Students Reinvent Narrative Storytelling

At the end of last semester, the artists behind The Storytold Project were gathering momentum to debut a revitalized and reorganized organization at the start of the fall term. As promised, the program is now taking flight with a new, user-friendly website, faculty advisor and ambitions to expand the project as a vehicle of campus-wide artistic collaboration.

The mission of Storytold is basic and fundamentally loyal to the Project’s initial foundation – students submit one or two sentences outlining a story they want to read, and in return receive personalized stories, delivered in weekly installments, created by Storytold’s narrative team.

Ben Mansky ’15 had been ruminating over a way to expand his love for narrative storytelling for years.

“I’ve always been interested in storytelling in a whole variety of ways,” he said. “I grew up around not just books, but plays and video games, as well. I figured there’s no better opportunity to try and start something like this than now, so when the idea struck me for a way to have a story that is truly your own, that you not only want to read but that you have a personal attachment to, I knew that that was an opportunity that didn’t yet exist. So I thought, ‘Why not?’”

Over the summer, Mansky performed logistical troubleshooting to improve the accessibility and efficiency of Storytold. After creating a more concise and engaging website, genre specifications were added to the story request form, allowing students to choose up to two narrative categories, ranging from historical to thriller to comedy to fantasy. This additional request narrows the focus for both the student desiring a story and the artists at Storytold while still allowing imaginations to run wild.

When requesting a story at www.story-told.com, students can choose to receive their narrative in installments ranging from one to ten weeks as opposed to the 20 week option available last year, with each installment anywhere from two to ten pages. Stories can be privately delivered to a student’s mailbox or publicly posted on the project’s website for other students to read.

“The shortened length of each request is more manageable for our writers to take on during the year, as is asking for more specific plot bits instead of just something wide open,” Mansky said. “Maybe eventually we’ll be able to open that up more, but as we keep recruiting, we’ll keep it specific.”

In addition to fundamental formatting changes, Mansky also accomplished his goal of finding a faculty advisor for Storytold. Visiting Assistant Professor of English & American Literatures Kathryn Kramer will lend official credibility and advice to the group while allowing student ideas and creativity to remain at the core of the project.

“Mostly I think we’re trying to take this into our own hands as a student run project, for the students, by the students, but it’s going to be really nice to have [Kramer] as a resource to tap into as a presence in the creative writing department,” Mansky said.

Though the idea of Storytold is steeped in simplicity, the breadth of work and student collaborations that can result from the project are intricate and endless. The acquisition of artists across mediums will eventually allow the publication of stories with visual, interactive and even theatrical components.

“Because it’s really applicable to all different art forms and media, hopefully we can collaborate with radio theater, some of the literary journals and some of the other arts around campus,” Mansky said. “To be able to develop relationships with other student groups that are around would definitely be the primary goal once we’ve been established as something that exists on campus.”

Recruiting and managing student schedules have been the biggest difficulties in establishing Storytold as a prominent student organization. Though two students interested in contributing to the project graduated in May, two writers currently remain on the team for this year.

Interested writers, illustrators and graphic artists are encouraged to attend Storytold’s first meeting of the semester tonight, Thursday, Sept. 18, at 8 p.m. in the LaForce lounge. To be a part of the Storytold team students can also apply at www.story-told.com or by emailing apply@story-told.com or bmansky@middlebury.edu.

“There’s always the question of why is this something that we would want or need, and that’s something that I’m sure plenty of people might think in relation to a project like this, but I don’t think that will be a roadblock or a problem,” Mansky said. “It always has been and will be a labor of love for us.”

Eventually, Mansky would like to see Storytold expand beyond the College as a service available to anyone with access to the Internet.

Three stories are currently available to read on www.story-told.com, and students are welcome to start making requests now.

At its very core, Storytold is a new forum for students to exercise their skills in narrative storytelling. What sets the project apart is the opportunity for interaction, allowing students to request, write and read stories that were crafted from idea to finished product by students. Storytold is trying to redefine the creative part of creative writing, banishing the isolation of writer and page to allow an innovative, personalized brand of narration that has never existed on this campus before.