INTERVIEW
Storytelling Special
Walt Disney World visitors “almost
literally walk into the storybook,” Gottschall says
It’s interesting that MRI scans show we’re participants when we read or watch sto- ries, rather than spectators. That can be useful for experience businesses, where you want people to be actively engaged and participating, whether it’s a museum exhibit or a theme park ride. Disney World’s a great example. You
walk into Disney World and enter this alternate dimension of reality, almost lit- erally walking into a storybook. That’s a huge part of the appeal. There are all the great rides, but there’s this very familiar world and Disney lets you live these sto- ries that you love. Other attractions have rollercoasters – what sets Disney apart is this incredibly rich story universe that you enter when you pass through the gates.
You’ve said our minds can easily flutter to something else, and that our attention spans are notoriously short. This is not good news for an experience designer. What must they do to keep the audience hooked? If you look at a novel, the story doesn’t happen all at once. It’s gradually built up in the reader’s mind, detail by detail, character by character, plot point by plot point, over hundreds of pages. Events and attractions can be designed
the same way. You walk into a distinct world and the story is built up, experi- ence by experience, plot point by plot point, with the accretion of detail just like you’d have in a novel. The more you do that the more you tap into this unique
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IN AN ATTRACTION THE STORY IS BUILT UP, EXPERIENCE BY EXPERIENCE, PLOT POINT BY PLOT POINT. STORYBUILDING DOESN’T JUST HAPPEN; STORIES ARE BUILT GRADUALLY
power of story to grab attention, rouse emotion and persuade. In an attraction or ride, your hero might be the guest, and the attraction is centred around a prob- lem the character is attempting to solve. There are museum experiences where
the exhibit designers have just understood, carefully building the story piece by piece. Storybuilding doesn’t just happen; stories are built gradually. The narratives you get at a museum can be very story-like. I gave an events industry talk and the audience asked about how literal you can be. The question is, are we making a weak connection between what happens during an event [or in an attraction] and what happens in a novel, but not a literal connection? No, I think the more literal you can make the connection the better.
When have you visited an attraction and felt you were being told a story? Disney has stuck with me since my childhood. It’s been many years since I’ve been, but I still remember the magical wonder of the place and walking around slack-jawed. The feeling of being inside the story, of seeing the Disney princesses I recognised from the stories and saying, “There’s Snow White!” That stuck with me and made a tremendous impression on me.
Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital At Universal Studios, it used to be the
Back to the Future ride. These days it’s Harry Potter, and the ride’s about you being the hero inside the familiar stories. I recently had a wonderful experience
at the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising in Poland. It was utterly astounding – one of the best museums I’ve been to, partly because it’s so focused. It’s about the weeks during World War II when the Varsovians rose up against the Nazis, and were utterly crushed. Warsaw afterwards looked like Hiroshima, reduced to rubble, depopulated, with almost everyone dead or sent to concentration camps. There are a few key characters who
the curators keep returning to, and you follow them through their struggles. There are incredible images of people – not great heroes of warfare or great generals, but regular men, women and children (as the whole population was mobilised). It was very story-like and had a powerful impact on me. I left feeling eviscerated, emotionally destroyed. I’d just walked through an epic tragedy. It’s the sense of entering into that world for a few hours – as if getting lost in a novel – you disappear in that world and get swept along by the narrative. It was very powerful. l
AM 4 2014 ©Cybertrek 2014
PHOTO: WALT DISNEY WORLD RESORTS
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