Addict

From "The Bureaucrat's Guide to Idea Execution"

Hi. My name is Botgirl Questi. And I'm a Micro-Storytelling addict. The month of October was supposed to be the time for me to get clean. Forego the short stuff. Focus on deeper and more fully realized work. And here I am, not even half-way through the month and I'm back at it. Oh well. One day at a time, right?

Micro-Storytelling in Dance

This performance from last night's episode of So You Think You Can Dance is a compelling example of micro-storytelling through dance. It was choreographed by Mia Michaels, a gifted storyteller whose work takes viewers on a roller coaster of story and emotion over the course of a minute or two dance.

Although I've been watching the show for a few years, the correlation between its short narrative dance format and micro-storytelling only occurred to me last night. It is very inspiring (and a bit intimidating) to realize how much emotional depth can be conveyed in such a brief performance. Works such as this challenge us as storytellers to dig deeper into our joy and pain and be more committed to infusing each phrase and image with craftsmanship and integrity.

The Art of Micro-Story: Parodies, Sayings and Rants

This is the third in a series of posts based on a presentation at the 2012 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference.

Parody is a powerful micro-story modality with strong pedagogical potential. Imagine how fun it would be for each student to write a tweet each day commenting on a current news item. Through the use of a distinctive hashtag, their collective work would create the social network equivalent of The Onion. Of course, this wouldn’t replace traditional forms such as essays,  but I believe it would move students to think critically about the issues of our time and help them get in touch with their unique take on events.

Second Lie is my favorite parody micro-story writer. His Twitter stream is a non-stop roast of emerging news about Linden Lab and Second Life. Within minutes of a new event, he starts posting strings of parody tweets that make transparent the Emperor's new clothes. His stream is the Metaverse equivalent of parody news programs like The Daily Show and Steve Colbert. His character is a cross between Rodney Dangerfield and Tony Clifton. (Tony Clifton was Andy Kaufman’s darker twin.)

Here are a few of my favorite tweets from Second Lie:

BREAKING NEWS: Quarterly economic reports have been discontinued. (We lost the dice we used to generate the numbers.) 

Inventory server maintenance underway. This may affect logins for some residents. God forbid, we tell you which ones. That's no fun. 

BREAKING NEWS: Linden Lab sues Google for Plus, which steals a patent for a platform used exclusively to complain about that platform. 

Unfortunately, Second Lie retired his character shortly after the lecture (no connection.)


Aphorisms have proven themselves as one of the most enduring forms of idea-transmission. The identities of the authors of sayings such as “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket” have been lost in time, but their work has endured for hundreds and even thousands of years.

I’ve found a lot of creative satisfaction using Twitter as an incentive to come up with pithy sayings. I want to stress again that what’s most important about writing micro-stories isn’t the quality of each post, but rather how the process of creation hones our awareness. It allows us to connect some of the otherwise unintegrated and unexpressed ideas that lie in wait within our subconscious.

One of the ways I think of Botgirl is as my Muse. She’s the voice of my subconscious whispering in my ear. But you don’t need an avatar identity to tap into your inner landscape. The journey from blank screen to finished work (even a tweet) is an exploration into uncharted territory. You never know what treasure is around the bend.

I’ve played around with a number of different formats on Botgirl’s stream over the years. One of the most personally rewarding is the Deep Tweet. The idea started out on the blog as “Fortune Cookie Wisdom”, which was a funny quote at the end of a serious post to lighten things up.” Here are a few examples from Botgirl's Twitter stream:

The word “tolerance” bothered me until I realized what we are tolerating is our own discomfort about those we don’t understand 

Objectification isn’t seeing someone as a person in a box, but rather seeing the box as being the person. 

The blank page is Sacred Space

The idea of the blank page as sacred space is the foundation of my love of micro-story. Every time we face a blank screen and allow ideas to emerge we are building a bridge between our everyday mind and the deeper levels of our being. And in bringing them to some soft of tangible and shareable form, I believe we are participating in the collective evolution of our human potential. Pretty deep for what is typically viewed as the shallow wasteland of social networks.

Thematic 

The last social network format I’m going to discuss today involves posting a series of tweets over the course of a day based on a theme. Botgirl calls them micro-rants. As a whole, they don’t form a linear narrative. The individual tweets may even be contradictory. The intent is to stimulate thinking rather than to promote any particular point of view.

I was inspired to take this approach by Marshall McLuhan’s “probes,” super-charged phrases that force you out of habitual ways of thinking. Micro-rants are intented to take readers on a ride through multiple perspectives and provoke fresh thought. Here are an example of a complete micro-rant that was published over the course of one day. It's about re-evaluating our virtual lives:

The info-stream is growing ever vaster than we can attend, little alone comprehend. Discretion is the better part of consumption. #reboot 

"Stop and Facebook the roses" is a more congruent aphorism for these times. And to mix the metaphors, it doesn't smell as sweet. #reboot 

Just-because-I-can is becoming a less and less compelling reason to create something. #reboot 

"All the world's a stage" does not suffice anymore. Human life itself is becoming as much public performance as private experience. #reboot 

Another tweet falling into the bottomless abyss. Thanks for catching it. Now what are you going to do with it? #reboot 

The stream is a treadmill. #reboot 

The Social-Net values only what is made public, for that is all it perceives. #reboot 

We are starting to experience our own lives as if we were editors of a Reality TV show. #reboot 

Amusement sweetens the spirit as a dessert but smothers the soul when it serves as the sole sustenance. #reboot 

I can't think of any modern technology whose primary impact has been to actualize wisdom in the cultures it permeates. Can you? #reboot 

Insights without action are like crops rotting in the field. #reboot

One of the curious aspects of this format is that each reader may receive them somewhat differently. Some people check their stream a few times an hour, others a few times a day. Depending upon how many people a reader follows, the micro-rant tweets may show up pretty close to each other or be separated by dozens of other tweets. They may be viewed in order, in reverse order, or only partially. I usually post about every half hour. I want to give each enough space for it to generate some discussion, but be close enough to have some resonance between them.

This is another format that would be great for education. How about a weekly micro-rant Monday, with a topic and hashtag classmates would post to. They could be collected and published in other formats like a class blog, wiki or e-publication.

In the final segment of this series I’ll  cover visual micro-stories, describe some of the tools I use to create and publish them, and sum up with thoughts on the medium’s educational potential.

The Art of Micro-Story: Head Injury Theater

This is the second in a series of posts based on a presentation at the 2012 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference.

Some educators are troubled by our pervasively net-connected lives. They contend that constant multitasking and info-surfing undermine their students' ability to sustain full attention on anything except the briefest and most stimulating entertainment.  But I contend that relentless multitasking is a practical adaptation to the emerging technological environment. It is as inevitable and unstoppable as the electric light was 150 years ago. Our lives demand that we learn to live appropriately within the reality of our current information ecosystem. Arguing against it is the modern equivalent of fighting the wheel. That’s why I believe it’s important to start creating curriculum that leverages new mediums instead of clinging to past formats that are no longer appropriate.

Public communication used to be a one-way flow from a handful of media giants to the global masses. Like the old adage said, freedom of the press was only for those who could afford to own one. But times are changing. Today, millions of people around the world are reversing the tide by publishing creative work that expresses their personal points of view. 

Of couse, it’s not all gold. As a matter of fact, it’s mostly crap. I could die happy if I never saw another meme. But if we look at the explosion of social networking, media sharing and blogging as steps along an evolutionary continuum, I believe it calls upon us to actualize the educational potential.

One thing we need to learn to thrive in the current environment is how to to express our ideas through compelling condensed narratives. Twitter posts are an ideal exercise format.

My favorite Twitter micro-storyteller is Whiskey Monday. Her Twitter stream is filled with slice-of-life tweets about caring for two teen daughters, a sister with cancer and a mother with a head injury. She call is "Head Injury Theater." Here’s how she described her situation in a blog post:

My sister’s chemo has weakened her to the point that she stays in a rocking chair 24/7, criticizing me like Norman Bates’ mother. My mom moved here from the Brain Injury Rehab Center last week, and she’s just a big toddler with a wicked tongue. I’ve got my 10 yr old niece to care for, my own kids to deal with, my mom’s AND my sister’s houses to care for in addition to my own and to top it all off, I lost my teaching job.

Whiskey's tweets are tiny masterpieces that tell the compelling story of her day-to-day life. My favorites are short dialogues between house members:

"Mom don't stand up in the bathtub til l get back." - "Okay I'll just lie down." - "No mom, don't lie down either."

"Why won't Gran wake up?" - "Orange Dramamine tastes like candy." - "Oh. Grab her arms, I'll get her feet." 

19: "Either your waffles are burning or the toaster has chosen a new pope." 

Whiskey's posts aren't just witty and entertaining. They they also demonstrate the creative and therapeutic potential of writing and sharing micro-stories. She wrote:

“Twitter has kept my brain forming thoughts at a time when I couldn’t do much else. Twitter kept my sense of humor stimulated, which in turn has kept me from going postal on my family."  She went on to write: “My life is still funny; I still see the humor in my situations. But I see 140 characters worth of humor, not a whole blog post. Because if I start a blog post, well, I’ll have to go there. Who has time for that??”

By using our lives as fodder for narrative posts like Whiskey’s, we can transcend our usual state of hyper-subjectivity and become more conscious of the dynamics of the stories we’re living. 

The next post in this series will look at parody tweets and the great late @SecondLie 

The Art of Micro-Story (Part 1)

My human counterpart gave a presentation on micro-storytelling a few months ago at the 2012 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference. Since it now looks like videos from the conference won't be posted, I decided to publish a transcript of the presentation here, using the speaker's notes as reference. Since it's in the neighborhood of 3000 words, I'm going to post it in a few sections over the course of a week:

fourworlds speaking at the VWBPE Conference (Image by Crap Mariner)

I'm happy to be back at the VWBPE conference. Last year, Botgirl Questi and I did a performance piece on virtual identity in front of a few hundred people. Apparently she’s a much better draw. This year it’s just me and I’m here to talk about micro-storytelling. On the surface, micro-storytelling seems like a topic that is only marginally connected to either virtual wolds or best practices in education. But even though "micro" is the antithesis of “Epic!” (the theme of the conference), I think it’s a good match for a number of reasons.

Transworld Identity 

First, the micro-storytellers I’m going to discuss in this presentation represent themselves on social networks through avatar identities that were born in Second Life. Thousands of avatar-identified people communicate and build community each day on Twitter, Plurk and Facebook. Social networks aren’t just a way we keep in touch with friends made in virtual worlds, they’re also one of the main mediums where we meet and get to know one another. For instance, I met Whiskey Monday on Twitter. She's one of the storytellers I’m going to talk about today. Although our identities were both created in Second Life, we’ve never met avatar-to-avatar in a 3D virtual world.

Social networks, media sharing sites and blogs are no longer just a peripheral part of virtual world culture, community and relationships. They have become powerful mediums that both reflect and shape inworld culture. Even if you spend hours a day in a virtual world, you probably interact with only a few dozen people there on a regular basis. Through the use of work computers and net-connected phones which don't have access to Second Life, we’re hanging out in virtual social space 24/7 with thousands of our peers. 

Visual Tweet with content from Second Life

Another connection between micro-storytelling and virtual worlds is that there is a two-way creative flow between the creative work we produce in virtual worlds and social networks. For instance, visual tweets are one of the emerging forms that are integrating social network posts with virtual world imagery.



Small is beautiful

I use the word micro-storytelling pretty loosely, but essentially it’s about applying creativity within very constrained spaces. For the purposes of the talk today I’m referring mainly to:

• Social network posts
• 100 Word Stories
• Captioned images
• Videos of less than three minutes in length

Although I love these formats both as a creator and a consumer, I think the impact on the creator is the most interesting. I'm speaking about it here because I believe there’s great potential to use these formats in education. My hope is that some of you will be intrigued enough to experiment with it in some of your classes.

Although I’m speaking mostly as an amateur enthusiast, this topic also hits home in my professional life. In my day job, I’m one of the principals in a consulting company that does agile software development for large enterprises. My current job title is “Geek Interpreter Guy.” That’s a fun way of saying that I help techies and business people create communication their counterparts can understand.

One main challenge is that experts have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees. (I like to joke that it’s because all the trees have been cut down to make the paper used to print fifty page whitepapers and thousand bullet point presentations.) But the real problem is that although specialists know all of the facts in excruciating detail, they often have no clue about how to contextualize the details through a comprehensible story.

My loose definition of “story” includes not just the narrative of events, but any communication that delivers meaning. I see the micro-story format as a great reality test for even the most critical communication. The type of fact-filled ignorance that hides in a 10,000 word report or a 50 slide presentation can usually be exposed  by challenging ourselves to articulate the main idea in a 140 character tweet.

Part 2 of this series will cover these 5 types of micro-story:

• Narrative
• Parody
• Aphorism
• Themed
• Visual

Headline Hijinks

Tired of the endless barrage of partisan news stories? Hijack the media with your own headlines! Here's a fast and easy mobile workflow:

1. Screen capture from Flipboard
2. Overlay new headline in Comic Life
3. Crop (if needed) in Photogene

I Obviously Have Some Issues I Need to Work Out

There's a story from my subconscious somewhere in here

The majority of my visual work over the last few years was created through this basic process:

1. Wait for a concrete idea to pop into my mind. (Like the recent Whack-a-Doodle game)
2. Pick an output medium (comic/video/etc.)
3. Write a script if needed
4. Choose one or more visual creation platforms (SL/Frameforge/Photo/etc.)
5. Crank it out, usually in a half-day or less

Although my recent Polaroid Micro-Story series began life with a similar workflow, it has evolved into a very different process:

1. Comb through a collection of dolls, toys and action figures
2. Select one or more that catch my eye
3. Pose them in various ways and try to capture an evocative image
4. Sit with it and wait for a story to emerge
5. Create a caption

The first process I described starts with a mental concept which is then visualized. The second reverses the order by starting with the image and then conceptualizing an associated story. I recently realized that the latter process is a form of Sandtray Therapy. Given what's come up so far,  I obviously have some "issues" I need to work out.

Here's the 100 Word Story that emerged from the image above:

Spawn of Satan 

Mama has a million stories about the identity of my father. She's never repeated one twice. And she tells each version, no matter how fantastical, with the complete conviction of the consummate carny she is. But my truth is stranger than her fictions. 

You see, I'm no ordinary girl. Not even close. The small town kids who gawk at me in the sideshow would pee their pants if I let my predator's gaze capture their eyes. But I have to bide my time until my first red moon. That's when the power wakes up and all hell breaks loose. Literally.

Video Trailer for Micro-Story Presentation at VWBPE

Looks like a great line-up for this year's Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference. This video previews my human counterpart's presentation, which will be held on Saturday March 17 at 3:00 PM Pacific Time in the Central Auditorium in Second Life.

Be Careful What You Wish For

I've been having a lot of fun over the past few months with Polaroid MicroStories. Although work using physical world dolls, toys and actions figures may seem off-topic for a blog about virtual identity, it's very complementary. The process of reification that transforms a couple of dolls pulled off a shelf into a character-based narrative also molds our conception of everyday experience. Our internal judgements shape our sense of reality in the same way that the caption imposes story and identity on an otherwise ambiguous image.

I'm Your Mirror . . .

We're suckers, believing almost every thought that comes into our minds. This is especially true when it comes to our conceptions of other people. Although it feels like we can look into each other's souls, we're mostly just seeing our own distorted reflection.

Magdalene Was Bemused

I Am Not Playing!

Cindy's Inner Child

Buffy is Exhausted

After having a lot of fun with 100 Word Stories, I recently stumbled onto an even more condensed micro-tale format in The Tiny Book of Stories. It's an anthology of 67 works that combine a few lines of text and an illustration. It's likely you'll see a lot more of these here over the next few weeks while I'm busy working on a new long-form comic, "The Death of Botgirl." (Yes. That was a teaser.)