The evolution of storytelling: have stories become more complex?
I recently had a discussion on the evolution of storytelling – as you do – with a Canadian friend who is an English teacher in an American school. I suggested that storytelling has become more opaque but she rather contested that. She pointed out that the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” – both, of course, very old works – are examples of complex storytelling.
I’m been thinking more about our discussion.
First, a few introductory points:
1. I used the word opaque. I could have used other words like less straightforward, less conventional, more complicated, more challenging, more sophisticated.
2. I did not mean this as a criticism, so much as an observation. At its best, this trend makes storytelling richer and more nuanced; at its worst, such storytelling becomes confusing, even indulgent.
3. Our discussion was mainly about storytelling in novels, but my favourite storytelling genre is cinema and I think that hers is theatre. Perhaps later we will look at various arts of storytelling including poetry (which I find particularly hard) and even art itself.
4. My friend rightly pointed out that there has always been sophisticated storytelling. I agree. I’m talking about general trends, particularly over the last century or so, and about more literary works rather than common fiction.
OK – now to the substance of my assertion:
I think that we both accept that essentially traditional storytelling has three elements: exposition, complication, resolution. Structurally this usually means a beginning, a middle and an end (but not necessarily in that order).
Beginnings have become more variable these days. Rarely is a story told chronologically; there are usually multiple flash-backs (and sometimes flash-backs within flashbacks). Endings in particular have become more opaque in modern storytelling with frequently uncertain, ambiguous or open endings.
I’ve been rereading an essay titled “Approaches To The Novel” contained in the book “Novels And Novelists: A Guide To The World Of Fiction” edited by Martin Seymour-Smith. This was first published in 1980 and I bought it in 1987.
In support of my basic assertion on the growing opacity of storytelling, I would like to quote some points from this essay:
“In its evolution over the last 250 years, the novel has moved from simplicity to complexity.”
“One mark of growing complexity has been the defiance or undermining of conventional structures, codes and constraints. Open-ended novels … are common in the twentieth century (in the nineteenth century, they occurred only when the novelist died while writing).”
As regards the phases exposition, complication, resolution: “Since fiction in the twentieth century has become increasingly sophisticated, the phases are not always clear cut, or are sometimes deliberately flouted.”
“According to one epigrammatic account, ‘the history of fiction is simply the decay of plot’. The writer is alluding to the increasing ‘inconsequentiality’ of modern and post-modern fiction.”
“In the modern ‘literary’ novel, the reader has no secure sense that everything will fall into place.”
These comments are predominately about the structure of the modern literary novel but, in our conversation, I also instanced important changes in style:
– instead of one point of view, we often have two or more
– instead of a reliable narrator, we often have a narrator who is unreliable, either intentionally or through trauma, alcohol, drugs, or mental illness
– instead of classic punctuation, speech marks may be omitted or some or all punctuation marks may be omitted or pronouns may be used instead of names.
Any thoughts? Any examples?
June 28th, 2021 at 10:20 am
I think you are both right!
Whereas your friend is taking a whole-of-history perspective, you (and indeed Seymour-Smith, in his case expressly) are taking a much more contemporary one. Consequently, while I think it is true to say that modern story-telling *is becoming* as you describe, I think it is too early to say what it *has become*. The history of the present can only be written in the future and, while it is important to record some, sometimes apparently ephemeral, things to ensure that they are not lost, it is otherwise simply too early to say what ‘has happened’.
I see few films, even on TV, much preferring written expression as a storytelling format. I do read quite a bit – and mostly modern novels.
I don’t think that the modern novel is more complex. I do think, however, that it is more rich, more innovative and more experimental, in all the ways that you describe. Ali Smith’s novels – not so much her seasonal quartet, which perhaps have deliberately wider appeal (she is trying to make a statement about the times in which we live), but more her earlier work – are unconventional featuring stream-of-consciousness dialogue, sometimes internal to the characters, and other non-traditional features. But John Fowles’s work in the 1970s – fifty years ago now – was also non-conventional and the novel-within-a-novel approach (brilliantly realised on-screen, by the way) – was both complex and told a clear story. Louis de Berniere’s ‘Birds Without Wings’ (probably my favourite novel) is both complex in its structure (short chapters capturing different characters and voices but which still drive the novel) but brilliant in capturing the simplicity and ordinary rhythms of people’s lives (at least, until cataclysmic events happen).
We also have more access now to greater diversity among authors and, therefore, different approaches to storytelling and different story veins giving us novel approaches. Here, we should not forget that Shakespeare – although he did it generally rather well – was working in his medium with a rather narrow set of established, conventional stories (although he too was able to deliver fresh experience on these because his tales were, substantially, ‘European’ in origin).
While plotting can be tight or loose – crime fiction is a good example of the former, although I read little of it – what matters is what always has done: that the author can entertain us and allow us to be transported to an alternative place; tell us something about ourselves or the world in which we locate ourselves, either in a contemporary way or by holding a mirror up to the past; and make us think afresh about problems we are trying to grapple with. (A novel is the greatest self-help book there is!)
So, in a writing context, not much has changed even if the manner of the telling is evolving – as it must do. What I do worry about is that, even if I have enjoyed the books on my shelves at the time, I can remember (at first glance) few details of them some years later (characters’ names, even the basic plot). Perhaps the problem with greater complexity is that it leads to such things being less likely to stay with us – not a problem that Shakespeare or Homer ever had to worry about, I suspect.
June 28th, 2021 at 12:49 pm
Many thanks indeed, Calvin, for a very full and very perceptive comment on my initial thoughts on storytelling. Keep up the reading! And do let me know if you’re ever in London.
June 30th, 2021 at 10:35 am
Will do, Roger. When This Is All Over!