ages and such. I think we may want to stick with the "Storyteller" as our main theme and how each of our characters is one in his own way. cool?
Posted at Mar 09/2006 09:25PM:
Tim Horan: Sounds good to me. If we do this how should I approach for example the Royal Advisor(took place of economist) I wrote about? Would he be another page in the story tellers book, and if so in what person should I write his story? If you have some ideas let me know. Anyways, I think it is a good plan.
Posted at Mar 09/2006 09:27PM:
Caroline Feinberg: Hey Tim- yah, exactly. I mean, our theme is the castle from stories- see my addendum to the front page of
Visitors. It doesn't matter what person you write in b/c the storyteller (think bard-like) switches back and forth- I think that's some of the appeal. A lot of what I'm writing is in 3rd b/c it's all amorphous and descriptive. Yours is more personal. Does that help?
Posted at Mar 09/2006 10:03PM:
Tim Horan: Gotcha. Yeah that helps. I like the idea a lot should be good.
Posted at Mar 09/2006 11:32PM:
Tara Laidlaw: Got it. So each of the visitors is a storyteller with a different story to tell. Seems like that would work nicely...
