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Today on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re sharing an unscripted episode about learning storytelling and collaboration lessons in unexpected places like musicals and theme parks.

Over the last year, we’ve done a wide range of topics — from writing about disabilities to writing with empathy —that took a lot of energy and preparation. We’ve also been doing this podcast for almost 5 years and as we celebrate our 250th episode this month we felt it would be fun to do a series of episodes getting back to our roots of how this first began — through unplanned conversations about life, books, and the writing craft. So, for right now we’re continuing to see where our conversations take us, without planning in advance what we’ll talk about.

In this conversation, we talk about musicals and theme park storytelling and the surprising lessons those can teach. Things like:

• The Wind and the Willows musical and how the lack of character change and growth in that story along with the absence of a central plot arc and satisfying story resolution can lead to a disappointing audience experience.

• The interesting detail that Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride does include a form of conclusion or at least consequence as part of the storytelling, which at least is more satisfying than no ending at all.

• The more recent addition to the Jungle Cruise ride of a story — along with having desrespectful elements that detracted from the story removed — led to the rides increasing popularity with guests.

• Rides we love like Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and Star Tours and the immersive nature of their settings and storytelling along with the overall feeling of curiosity and wonder that they tap into.

• Things discovered from The Imagineering Story (book) and The Imagineering Story (2019 documentary series)

  • Nuggets of wisdom from Disney’s theme park storytelling and place setting rules, successes, and failures.

  • Tales of how opposing viewpoints and contrasting skill sets led to some unique and rich experiences — such as the distinctive characters provided by Marc Davis and rich backgrounds and settings provided by Claude Coats in both the Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion rides

Towards the end of this discussion, we talk about collaboration and ideas for how to set-up a working relationship to help keep a writing project centered on bringing to life a joint vision without going too far in differing directions or allowing honest feedback to feel like a personal attack rather than a process to make the overall story stronger. We feel different points of view and opposing ideas can be good, so long as you maintain focus and balance. Watching people work together, reading about how creative teams make their way through a project (like in The Imagineering Story), and talking with other authors about how they collaborate can all be great ways of learning some new best practices.

We hope you enjoy this episode and the more improvisational format of this series and that some of this connects with your own journey!

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Books and Films Mentioned:

• The Wind in the Willows: Illustrated Classic by Kenneth Grahame

• The Imagineering Story: The Official Biography of Walt Disney Imagineering by Leslie Iwerks

• The Imagineering Story (2019 Documentary Series) - Directed by Leslie Iwerks  

Music from:https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)