VividWord Podcast

In this episode, we start with a broad conversation about story and art that narrows all the way down to why dialogue is so useful in fiction storytelling, and how our own perspectives don’t hinder character development, but actually enhance them.

Helpful Terms and Links

• Dialogue- Finding ___* through talking (*logic, meaning, ideas etc.)
• Art- Applied aesthetics
• Aesthetics - The senses that we use to experience the phenomenon of meaning in the world.
• Anti-art- An intentional showcase of chaos, around the phenomenon of meaning.

Character is Dialogue

• Speech pattern, tone, and world view are the building blocks of a written character. Not necessarily their backstory (although that helps to form their worldview, two people can have very similar backstories and develop very different world views).

Dialogue is Mini-Story

• Symphonic dialogue plays out the central conflict of your story in three levels. 1. Plot themes (desire/obstacles = melody) 2. Moral themes (perspective/world-view expression = harmony) 3. Icon themes (keywords/key phrases/key imagery = accents.

Story is Change Through Conflict

• The change doesn’t necessarily have to resolve the conflict. The change could simply be a self-revelation, a recognition that there will be no change.
• Good stories help us to experience the phenomenon of meaning
• A worldview is a story of the world that answers questions such as, “what’s right with the world (if anything), what’s wrong with the world (if anything), what are the highest values in the world?”
• Stories exist because questions exist and questions exist because the belief in answers exist. Stories are compelling because the belief in answers is compelling.
• Conflict occurs in the friction between different answers for the same questions.

Art and Stories mentioned

• The Anatomy of Story, John Truby
• Daisy Jones and the Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid 

Music

1. Human, by Gallos
2. Big Ol’ World, by Firework Festival
3. Villain, by Jared Marc
4. Questions I Will Never Know, by Telepathic Teddy Bear
5. Jogo, by Primo Levi
6. In My Head, by Lainey Wright

In this episode, we explore how dialogue takes shape and varies in nonfiction writing through journalism, personal essay, and memoir. The question we return to again and again is, what does truth telling look like when we write down the words of other, real-life people? 

This question leads us to a conversation about honesty in writing, and how two things can be true at the same time. 

Helpful Terms and Links

• Dialogue- Finding ___* through talking (*logic, meaning, ideas etc.)
• Essay- “an attempt”
• Memoir- (the author’s personal retelling of a crucial event or life-lesson learned) versus autobiography (a retelling of the author’s life events, in general).

Art and Stories mentioned

Examples of personal essays;

• Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace
• Essays, Michel de Montaigne 
• Small Victories, Anne Lamott 
• Many works by C.S. Lewis

Truth-telling in story

• The Lifespan of a Fact, John D’Agata and Jim Fingal
• The Big Short, directed by Adam McKay

In this episode, we explore how to steward dialogue well in important, deep conversations.

We laid out the different settings these conversations can happen in, which led to a discussion about the good, bad, and ugly sides of political dialogue and social media arguments, and how to cope when we have to have these hard conversations in less-than-ideal circumstance.

Helpful Terms and Links

• Dialogue - Finding ___* through talking (*logic, meaning, ideas etc.)
• Rhetoric - The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.

Books Mentioned

• Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre.

In this first episode, we set the stage for our series about dialogue by exploring how to steward dialogue well in all spheres of communication. We begin by asking, "what's universal about communication?"

This question leads us to a conversation about human connection, community building, and how we can approach the words we hear and say with a grace-filled perspective.

Helpful Terms and Links

• Dialogue- Finding ___* through talking (*logic, meaning, ideas etc.)
• Conversation- The idea of turning something (logic, ideas) around to examine it with someone else.
• Discussion- To shake something apart.
• Maieutics- A word for the Socratic method of teaching by asking questions. Related to midwifery; the socratic process of helping someone birth an idea.
• Communication; The process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior.

Books mentioned

• Conversation is a communal act! Claire learned a lot about this from the book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre.
• Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry