The skill of emplotment or the rise of storytellers
It’s a truism that the world is a complex, confusing and chaotic place. In any given second, innumerable things, big and small, happen – some of them connected to each other, some of them causing each other. Because we are part of this system, we are by definition unable to grasp it, much less to understand these connections and causalities in their entirety. And yet, we are able to make some sense of what is happening around us, to give it meaning – at least partially. How do we do that?
A couple of weeks back, I wrote about the increasingly important skill of «demystification», by which I meant the ability of not accepting unknowns, but believing that everything can be learnt or understood.
Another skill that I believe is becoming more and more important has to do with giving meaning to a frustratingly complex world. I am calling it «emplotment», a term I borrowed from Hayden White (although I’m not sure if he coined it).
Emplotment is the act of giving something a plot, of putting it within a narrative structure. It’s what authors do when they tell stories, but it’s also what historians do when they write reports. They don’t just report the facts – they create a narrative, a story in an attempt to give their data meaning. Creating a plot for something inevitably means leaving some things out and emphasizing others. Emplotment is not primarily about reporting what has happened – it is about explaining why.
Why is this important? In an increasingly interconnected world, many decisions depend on having the right information and the right understanding of complex issues. The rise of the internet has made accessing information incredibly easy and at the same time created a new problem: information overload. Emplotment is one solution to this problem: By connecting information in a narrative structure, the raw flow of data turns into meaning.
The knowledge society doesn’t care about you just knowing stuff. You have to be able to understand and re-narrate it. If you are a storyteller, then this is your time.
Image by Austin Kleon on Flickr
Nico has co-founded Sandbox and helps clients tell their stories through social media. He also teaches a class on the theory of history at the University of Zurich.
On the 2. December 2009 at 11:30 o'Clock
Hi Nico,
Thanks, insightful article. Narratives are also on the rise in management / organisational research {1}, though still having to justify themselves against the “harder”, (post)positivist approaches trying to pin down the “real reality” in abstract form. Still undecided which way is “better”, and experimenting how the two can be fruitfully combined…
Cheers,
Martin
{1} Rhodes, Carl, and Andrew D. Brown. “Narrative, Organizations and Research”. International Journal of Management Reviews 7:167-88.
On the 5. December 2009 at 13:40 o'Clock
[...] Here is the full post. Before that, I had already written about the skill of demystification: I’m about to graduate from university, and I often have the feeling that there isn’t a lot I know now that I haven’t known when I started studying about six years ago. It’s a frustrating thought; but Webers idea might offer some consolidation. Because studying, of course, is not about accumulating knowledge. It is a process of demystification of our minds, of learning that there is nothing that we could not understand, would we choose to look at it closely, and being given the tools necessary to get our heads around anything – anything! – we want. [...]
On the 6. December 2009 at 17:36 o'Clock
[...] story from the FT on the rise and fall (well, mostly fall) of MySpace. The basic narrative (yes, I’m a bit obsessed with storytelling at the moment) seems to be one that is heard very often: Small startup becomes [...]
On the 12. December 2009 at 09:31 o'Clock
[...] The Skill of Emplotment or the Rise of Storytellers: Komplexität in Geschichten erzählen. Gedanken über Geschichten in immer komplexeren Welten. [...]
On the 14. December 2009 at 18:25 o'Clock
[...] I’m not sure I agree; maybe because my definition of storytelling is broader (see my post on “emplotment”: http://www.sandbox-network.com/inspiration/the-skill-of-emplotment-or-the-rise-of-storytellers/) [...]