Storytelling

Storytelling - the conveying of events thorough sounds, images and words ofter using embellishment or improvisation. Stories have been used in every culture as a means to insill moral values, as entertainment, for educational purposes and to preserve cultural heritage.
Some of the crucial elements of storytelling are: characters, plot and narrative point of view.

People have used a variety of medium and ways of storytelling throughout history, everything from rock art (pictures drawn or carved on/in rock), sand, leaves and tree branches, tattooing (showing the story of the tribe, or the clan- used even nowadays by Yakuza members), singing, oral narrative, dance, then gradually transitioned to written language (when the first alphabets were invented), first on rocks and leaves then on paper. Nowadays people make use of video cameras, computers, recorders, video games, animation, film making, and anything in-between to tell a story. We even have a wider view on what constitutes a story. Apart from the traditional forms like legends, fables, fairytales, mythology, plays etc. we also have political commentaries, personal narratives ( diaries, blogs), etc.
One of the first attempts at examining the structure of various narratives was made by Aristotle in his work "Poetics". Through it he attempts to define structures for certain types on narratives (poetry, tragedy and comedy). He also set the basis for a story- what is should consist of: Beginning, Middle and End.

One of the major differences between traditional storytelling and modern storytelling is interactivity. The ability to change the story according to the reader/ viewers whims has taked storytelling to a different level. Games allow us to interact with the story and leave our imprint on it, even though the basic story and premise remain unchanged. And certain games such as Second Life give you the opportunity to create your own story and interact with other people (and their stories) thus giving birth to yet another new type of storytelling, where two stories merge to create a third, new one, where they can be seen as different stories or one story with two staring points. Yet, no matter what hybrids may arrise the main building blocks of story telling must still remain. Given to much freedom and ambiguity creates either a bad story(with no structure) or a bland story ( so structures and concise that it leaves nothing to the imagination - narratology is, after all, an art form).

Games seem to be the best bet for original storytelling. The interactivity mixed with traditional storytelling (oral and visual) make games the most versatile and most groundbreaking way of storytelling, and only time will tell where it will lead us.