Oral Story
On Thursday I had a women’s league basketball game I was on my way from coaching and so I was running out of gas I didn’t notice until about halfway to my basketball game and I looked down at my gas tank and realized that I was on one bar and of course I was not very close to getting to the gym I started to panic and coasting try not to use my AC I put my windows up even though I have no idea if that actually affects my gas use and then I took a wrong turn because I was thinking about my gas and instead of getting to the gym quickly and ensuring that I didn’t run out of gas I actually prolonged my travel time luckily I made it to the gym and I chatted with all my teammates about the situation and how far I may be able to get on my gas tank our basketball game went well we played a current UBC basketball player and she was playing against all of us old ladies and it was really fun to see someone that is currently in University playing where I was quite a while ago we ended up winning the game by 15 points and it’s just a really nice social fun atmosphere where I get to see all of my friends and get a good workout in after the game I had to map where the nearest gas station was and a teammate followed me while I got to it I felt like I was about to fully run out and it was the closest I’ve ever been but luckily I made it to the station paid an astronomical amount for gas and filled up my tank and then drove home and called my sister to decide what was for dinner and we made omelets with lots of cheese I had a nice delicious bubbly water and then we watched our favorite reality TV show after that I went to bed for much-needed I woke up the next day I’m super sore because I’m now not as young as I used to be and my knees always get a bit sore after playing overall not a bad Thursday night
The story above has not been altered in any way after the speech-to-text process (using https://speechnotes.co/). Grammatical and spelling mistakes are all included as originally seen.
Reflection
For this exercise I found myself speaking differently than I normally would if I was telling this to a friend. I found it difficult to just come up with a story on the spot which is why my story is so boring and seemingly about nothing. If I had time to script the story, it would make more sense and flow much better. What is “wrong” with the text is the punctuation. I spoke with pauses however the written text does not account for this making it an entire run on sentence. I consider these mistakes because without the punctuation it impacts the story and how I intended to share it with the listener. This could change the meaning or message that I was conveying. I also notice with other voice to text applications that often words are autocorrected to choose words that are proper English words but which make little sense in the sentence. If I had scripted the story it would have been much more logical with less repetition and more polished because I could revise it as I went. This made it clear how much oral storytelling differs from written storytelling. Oral first of all does not require the listener to be literate. The story can also be adjusted to suit the specific audience so there is the ability to make it more personal or interesting based on who is listening. This is not the case for written stories however the benefit to written is that they include more description and detail to make it more interesting to read. “Writing is generally done more deliberately than speaking, so finished written pieces are much more carefully crafted than a typical spoken sentence” (Gnanadesikan, 2011). Reading what I was saying I really noticed I almost gave no description like I would through writing. The largest difference to written and oral storytelling is that written can be read verbatim rather than from memory. As Walter Ong (2002) discusses, reciting something of great length verbatim is impossible for the human brain. So, although it could be memorized and recited verbatim, by writing it down it ensures each reader would get the exact same information no matter how many times my uninteresting and monotonous story was read.
References:
Gnanadesikan, A.E. (2011). The first IT revolution. In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet (pp. 1-12). John Wiley & Sons.
Ong, W.J. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the wordLinks to an external site.. Routledge. (Original work published 1982).
Hi Kris!
I completely understand your struggle in crafting a 5-minute story. It’s very difficult to maintain a timeline and plot structure while speaking. I don’t know how storytellers do it —it’s definitely an art. I kind of love that you just talked about your day, and in that way, it actually did feel like you were talking to a friend.
I thought that your voice-to-text was very successful. Your story flowed well and was highly readable. The punctuation errors you noted were minor and didn’t really take away from the story. Perhaps most impressive was the humor that came across in your speech! It made for an enjoyable read.
We share many of the same observations on the differences between oral and written storytelling. For instance, there’s the need for literacy to read a written text, and that oral storytelling has a flexibility to cater to audience’s preferences. Additionally, as you note, text serves as a physical record, reducing the room for interpretation with each retelling, unlike oral storytelling, which changes based on memory and the storyteller’s interpretation. I find that oral storytelling possesses a spontaneity and accessibility that can sometimes feel absent in written text which also highlights its strengths and weaknesses. Who knows what this story would look like at its 25th retelling? Perhaps you might have run out of gas on your way to a championship basketball game forcing you to run to UBC arriving just in time to throw the winning basket!
I really enjoyed reading this post. Thanks,
Steph
Hi Kris,
Thanks for this post – I really enjoyed it! I think that you certainly did have a point, and it was anything but boring. Anecdotes like this make me think of Stuart McLean and his Vinyl Cafe stories. I love a story that can make me smile, even laugh, as I imagine myself dealing with a situation.
The difference is that as masterfully as Stuart McLean spoke his stories ( I miss him!), we know that he carefully wrote them and practiced his speech. We did not have that luxury with this assignment.
Anyways, for a first draft text, I think this achieved its purpose very very well, and if you took the time to edit and rewrite you’d have a publishable anecdote that many of us can connect with.
Steve