This was a really fun workshop day, and Lucy was great. I have not been formally taught storytelling, but I was already familiar with a lot of what she discussed with us. Nonetheless, it was great talking about how stories are constructed with arcs, and how characters often fit into archetypes. For some reason, my group of friends said I was somewhere between the Trickster and the Devil archetypes. It is probably because I am always tricking people for no particular reason.
I think my favourite thing about the session was a technique Lucy showed that was essentially a diagram of a character journey represented as a river, and how the river might be a white water rapid when the character was in peril, or a slow meandering stream when they were enjoying themselves, or a waterfall when something life changing was revealed to them. I thought that a cesspit would be a cool representation of a character’s lowest point. I hadn’t heard of this technique until this session and I think it is ingenious in its simplicity. You can see in an instant whether or not your character’s arc, or the overall story for that matter, is interesting based on the consistency of the water and its speed. If it is a steadily flowing river the whole time, the story probably needs spicing up a bit and some more problems thrown at the character, but if it is constantly a full pelt rapid then you might need to add in some moments of relief.
I also enjoyed working on a story with my friend Marco where we discussed how character archetypes would interact and how the story arcs would be constructed. The result was terrible because we are both foolish but it was a lot of fun anyway!