In 1974 - or 1976, depending who you ask - Armistead Maupin began writing "an extended love letter to a magical San Francisco” in the form of a serialized, fictional drama published originally in the Pacific Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, originally called "The Serial" which then became collectively known as Tales of The City. It is a suprisingly beautiful, deep, emotional, cosmopolitan and lasting tale about life in San Francisco in the turbulent, heady days of the 1970s and 1980s. Widely credited with and cherished for helping spread a little of the openess, tolerance and acceptance that San Francisco is now famous for. It then became a series of books - Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You - and lastly, the spin-off tale of Michael Tolliver Lives. Almost exactly twenty years after first publishing, it then became an excellent miniseries from the United Kingdom's Channel 4, which aired in the United States on PBS, but not without protest or limitations.
posted on May 4, 2008 - View this thread

This is a story [audio] about how much I love you [audio].
posted on Apr 30, 2008 - View this thread

The 21 Steps is a spy thriller short story that is told using Google Maps. [via mefi projects]
posted on Mar 20, 2008 - View this thread

Aboriginal dance (also known as a corroboree) helps indigenous Australians to interact with the Dreamtime through dance, music and costume. Many ceremonies act out events from the Dreamtime. Many of the ceremonies are sacred and people from outside a community are not permitted to participate or watch. However, there are many ceremonies we've been allowed to witness (here's one of my favourites). And there's plenty of related pictures available at the National Museum's website. Naturally, any indigenous Australians reading should note that these links may include images or names of people who may now be deceased.
posted on Mar 13, 2008 - View this thread

The Moth: Listen to Stories
posted on Feb 20, 2008 - View this thread

Ira Glass sits at a soundboard and schools us on the art of storytelling.
posted on Mar 20, 2007 - View this thread

Ficlets are extremely short stories (a maximum of 1024 characters). Other writers swoop in and write prequels and sequels to your ficlet, making interesting branching narratives a la Create Your Own Adventure.
posted on Mar 15, 2007 - View this thread

The Dreaming (arguably better known as 'The Dreamtime') is more than just the story of how the world was created as told by Aboriginal Australians. It is also the basis for their way of life and death, their source of power in life and it tells of the life and influence of their ancestors on their culture. It was so important to Aboriginal Australians in the time before the white invasion of Australia that it was the one commonly held belief amongst a culture that consisted of over 500 different tribes (discussion of Dreamtime beliefs here). Thought to be the oldest continuously maintained cultural history on Earth, it is often presented as a series of inter-related stories explaining Aboriginal Australian origins and culture, such as how the Australian landscape was created or how the Mimi spirits taught them how to paint these stories on the walls of caves more than 40,000 years ago.

And what better way to learn of several of the many different Dreamtime stories than to listen and watch them being told by Aboriginal Australians elders themselves? And if that isn't enough Dreamtime mythology for you, here's some links to various sites which allow you to view Aboriginal rock art to see how these stories were translated into a form of artistic expression which is now five times older than the Egyptian Pyramids themselves.
posted on Dec 23, 2006 - View this thread

What is it with the London Underground and the internet? As many MeFi posts have noted before, no other subway system in the world has quite as many websites and applications devoted to it (why is this?). Until now the bulk of these applications have been based around maps, but the 'tube' has just got an independent site that is story-based. The brand new site at www.yourstation.co.uk wants you to write stories about the networks famous stations. Each gets its own homepage, you fill it with stories or simply read those that have gone before. Want to know how Mudchute got its name? You now know where to look.
posted on Apr 5, 2005 - View this thread

No capes , no monoguing, and no ex machina. Brad Bird's 'The Incredibles' notched the clichés of the superhero genre - if not all action/adventure movies - with a thick red marker. These lists have apparently been circulating since 1994. Why do (bad) writers persist in using these plot devices?
posted on Mar 11, 2005 - View this thread

At what point did the muse disappear and become replaced by the dramaturg? "Scripts aren't written, they're rewritten", goes the cry from all the script gurus - all the literary managers, editors, producers, dramaturgs - not just in theatre but film, too. Why do they say this? Because their jobs depend on it. If scripts were left alone, what would they do? Dominic Dromgoole writes about playwriting in the UK.
posted on Dec 19, 2004 - View this thread

I've been having a great time exploring the maze that is Musarium, wandering about and peeking into into various nooks and crannies to find such exotica as the wonderfully bizarre birdhand book, and absorbing cultural artifacts and musings, including the poetic Visions and Icons (I really love the way the text works with the images on this), the atmospheric Familiar Ghosts (the texts will cue you on clicking through this somewhat dream-like landscape), the time-capsule imagery of Balkan Portraits (1906-1910), the breathtaking portraits of photographer Steve McCurry (famous for his National Geographic portait of the Afghani girl), the subterranean monologue of Grand Central: the View Down Under, and the shocking and heartbreaking Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. There's a lot more, so take your time. You can use this page to access archived material.
posted on Aug 8, 2004 - View this thread

Immersive Online Content. The first in a series on digital storytelling techniques, from the Poynter Institute. Examples include stories on baggage inspection, water conservation, the Florida 2000 election and touch screen voting.
posted on Jun 6, 2002 - View this thread

Lucas: Powerful reteller of myth - or galactic gasbag? Salon has a scathing review of Lucas' claim that the basis of the Star Wars saga is in "man's oldest stories" and that he was guided by Joseph Campbell.
"With 'Star Wars' I consciously set about to re-create myths and the classic mythological motifs," Lucas says. "I wanted to use those motifs to deal with issues that exist today."
Hogwash, says author Steven Hart. Star Wars is based not on "The Odyssey" or the "Upanishads", but on Asimov, Heinlen, Herbert and other 20th century S.F.
posted on Apr 10, 2002 - View this thread

Creative storytelling at Flight404.com. Visited this link a long time ago from the forever-in-hiatus K10K when it was a white splace page with a vector drawing of a plane, now it's a great online story.
posted on Feb 27, 2002 - View this thread

So how was Fray Day 5?
posted on Sep 9, 2001 - View this thread

What's your story? That's the question that the site EatTheseWords asks. In nature, it's quite similar to {fray}, only not as focused. Which format do you prefer--that of {fray}'s, or the more general purpose approach seen at ETW? Find any particularly interesting stories there?
posted on Jul 13, 2001 - View this thread