ABSTRACT:
Stories have always been integral to human communication, helping us to acquire new knowledge by seeing new perspectives, and ideally, moving us to take action to bring about desirable change. The craft of writing stories for the screen offers well-established tools to engage, connect with and motivate a potentially large audience—tools which can be adapted to advantage by knowledge management practitioners. This paper explores the encultured and other kinds of knowledge which screenwriters target to help audiences receive, and ultimately act, on a message in a screenplay. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of sharing knowledge with a broad, public audience as distinct from within an organization, and suggests contextual strategies to access that knowledge, including the use of complementary Web sites. Finally, it presents five key tools of the screenwriting art—structure, character, conflict, the narrative world and theme—which can encourage audiences to engage in, to share and ultimately, to act on, messages embedded in stories presented onscreen.
1. Introduction
1.1. Why
Stories Matter
“Knowledge management isn’t about helping us to know more. It’s about helping us to understand. … So, how do we understand things? From the first accidental wiener roast on a prehistoric savanna, we’ve understood things by telling stories. It’s through stories that we understand how the world works.” (Weinberger, 1999; pp.12-13)
Narratives, or stories, have always been integral to society. It is through stories that we make sense of the human condition, and learn how to live, or not to live. Stories do not replace communication or analysis, but they can help us to acquire new knowledge by seeing new perspectives, as well as communicate change and inspire innovation. Fundamentally, stories engage people by requiring them to bring their own knowledge to the story and then to take action. An emerging body of research linking storytelling and knowledge management (KM) examines issues such as organizational self-awareness and change (Denning, 2001; Snowden, 1999), leadership (Armstrong, 1992) and retaining tacit knowledge in a firm (Post, 2002). In setting out a case for storytelling as an effective management tool, Armstrong describes the benefits of storytelling as simplicity; timelessness; inclusiveness, empowerment; the recognition of worthy individuals; the promotion of ideas; memorabilty; the best way to impart traditions and values; and to train and motivate people. Armstrong further asserts that stories are “demography-proof” (1992; pp. 7). Understandably, the literature has devoted less attention to the less obvious application of KM strategies to engage people through entertainment media. In fact, rarely do KM systems account for our tendency to share essential knowledge by telling stories (Pfeffer & Sutton, 1999). According to Snowden (2002) we can know more than we tell, and we tell more than we commit to writing.
A common reason why people craft and tell stories is to share a theme, message or a worldview; to communicate about issues of importance. As Armstrong notes, “telling a story, when you underline the moral, is a great way of explaining to people what needs to be done without saying, ‘Do this’” (1992; pp. 13). Telling a story as a drama—that is, a performance involving characters—engages people’s empathy and induces them “to reconceptualize the central problem depicted in the drama and to resolve it in a similar manner in their own lives” (Kincaid, 2002; pp. 150). Telling a story through film and television offers the opportunity to engage, connect with and impart a message to a potentially large audience, and the craft of screenwriting has much to offer practitioners of KM seeking to engage not only people within their own organization, but the broader public. Thus, we will focus on ways that KM principles are applied in creating stories for consumers of film or television. Specifically, we. aim to explore KM contexts and strategies through which a screenwriter can engage an audience in a rich and meaningful experience, thereby creating a receptive environment to communicate the overarching theme, message or worldview of the screenplay. Engagement is an increasingly elusive prize in a hectic world where people’s time and attention seem to b at an unprecedented premium.
1.2. Issues To
Be Explored
From a KM perspective, what are some of the considerations facing a screenwriter which can be adapted by KM practitioners to communicate a message to an audience? In addressing this question, we will explore three avenues: first, the kinds of knowledge which screenwriters can target in their audience to help people receive, and ultimately act on, the theme, message or worldview expressed in the screenplay; second, contextual strategies to access that knowledge; and finally, tools to encourage audiences to engage in the stories presented onscreen, and to share their knowledge.
2. Kinds Of
Knowledge To Target
In seeking to communicate a message, screenwriters may begin by assessing their target audience because, as basic communication theory holds, a communication is incomplete until it is received and acted on by a recipient. This involves determining what the audience knows. Constructivist theory holds that everything we know depends on the meaning that we derive from our experiences. Thus, knowledge, as distinct from the mere product of observations, whether left in a raw state as data or organized further into meaningful relationships as information (Nunamaker, Romano & Briggs, 2001), can be categorized as both explicit, which is codified and accessible in a fixed form, and tacit, which covers individual know-how, judgment and intuition, and remains internalized. Explicit knowledge, though expressed more formally, is removed from its original context of creation or use, while tacit knowledge is more difficult to articulate (Zack, 1999). Stories blend explicit (content) and tacit (context) in a metaphorical capturing of a partial understanding of reality, and build on that.
These dimensions are broken down further (Collins, 1993): screenwriters can attempt to engage their audiences by depicting situations triggering (i) embrained knowledge (conceptual skills, as in watching a film on mountain-climbing and understanding that breathing is more difficult at high altitudes), (ii) embodied knowledge (understanding actions and the physical responses they require, as in watching a film protagonist being kicked in the groin, and reflexively protecting one’s corresponding region in response), (iii) encoded knowledge (decoding signs and symbols, as in watching a pursued character careen through a red light and understanding that peril is likely to precipitate), and finally, (iv) embedded knowledge (routines and procedures, as in watching a bride begin her march down the church aisle and understanding the sequence of events—the marriage vows, celebratory kiss and signing of the register—normally scheduled to follow).
In practice, these dimensions of knowledge, which we experience in combinations of explicit, tacit, individual and collective, interact to create new knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995), and make up what we may view as the limbs of the writer’s story. What we may view as its trunk—the spine on which all things rest and from which they spring— is a fifth type of knowledge, encultured, which concerns shared understandings (Blackler, 1995). An example of this, at least in a North American context, would be watching a timid male character wander mistakenly into a women’s washroom, and appreciating the social awkwardness that is likely to ensue, from all perspectives. Encultured knowledge is related to embedded knowledge in that both are based in culture, but the former transcends the routines inherent in the latter and the parameters of the other three “limbs” in focusing on the bases for human relationships, which goes to the heart of storytelling. Stories explore “the power of social dynamics” in drawing on “common[ly] understood truths to convey more information than is obvious” (IBM, n.d., pp.1-2). As Weinberger (1999) notes, stories augment mere information: they deliberately have a causally linked sequence (a beginning, middle and end); they involve events, not conditions; they describe specific rather than generic individuals; and, “unlike… economic forecasts or trends analysis, they do not pretend to offer the certainty that life will continue to work this way (ibid; pp. 19).” Denning (2001) distinguishes between detail-oriented stories, presumably emphasizing plot and characters, and what he calls “springboard” stories requiring the audience to grasp a concept as a basis for action. However, for our purpose, this may be confusing the goal of a screenplay—to trigger the sharing of knowledge, and ultimately action, by the audience—with the means by which people are drawn into and engaged in the story, so that subsequently, they will be able to act on the screenwriter’s communicative goal. Given that television and film audiences, by virtue of those media, are likely to expect more from a story and absorb it differently than employees of an organization as contemplated by Denning, a properly executed screenplay both provides detail and motivates, the former as a means to the latter end.
3. Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities And Threats
Communicating knowledge through stories broadcast through television and film offers four of the seven features described as an ideal knowledge transfer system (Fulmer, 1999): a one-to-one transmission between sender and recipient, universal (or near-universal) accessibility, ease of use, and the user’s language. The remaining three factors—built-in feedback mechanisms, constant availability and automatic update capability—are not as neatly congruent with our screenwriting scenario, although we have the technology to provide them to audiences by way of advances like interactive television; electronic, push-button response for audience focus-testing; and on-line movies on demand. The absence of these features from everyday popular usage might be offset by the ubiquity of film and television, at least in our society, and the undeniable appeal of these media as the subject of social gatherings, whether in watching a show with others, or discussing it afterwards around the proverbial water cooler.
Critical challenges such as lack of time, a failure to share the knowledge
effectively, and the difficulty of capturing tacit knowledge are more endemic
to organizations than to the screenwriter’s habitual audience, the public
as whole. Sharing our perceptions of stories broadcast through these media has
become an encultured, if not embedded, form of
spreading tacit knowledge. The unfortunate corollary of this ubiquity from a KM
perspective is that while the message in a screenplay may be interpreted,
discussed and debated by the masses, there is no literal, one-stop download of
the resulting knowledge. People may document a film’s gate receipts or a
TV program’s audience share as data—and
present individual views of a production in everything from personal essays and
critics’ columns to academic articles and popular books, or capture
specific responses in sidebar news stories, as information, which Zack (1999) describes as data put in a
meaningful context. However, these are distinct from knowledge, defined by Zack as values and beliefs acquired through
experience, inference or communication
(emphasis added) from meaningfully organized messages. The closest that we come
to a monolithic catalogue evolving from this discourse are on-line discussion
groups and official or unofficial “fan” Web sites devoted to a
production. Indeed, a search on the World Wide Web using the terms “
It is advantageous, from a knowledge-sharing perspective, that
the potential audience for a screenplay cuts across virtually all segments of
our society. Widespread access to the message in a screenplay may encourage
people to articulate tacit knowledge that they may otherwise withhold due to
social constraints, the usual barrier to sharing such knowledge (Zack, 1999).
Here, the agenda-setting theory of communication reminds us that the media
influences the subject of the public discourse (McCombs & Shaw, 1972).
Thus, screenwriters cannot tell their audiences what to think, but through the crafting
of themes and messages and in their screenplays, they may raise issues from
deep within the public’s consciousness to the level of open discussion
and debate. As
4. Contextual Strategies To Access Knowledge
4.1. Create A
Context For Sharing (Network)
The ubiquity of potential sources of both tacit and explicit knowledge around entertainment media poses an interesting challenge for screenwriters. Effective KM strategies in organizations balance a codified or integrative approach with a personalized or interactive approach (Zack, 1999). However, a fundamental difference between our scenario and the challenges of KM in an organization is that the audience for a film or television program is united, if at all, by the act of viewing it—whether motivated by private interest, family or social network, serendipity or otherwise—rather than by their ties to a specific entity, cause or community. The difficulty in systematizing the sharing of knowledge among such a disparate audience, and that sharing deep knowledge consumes time and resources, suggest that a screenwriter’s strategy to impart a message would lean more towards personalization than codification. That is, the primary basis for engendering knowledge-sharing would rest in emergent discussions among members of the audience, ideally supported in a secondary capacity by interactive collaborative fora from both official sources created by the content owner, and unofficial sources such as fan Web sites.
An excellent example of this is Degrassi: The Next Generation. This Canadian TV program about a group of inner-city high-school students comes with a complementary, internationally acclaimed interactive Web site which provides previews of upcoming episodes; access to exclusive on-line stories taking place in the narrative world at Degrassi Community School; customizable, personal Web space for registered “students” to share their own thoughts and photos; visits to “locker pages” of the show’s characters; and an internal e-mail service to communicate with those characters and with other virtual students (http://www.degrassi.tv). Beyond these official sources are several fan sites offering further information and discussion fora (e.g. http://entertainment.sympatico.ca/degrassi). Supplementing a screenplay with ongoing collaborative meeting places which unite creators and consumers advantageously allows the flow of knowledge to loop between presentation and acquisition, although it requires aligning the content owners’ “organizational and technical resources and capabilities with [their] knowledge strategy” (Zack, 1999; pp. 57), and paying the attendant costs. A further requirement of enabling emergent communities of practice of this sort is accepting that too much structure or perceived meddling can hinder participation.
People rely on their personal networks to share knowledge because the process of creating and sharing knowledge is inherently social, and people have always channeled their collective learning into social practices. If, as Wolfe and Gertler (2001; pp. 4), suggest in an organizational context, “Increasingly, the… issue is how to pool and structure knowledge and intelligence in social [emphasis added] ways, rather than simply to access them on an individual basis”, then writing for film or television is potentially a highly effective way to impart a message, given that people tend to use these media on a social basis, both in the actual viewing and particularly in discussing them within their families, communities and social networks afterwards. Members of these networks create meaning from experiencing a film or television program by telling their own stories to others—processes which Wenger (1999) calls reification and participation, and which ideally lead to ideas being considered and actions being taken as a result. As discussed above, Western culture is primed for this, and a culture conducive to sharing knowledge and to communicating is absolutely essential to any KM effort.
Social capital of storytellers and their professional networks can help i.e. their networks and the resources that may be deployed through them (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Communities of practice, ideally encompassing members from beyond any single organization, may be the easiest way to build human capital because knowledge is best shared within communities (Stewart, 2001). As communicators, screenwriters must appreciate the other key roles in the process of KM, which Stewart describes as “the champion… knowledge-asset owners… the local focal point… the itinerant knowledge peddler and meddler… the standard-setters… [and] the wise man/guru” (pp. 216-17). In a screenwriting context, there is no ultimate “champion,” but a battery of local champions, being film critics (Stewart’s “focal points”); the studios producing the screenplays for film and television (the knowledge-asset owners); opinion leaders at the informal level, including communities of practice; librarians, video store staff and compilers of TV listings (knowledge-peddlers and meddlers); both the creative and technical team that bring the screenplay to life in the studio, and the journalists, editors, and public relations staff who discuss or promote the story after it is produced and released (communicators); and impassioned, vocal members of the audience who crusade publicly to share a message from a screenplay (the wise gurus). Similar kinds of networks arise around any organization.
Ultimately, as Nahapiet and Ghoshal
(1998; pp. 250) explain, “social capital resides
in relationships, and relationships are created through exchange,” and
stories, along with shared codes and languages, are part of the cognitive
dimension of social capital in an organization. Those authors note further that
beliefs in the form of shared visions and interpretations play a critical role
in generating social capital, and that firms’ dense social capital gives
them advantage over markets in creating and sharing knowledge. For
screenwriters, this disadvantage plays off against the advantage of a larger
audience base and the opportunity to explore and build on understandings common,
if not universal, to the human condition. Stories built on self-awareness,
organic to either a group or to a general audience emotionally if not strictly
factually, are more likely to create new meaning and motivate action than
models or best practices centred on distinctions
between explicit and tacit knowledge (Snowden, 1999). The concept of Social
Capital Has Yet To Be Developed Fully In KM.
4.2. Know The
Audience
A vital step, as previously noted, is to know the audience: to know what they
know, and then build on it, because people cannot reflect and act on what they
do not understand. As Dixon points out, “much of the hard work in
knowledge transfer has to be done by the knowledge receiver” (2002, p.
39), so we must determine how much related knowledge the audience needs as a
foundation for connecting the message in the screenplay; understand the
audience’s context and the assumptions that they will bring to the story;
and to use this knowledge to give the audience a sense of confidence in the
credibility of the source (for our purpose, the honesty and true intentions of
the story) and a sense that the message of the story is of personal relevance
to an audience that is willing to engage in it. Thus, in crafting a story, be
it a tale of patriotic duty for wartime adult audiences like Casablanca, or stories for contemporary
teen audiences addressing student politics, on-line romance and the pressures
of school sports, like Degrassi,
screenwriters should seek to understand the context and position of the
audience for a particular story, as a fundamental part of researching the
story.
In conducting such research, screenwriters can draw on banks of common
knowledge, universal touchstones such as our survival instinct, topical issues
and popular story genres. However, the vital need to reinvent and update common
knowledge to address and solve contemporary concerns requires that the story be
relevant to the audience—that is, address issues of concern and resonance
to their lives today. This does not preclude using historical contexts, events
and characters as a basis for creating the story; indeed, much of the cult
status of the original Star Trek television
series may be ascribed to its addressing issues such as war, racism and the
then-important “generation gap” that would have exceeded the
comfort levels of network executives in the 1960s had the stories been told in
a contemporary format, rather than as science fiction. For example, that the
small screen’s first interracial kiss took place on Star Trek illustrates its creators’ foresight in reading
their audience’s increasing social tolerance, much as All in the Family and other
ground-breaking series did in the early to mid-1970s, invariably using comedy
as the vehicle to convey their socially liberal messages.
5. Strategies To Encourage Knowledge-Sharing
5.1. Connect With The Audience
Even if our culture did not accept and encourage the sharing of people’s impressions of films and television programs, screenwriters who seek to make a difference in people’s lives recognize their obligation to motivate audiences to engage in their work, and to create further meaning by sharing their impressions, ideas and critiques—in other words, their knowledge—with others. Thus, apart from external considerations such as the reputation of the studio, producer, director, actors or other creative personnel associated with the presentation, screenwriters need to provide incentives for audiences to share. These can be the same incentives that screenwriters have used to engage audiences in general, namely rhetorical devices (Aristotle’s logical, emotional and ethical appeals) and time-honoured storytelling strategies.
5.2. Narrative Tools
The power of storytelling in film and television is well-established, being the basis of both dramas and documentaries. The craft of screenwriting has developed according to stringent, but well-understood, storytelling conventions, based on Aristotle’s Poetics and expanded on by contemporary authors, more recently in an organizational context by Denning (2001). The rest of this paper will highlight five key narrative tools which effect these conventions in serving to engage and motivate audiences: structure, character, conflict, the narrative world, and theme. These tools are not panaceas, but offer useful guidance to organizations seeking to impart messages and motivate action.
5.2.1. Structure
The indispensable three-act structure, well-defined as early as Aristotelian times and formularized in the Hollywood film, is commonly summarized as an introduction (set-up), in which we place our heroes up a tree; a complication (conflict), in which we throw rocks at them; and a resolution (climax) in which we get them back down. Each act marks a series of causally connected scenes, culminating in a climactic scene in which the story changes direction, more powerful in its impact than any previous scene or sequence. Begun with an inciting incident—a major event that disturbs the equilibrium and launches all subsequent events—the story progresses to the protagonist’s answering a call to adventure to close the first act. Typically, the second act immerses the protagonist in an escalating series of complications and conflicts at the hands of the antagonist. This bottoms out at a point of crisis where all seems lost for our hero, which marks the second act break. The third act propels the protagonist to the climax, when he or she confronts the antagonist, after which the story is resolved quickly. Rewards, punishments or both are meted out to close the screenplay. People are far more likely to recall, and act on, a message embodied in a well-structured story, and how it made them feel, than they are likely to be inspired by a disembodied series of facts, charts and presentation slides.
5.2.2. Character
As Russin and
5.2.3. Conflict
Because life is like economics in that there are only a limited number of resources to fulfill an unlimited number of needs, our history is rife with conflicts, from grand-scale wars to everyday confrontations at home, on the job and anywhere else where living things meet. Although most of us tend to shy away from conflicts which disrupt our relatively peaceful everyday routines, people don’t attend movies or watch television to sit through mundane non-events: they want to see something happen. This is why the struggle between the protagonist and the antagonist—people with opposing needs that are irreconcilable—is the heart of a satisfying story. It is this tension, escalating in danger and importance over the course of the story in general and the second act in particular, that sustains the engagement of the audience, and defines its journey along with the protagonist. As Kincaid (2002) argues, drama theory and the convergence theory of communication combine to hold that conflict precipitates emotional responses, cognitive reorientation and behavioral change in the characters in the story—and consequently, in audience members who are influenced by the characters with whom they identify and empathize. People draw their energy from a heightened sense of engagement that comes from overcoming obstacles. Consequently, they are more likely to take action in response to a challenge than to a foregone conclusion.
5.2.4. Narrative World
People watch movies and TV programs to experience either something new, or
the familiar in an fresh way. Because film and
television are visual media, a screenwriter is in a strong position to immerse
and engage people in a parallel universe so that they get lost in the story,
and thus become more apt to receive and act on its message. The world of a
story is rich with visual cues that can trigger recognition, logical connection
and emotion in an audience with unparalleled power and economy. That world is a
critical part of the story and its characters, which grow directly from it. A
tale like
5.2.5. Theme
Now comes the mightiest point among the arrows in the screenwriter’s quiver for our purpose. As McKee notes, an artist must not only express ideas, but prove them by engaging an audience and making them not only understand it, but believe it:
You want the [audience] to leave your story convinced that yours is a truthful metaphor for life. And the means by which you bring the audience to your point of view resides in the very design you give your telling. As you create your story, you create your proof; idea and structure intertwine in a rhetorical relationship. […] A story is living proof of an idea, the conversion of idea to action (McKee, 1997; pp. 113).
Every story should have a clear, unifying theme, moral or message to share with an audience. It is that point of view that creates a powerful experience for the audience, and the motivation to carry forward the message by discussing it with others, or otherwise acting on it. This is what Denning (2001) suggests in his notion of a motivational “springboard” story. However, the power of the message is in the subtlety of the call to action. The theme or message may be explicit, but the call to action is implicit. This vests ownership of the resulting action, and its process and consequences, in the audience rather than in the screenwriter. And that, of course, is precisely the point of the screenwriter’s art. As Kincaid concludes, success in “an entertainment-education strategy for social change” requires the characters, their relationships and their story to seem plausible to audience members, “resembling problems and events that happen in their own lives” (2002; pp. 150). The message must always resonate emotionally with people to inspire them to take action.
6. Conclusion
The craft of screenwriting has important implications for KM, which has yet to take full advantage of techniques for sharing knowledge with, and motivating, people through stories told through film and television. Stewart (2001) tells us that the leader of the past was a doer; the leader of the present is a planner and coordinator; and the leader of the future will be a teacher, responsible for developing capabilities to act and to respond. Ideally, screenwriting offers an opportunity to teach by helping to set the public agenda. Knowledge-sharing is just the first step: the journey is a collaborative process involving both people who bring the story to the screen, and various players who engage the audience in discussion and debate through supplementary avenues such as the Internet. Sharing themes, messages and worldviews as encultured knowledge through the timeless and ubiquitous device of the story, told through popular and socially recognized vessels for encultured knowledge like film and television, can do more than educate, entertain or perform any of the other useful functions historically ascribed to storytelling. Storytellers in general and screenwriters in particular have a precious opportunity to motivate people to increase their capacities and to act. Ultimately and ideally, this sharing of knowledge can foster public discourse on issues that matter to us, such as politics, economics and our natural and human environments. In this way, screenwriting tools can be deployed to address not only the ubiquitous bottom line for an organization, but social challenges—and thus, in at least a small way, help to make the world a more palatable place for us all.
7. Acknowledgement
The author thanks Dr. Kirby Wright, since of the MBA program at
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About the Author:
Geo Takach, B.A., LL.B., M.A., is a writer,
speaker and performer, and an emerging director-producer in television and
film. He teaches screenwriting at