The End: The Storyteller Project Summary

What a week!

In just 5 days, a modern folk tale was divined, imagined, played, created, produced, and shared. Here’s the story from start to finish:

Day 1: The Tarot Reading (1 hour)

For day one of the Storyteller Project, I conducted a collective tarot reading to inspire a new modern folk tale. Listen to the recording of the live tarot reading to get a bit of the background for and explanation of the cards, which were building blocks to the final production. 

The decks used:

Tarot of the Divine by Yoshi Yoshitani

Next World Tarot by Christy C. Road

The final spread:

• The nature of the main character(s): Three of Cups
• The nature of the conflict: Six of Cups
• The nature of the motivation Four of Wands
• The antagonist: Five of Cups
• The allies/skills needed: Three of Coins
• What must be sacrificed: Four of Cups
• The message: The Lovers
• A message from collective’s shadow: Queen of Cups

Day 2: The Moodboard and Logline (2 hours)

Over the course of the day, I synthesized the tarot reading into a coherent hook and logline for a modern folk tale called “The Wedding Gift”. I also created the following moodboard to get a sense of the color and tone of the story.

Day 3: Script and Sample Audio (4 hours)

Now onto the hard part: writing. I spent the first few hours, including one hour of quiet ‘co-writing’ time with participants int he Storyteller Workshop on Discord, writing a draft of the episode script. I also pulled sample audio from Freesound.org and started to play around with a little bit of mood music. 

Day 4: Trailer and Concept Art (5 hours)

Things were really getting real. Now that I knew more about the main characters – the Brothers Three! – I decided to create both a set of concept art and a trailer that showcased their story and personalities. 

Day Five: The Wedding Gift (8 hours)

The recording took about an hour, sourcing sound effects and music about another hour, and the full production and editing about six hours. Here was the final result.

Today is the last day to support the Storyteller Project.

The Storyteller Project was created to test a couple of assumptions:

1. Our culture is in dire need of new folk tales
2. It is possible to create a modern folk tale audio short in a week
3. People are willing to support the arts, because they provide inherent value to their lives

I also just really wanted a space to hone my own craft as an audio storyteller, and prove to myself I could create such a story in just 21 working hours — the equivalent of $500 of labor based on the living wage in my area. I truly appreciate the opportunity that many of you have given me by simply showing up and telling me you enjoyed the work that was done. 

If you liked following along with this project, I’d love for you to contribute to the Storyteller Project if you haven’t already. As of today, we have raised $275 of our $500 goal. As I’ve said, if we raise over $500, the excess will go to the next storyteller who wishes to run this micro-crowdfund/audio short experiment. 

And if you can’t support this round, share our social media with your friends, rate on Apple Podcast, Spotify, etc., and just genuinely express how you feel. I hope to run this experiment again in the new year – hopefully with a little more knowledge and more finesse. 

Either way, I had a lot of fun and I have learned a lot: isn’t that the point of any experiment?

Thank you for listening!

– Lisette

Toss a coin to your storyteller.

We are keeping the micro-crowdfund open until Sunday! We are 54% of the way to our goal of raising $500 in one week. Please consider supporting the Storyteller Project if you haven’t already! Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far, you are helping to sustain art in your community. All funds raised over $500 will go to other storytellers who want to run their own micro-funding experiment.