Everything Old is New Again: Storytelling Structures and the Book Arts

All the stories have been told. There is nothing new under the sun. There are only seven plots in all of fiction.

I hear varieties of these aphorisms all the time, and I agree and disagree. Like everything that seems on the surface very simple, these ideas are really very complex.

Is Romeo and Juliet a story that has already been told? Do the multitudes of movies telling this story but set in different times tell a different story? Or are they just speaking to a different audience? Or does the story change as it percolates through new minds?

I suspect that stories are organic and they change as they are filtered through the collective human unconscious. Some stories resonate so powerfully with our experience that we want to tell them over and over. Hamlet-on-Wheels, for example, also known as Sons of Anarchy. Beautifully done modern tale of a California motorcycle club engaged in gun running and porn and general ass kicking and mayhem. But underneath the story is pure Hamlet. I think it resonates so strongly because the show is well acted and well done, but the classic story at its heart is one that sets up echoes of memory in our collective unconscious.

Books are dead, killed by computer games and e-readers. More e-books were sold last month than paper and board books. Aphorisms? More truths that are somehow not as simple as they sound.

When books started to be bound in the codex form, did scrolls disappear? Or did they just change? Did movable type put the monks out of business? What is the point today of a book you can hold in your hand, made out of paper and board, or leather or vellum or clay, if their primary purpose is to transmit information? Those books are resource-rich, and we are becoming resource-poor. Are they worth what they’re made of?

What is the role of a physical book today, and does it change the way we tell stories, does it affect narrative?

I’ve been exploring these ideas by making my own books by hand. This is something that every writer ought to try—amazing the way the form of a book, or a page, shapes narrative. I re-wrote a short story I had been very happy with so the paragraphs could sit on their pages with a bit more symmetry, and I used the structure of a very short paragraph for emphasis. Sitting alone on the page, a tiny paragraph has the power of a shout.

Bookmaking, just like writing, is about the process, but it’s a very different process. I was playing around with tiny books make out of purchased paper from the craft story, and the original idea I had was gradually transformed as I worked. I was playing, really, letting the materials say something, and my only input was asking, what does this mean? Why did I make this choice? What am I trying to say? And gradually the idea changed and the form took shape.

Books are about narrative. They say something about time, move a reader through time, and they tell a story. The structure and form of a book can emphasize the narrative. A story about chaos, for instance, might be well told by being written on a deck of cards, and read by the cards being thrown into the air and picked up in random fashion. A story about getting old might be told by nothing more than a series of images, the same place photographed through the changing seasons. There are many ways to tell a story, and the physical form of a book, the book arts, can help us craft a powerful and meaningful narrative.

This is, I think, what the physical book still offers us--the use of structure and image to add power and meaning to the narrative. And for writers, making our own books, playing with the book arts may change the way you think about telling your story.

My favorite book artists: Margaret Couch Cogswell and Daniel Essig. There are many more, but these two really make me happy.

http://margaretcouchcogswell.com/Site... I love her story crowns, but especially her playful way of approaching storytelling. She makes it very easy to go through the door into the world of stories. Playful doesn’t mean unsophisticated, though, or serious—she just has some fun with it. I want to make myself a story crown and wear it around the house. And I don’t care who sees me!

http://danielessig.com/ Daniel Essig makes really powerful mixed-media books that reference historical book structures from many cultures. He often attaches his books with tiny chains, or hides them inside boxes. Books used to be rare and precious, and we humans always lock up what is most precious to us. I love his use of tiny artifacts and fossils.