From the Written Word the Spoken Word

(This image is from www.navazpoets.org)



This blog entry is an extension of the last one as well as an exploration of other issues that have emerged while I have been creating this podcast. The two items I will address are the potatoes-to-vodka ration and how our writing mirrors our speech.

Like I described in my previous blog post I have never been able to effectively tell a personal narrative because I usually cannot recall events. Since then, though, I wrote a 7 page personal narrative. There are still major flaws with this piece because of both the potatoes element and the vodka element.









These two images are a graphical representation of my potatoes-to-vodka ratio and are from www.flickr.com.

I would characterize my potatoes-to-vodka ration at roughly 9:1, which doesn’t surprise me because I’m usually more focused on the literal rather than the meta. While reviewing this piece Delia and I both discovered that the potatoes were too potatoey. These bad tasting potatoes caused the story to take a while to develop, causing the progression of events to occur at a snail’s pace. This prevented the intensity and drama from building, which in turn prevented the reader from being captivated and intrigued.

Because I’ve never had to write a personal narrative until now I’ve never realized how my written narrative matches my oral narrative. I thought that what one speaks in not usually what one writes, but I was completely wrong. My oral stories are also really boring and take a while to develop; I guess you could say I’m an awful story teller. But there are some key differences between a spur-of-the-moment oral story and a story told as a podcast.

This balance should be thought of as the difference between improv comedy and a comedy sketch. Improv comedy does not enable the author to edit his or her comments. It is based solely on how well you can think of things on the spot, much like a first draft in writing. Sketch comedy though is heavily reliant on editing and multiple drafts. Stories are always better the second or third or fourth time they’re examined or edited and not on the first run through (except for unintended bloopers). This is also true with writing. First drafts are riddles with typos, fragments, unrelated comments, and an overall lack of cohesion.

The same applies to the difference between my oral stories and my podcast. I don’t foresee my oral stories getting better, because I’m not good at on-the-spot story telling. The ability to tell stories on the spot is a gift that people develop and cannot be changed overnight. However, the ability to write a good podcast is not. Podcast drafts can be edited, revised, cut, expanded, etc. multiple times. This process enables podcasts to be more equitable for writers off all abilities rather than just for great story tellers.

That is what I am hoping for with this podcast. I may not be able to tell a good story, but I’m hoping that I can edit and revise one into a great podcast.