Narrative Density

Why we are attracted to certain stories.

Watson . . . if I can get a mechanism which will make a current of electricity vary in its intensity, as the air varies in density when a sound is passing through it, I can telegraph any sound, even the sound of speech.

- Alexander Graham Bell

My undergraduate degree from Syracuse University is in printmaking. Printmaking is a “fine art” that is basically drawing—just drawing in a way that can be reproduced. Part of my degree was also paper-making and bookmaking—but mostly I learned how to draw using different tools and methods.

I chose this major as a result of taking a freshman year “core” class taught by the Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts called “Basic Drawing.” It was called this because we did not draw human bodies—that was called “Figure Drawing,” and it was a different class. In this core class, the Dean asked us to draw something “narrative” as opposed to “illustrated.” My memory is that he did not give us much instruction other than the distinction between these two ways of drawing: narrative drawing and illustration

This is a photo of me and the Dean at my graduation.

I couldn’t do it.

I didn’t understand.

I think I drew a picture of a fairy tale with fuzzy, “arty” lines rather than the crisp lines that I associated with children’s book illustrations. Luckily one of my fellow freshmen, a young man named Mark, drew a picture of a man—a big man who seemed to be sitting on a throne, like a king. The man was leaning back in the throne with his hands clutching the armrests, and he seemed to be wincing. I couldn’t understand the image—I didn’t know what was happening or what Mark wanted me to know. But I could feel it. I could feel the wince and the clutched hands. I could feel that the man was experiencing something profound—possibly painful or ecstatic. There was so much in that image—so much experience and feeling and possibility. It was filled with narrative.

“Mark got it” was all the Dean said to us.

And then he left us to figure out why.

This impressed me. It set my head spinning. I wanted more of what the Dean had given us and thought that if I chose “drawing” as my major, I would be able to have this experience over and over again. But since there was no drawing major, I chose the closest thing: printmaking. It was the right decision, because printmaking and bookmaking both lean heavily on narrative—and the more “dense” the narrative, the better

And this is a photo of me and the printmaking department. I’m hiding in the middle because I was terminally unique. And btw, the Santa looking guy at the end is the teacher who said I was “chosen”.

The more dense an object, the more gravitation pull.¹

More density, more attractive. The earth has more gravitational pull than I do, so my body is pulled toward the earth. So are basketballs. So are Ford F-150s.

This is also the case with stories. The dense stories have more pull. More people find themselves listening to a dense story than one that is less dense. So what is a dense story?

We have relationships to stories. Certain stories mean a great deal to us. Some of us love underdog stories. Some of us love stories about misfit dogs. Some look for haunted houses. Some seek balloons.

Density in stories has to do with particular moments or images in the story that are “sticky”.

They stay with you. You keep thinking about them. When someone reminds you of the story, its the dense images you recall.

Images with a lot of narrative density can reach more people. They are sticky for lots of people, and often different kinds of people. This is a major factor behind an image or moment going “viral”. There is something narratively dense about the cat, or the dancing old man, or the crying soldier. It sticks more often with more people

.

Politicians seek narrative density. They know that an election can suddenly swing on a narratively dense word or image or moment.

Advertisers seek narrative density. This is what they want for their client—to find a sticky connection with a target market.

When a storyteller reads a room, they are seeking clues about what will be narratively dense for this particular group of people. The storyteller looks for what will grab them and hold them and stick with them for a long time.

Narrative Density is a variable that we have all felt, but may not have considered as a thing. It’s a thing. And its something we can all learn.

1. (“Relationship between Gravity and Density”)