Last week I went to Edinburgh for the day to go on the City of The Dead tour. It was mainly the idea of someone else on the course because it has a direct link to what they're doing with their work. I didn't expect to get too much out of it in terms of inspiration or a source to take notes from regarding any expected work I'd be doing for University.
However! I was surprised to find out there was plenty there that I could take on board for storytelling. Because, really...me being a huge cynic and a stick in the mud when it comes to the supernatural and horror in general the locations we visited in the tour didn't inspire me so much. They were cold, dark and damp - underground vaults, old crypt and a graveyard but none of that felt very impressive, in fact most of my attention towards my surroundings were aimed at not falling over all the bloody debris on the floor. *Scroll to the bottom of the post for the tl;dr*
Anyway, the highlight of the tour and the real source for some inspiration was the tour guide, Fred. This guy clearly loves his job because throughout the whole tour when he was telling anecdotes of supposed previous tourists and teaching of us of the history of Edinburgh he really painted the scene of ye olde Edinburgh with passion and made me fully engrossed in the lore of the local horror stories.
From watching Fred basically 'perform' through the tour I noticed some very effective ways of storytelling and what was more refreshing about it was the fact that it was in person. Just good old fashioned real storytelling from one person to another back before the reign of technology started, however many eons ago that was.
Setting the Scene, Getting the Audience to Care
Fred started by taking us out on the streets into Oldtown and giving us a quick history lesson on what it was like in Edinburgh. The state of the economy, the huge difference of lifestyle between the classes, the hygiene of the population, the architecture of the city. Pretty much everything you needed to know to get the feeling of the place hundreds of years ago. What was really interesting was none of it was about ghosts, poltergeists or anything. It's pretty clear we're all there to get scared for a thrill but for the first 20 minutes we've stood in a public outside street talking about the crappy conditions of Edinburgh ages ago. It clicked in my head though that the tour has been cleverly constructed, written out and planned as a journey for the tourists themselves. He wasn't just going to pass on some ghost story and wave us off at the end, he's doing a real narrative. He's trying to set the scene, paint me a picture and get me to feel like I'm part of the story he's going to tell. I think this important in every storytelling device. I mean, think about a Horror game, it's easy to jump straight in and have some scares (I'd argue Outlast is like this) but if you really want to tell a story to get the player invested and feel for what happens to the character they're playing you need to set-up the world/characters before just diving in to the scares (I'd say The Last of Us is a good example of this).
Breaking Character, Leading Direction, Softening the Blow
Next were the underground vaults - where the scaring started. At this point we've built up a relationship with the lovely Fred, we trust him, he's Mr. Knows-everything-about-Edinburgh at this point to us and we think he's on our side. He's not. Always good a twist when the narrator in a film/game is the bad guy. See, Fred starts giving us more history about the vaults while weaving in anecdotes of old folklore of the 'Southern Entity' who supposedly haunts the vaults and then even starts to talk about previous tour guests who have had experiences with the entity.
He builds up a story about a woman feeling tapping on her shoulder again and again, she moves further back in the corner at the end of the room until she's clear of everyone around her and yet she still feels the tapping on her shoulder. She raises her hand and says to the tour guide, "Excuse me, I think the entity is tapping on my shoulder right now...". To which the tour guide replies "Put your hand on your shoulder"...so she does. "Is it wet?" he says. The woman nods to the tour guide.
...Then Fred points his light up to the ceiling..."Yeah we've got a bad leak problem down here."
This relieves the tension in the room and most laugh with that "Oh for gods sake..." look on their faces. I thought this was brilliant on Fred's part, at this point I've learned he isn't to be trusted. It isn't just a tour to listen to stories, Fred is going to mess with you and then just as you think something scary is coming he's going to give you a punchline to ease you up a bit so you trust him a little again. only to then mess with you once again. I found this to be really clever given the fact that we're in a setting he's just described as a horrific place and now there's a group of us stood in the pitch black laughing at the ceiling looking like a nervous wreck.
Immersion
Fred takes us into the bigger vault next where again he sets the scene and informs us on the history of the place. Following this again he starts to tell another anecdotal story of a previous tour guest back in the 70's when kids were allowed on the tour because reasons (read: hippies). So Fred is stood in the middle of the room and we're huddled around him in the big underground vault with just the light from candle in Freds hands. Fred goes on to say that in the 70's there was a woman and her child along for the story, the tour was going smoothly as usual and then suddenly while the tour guide was telling the crowd of the vaults history his candle went out. At which point Fred blew his candle out and the entire crowd crapped their pants.
I. Love. This. Guy. Well I didn't at the time but I can appreciate it now, Fred knew what he was doing...by now we're complacent to the stories he's told us, we think we're fine because we're with nice, ol' funny Fred who we trust. Only Fred just turned out the only light we had inside a vault where thousands have died and is apparently haunted by an extremely aggressive poltergeist. Fred continues in the dark. Fred says the tour guide kept trying to relight the candle while Fred himself is flicking the flint on his lighter unsuccessfully too. He says while this is happening, the woman is holding on to her child's hand tightly until she feels her daughters hand grip tighten impossibly and wont let go - the woman is filled with this anger and hatred to the point where the feeling of dread inside her makes her kick her own daughter off of her. She cries out for her daughter over and over with no reply.
The tour guide is still trying to relight the candle. So is Fred. While we're stood in the dark, Fred is telling this story while quietly moving around the semi-circle we've formed. His voice sounding very close and then distance. Genius. The candle comes back on. Fred says everything appeared to be normal and then they see the woman's daughter crouched in the corner crying. The mother goes over to her daughter and then she turns around with scratches all over her hands. Her mother asks her what happened and the daughter replies with "The monster grabbed my hand." The mother asks her daughter how she knew it was a monster and the daughter replies with "Because you don't have claws..." and then Fred let loose a party popper and once again the entire crowd crapped themselves.
The last bit was a bit lame, yeah but the rest I thought was genius. Recreating with the current crowd what had happened to the tour group in the story he was telling was incredibly immersive for me. It's a weird feeling to describe but I felt like I was in a film or in a flashback of what had happened which made it scary. The acknowledgement of messing with our senses was there too, taking away our vision so we'd pay much more attention every breath and footstep Fred took was much more terrifying than just standing there with his candle and telling us the story in a straight forward manner.
Concise Version:
- Setting the scene, building an understanding and connection with a world/character is important before you even begin to tell a story.
- The narrator of the story can be presented in the literal sense of the word and doesn't necessarily have to be an ally of the audience.
- To maximize audience investment in a story, making it feel personal always helps. This doesn't necessarily have to be just through emotions towards characters in a story it can also be the audience feelings about themselves in a story's world. (A persons senses can play into this experience.)
- I gained a lot of ideas on how to make an audience feel more involved, immersed and interacted with in terms of storytelling from the tour and I'm really glad I made the effort to go!
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