Summary Of Ted Talk By Julian Friedman

Julian Friedman in the TED talk, “The Mystery of Story Telling”, asserts that a writer must make his or her audience his or her number one priority. Friedman supports his claim by explaining the short falls of writers through his own eyes, citing his own experience as an agent, as well as the eyes of George Orwell, speaking on the motivation of writers according to Orwell, and even Aristotle, talking about how modern writers diverge from the Aristotelian formula for storytelling. The author’s purpose is to inform the listener, presumably a writer, in order to help writers create a more effective and engaging story. Friedman speaks in a knowledgeable yet casual tone for a wide audience of writers of all natures. In every TED talk, there are
To start out, the first full page of chapter five states that “Readers are, above all, actively involved in what they read; if they can’t be active, they can’t read that well” (Roskelly & Jolliffe, 126). Friedman relates this idea to the success of American movies over European movies. He states that because American movies have shorter scenes, which are prone to leaving out small details, audiences are filling in the blanks and paying closer attention. Meanwhile European movies, which leave no detail in the introduction and conclusion of a scene to the imagination, bore viewers more easily. More information from the TED talk can be found in chapter five. Take, for example, page 135’s section on how writers constantly, whether consciously or unconsciously, adapt their writing for their audience. Friedman, in the beginning of his speech, speaks of how a good writer makes his or her audience his or her number one priority. Everyday Use also has a section on aesthetic reading in chapter five, and Friedman speaks about how to make the reader enjoy him or herself. As one final example to show that chapter five and this TED talk have similar content, look no further than page 130’s diagram of a triad of the reader, the text cues, and the text itself. Triads are not uncommon in this book, an even more similar one to what Friedman mentions is the Aristotelian rhetorical triangle, however, this is not located in chapter five. Friedman cites a triad of the writer of a story, the characters in it, and the audience who reads it. The key similarity between the two triads is the audience. While Friedman and the authors of everyday use differ on the connection between the audience and the story itself, both agree in explicit terms that the reader is a part of this. All of the above proves to be similar content between Everyday Use chapter five and “The