The future of storytelling

"We all feel a compelling need to watch stories, to tell stories ... to discuss the things that tell each one of us that we are not alone in the world," says TV titan Shonda Rhimes. A dominant force in television since "Grey's Anatomy" hit the airwaves, Rhimes discusses the future of media networks, how she's using her narrative-building skills as a force for good, an intriguing concept known as "Amish summers" and much more, in conversation with Cyndi Stivers, director of the TED Residency.

Cyndi Stivers: So, future of storytelling.

Before we do the future,

let's talk about what is never
going to change about storytelling.

Shonda Rhimes:
What's never going to change.

Obviously, I think good stories
are never going to change,

the need for people to gather together
and exchange their stories

and to talk about the things
that feel universal,

the idea that we all feel
a compelling need to watch stories,

to tell stories, to share stories --

sort of the gathering around the campfire

to discuss the things
that tell each one of us

that we are not alone in the world.

Those things to me
are never going to change.

That essence of storytelling
is never going to change.

CS: OK. In preparation
for this conversation,

I checked in with Susan Lyne,

who was running ABC Entertainment

when you were working
on "Grey's Anatomy" --

SR: Yes.

CS: And she said that there was
this indelible memory she had

of your casting process,

where without discussing it
with any of the executives,

you got people coming in
to read for your scripts,

and every one of them
was the full range of humanity,

you did not type anyone in any way,

and that it was completely surprising.

So she said, in addition
to retraining the studio executives,

you also, she feels,

and I think this is -- I agree,

retrained the expectations
of the American TV audience.

So what else does the audience
not yet realize that it needs?

SR: What else does it not yet realize?

Well, I mean, I don't think
we're anywhere near there yet.

I mean, we're still in a place

in which we're far, far behind what looks
like the real world in actuality.

I wasn't bringing in
a bunch of actors

who looked very different from one another

simply because I was
trying to make a point,

and I wasn't trying
to do anything special.

It never occurred to me
that that was new, different or weird.

I just brought in actors
because I thought they were interesting

and to me, the idea that it
was completely surprising to everybody --

I didn't know that for a while.

I just thought: these are the actors
I want to see play these parts.

I want to see what
they look like if they read.

We'll see what happens.

So I think the interesting thing
that happens is

that when you look at the world
through another lens,

when you're not the person
normally in charge of things,

it just comes out a different way.

CS: So you now have
this big machine that you run,

as a titan -- as you know,
last year when she gave her talk --

she's a titan.

So what do you think
is going to happen as we go on?

There's a huge amount of money
involved in producing these shows.

While the tools of making stories
have gone and gotten greatly democratized,

there's still this large distribution:

people who rent networks,
who rent the audience to advertisers

and make it all pay.

How do you see the business model changing
now that anyone can be a storyteller?

SR: I think it's changing every day.

I mean, the rapid, rapid change
that's happening is amazing.

And I feel -- the panic is palpable,

and I don't mean that in a bad way.

I think it's kind of exciting.

The idea that there's
sort of an equalizer happening,

that sort of means that anybody
can make something, is wonderful.

I think there's some scary in the idea
that you can't find the good work now.

There's so much work out there.

I think there's something like
417 dramas on television right now

at any given time in any given place,

but you can't find them.

You can't find the good ones.

So there's a lot of bad stuff out there
because everybody can make something.

It's like if everybody painted a painting.

You know, there's not
that many good painters.

But finding the good stories,
the good shows,

is harder and harder and harder.

Because if you have
one tiny show over here on AMC

and one tiny show over here over there,

finding where they are
becomes much harder.

So I think that ferreting out the gems

and finding out who made
the great webisode and who made this,

it's -- I mean, think
about the poor critics

who now are spending 24 hours a day

trapped in their homes
watching everything.

It's not an easy job right now.

So the distribution engines
are getting more and more vast,

but finding the good programming
for everybody in the audience

is getting harder.

And unlike the news,

where everything's getting
winnowed down to just who you are,

television seems to be getting --

and by television I mean anything
you can watch, television shows on --

seems to be getting
wider and wider and wider.

And so anybody's making stories,

and the geniuses are sometimes hidden.

But it's going to be harder to find,

and at some point that will collapse.

People keep talking about peak TV.

I don't know when that's going to happen.

I think at some point
it'll collapse a little bit

and we'll, sort of, come back together.

I don't know if it
will be network television.

I don't know if that model is sustainable.

CS: What about the model

that Amazon and Netflix are throwing
a lot of money around right now.

SR: That is true.

I think it's an interesting model.

I think there's
something exciting about it.

For content creators, I think
there's something exciting about it.

For the world, I think
there's something exciting about it.

The idea that there are programs now

that can be in multiple languages
with characters from all over the world

that are appealing and come out
for everybody at the same time

is exciting.

I mean, I think the international sense
that television can now take on

makes sense to me,

that programming can now take on.

Television so much is made for, like --
here's our American audience.

We make these shows,

and then they shove them
out into the world

and hope for the best,

as opposed to really thinking
about the fact that America is not it.

I mean, we love ourselves
and everything, but it's not i.

And we should be
taking into account the fact

that there are all
of these other places in the world

that we should be interested in
while we're telling stories.

It makes the world smaller.

I don't know.

I think it pushes forward the idea
that the world is a universal place,

and our stories become universal things.

We stop being other.

CS: You've pioneered, as far as I can see,

interesting ways to launch new shows, too.

I mean, when you
launched "Scandal" in 2012,

there was this amazing groundswell
of support on Twitter

the likes of which nobody had seen before.

Do you have any other
tricks up your sleeve

when you launch your next one?

What do you think
will happen in that regard?

SR: We do have some interesting ideas.

We have a show called "Still Star-Crossed"
coming out this summer.

We have some interesting ideas for that.

I'm not sure if we're going
to be able to do them in time.

I thought they were fun.

But the idea
that we would live-tweet our show

was really just us thinking
that would be fun.

We didn't realize that the critics
would start to live-tweet along with us.

But the fans -- getting people
to be a part of it,

making it more of a campfire --

you know, when you're all
on Twitter together

and you're all talking together,

it is more of a shared experience,

and finding other ways
to make that possible

and finding other ways
to make people feel engaged

is important.

CS: So when you have
all those different people making stories

and only some of them
are going to break through

and get that audience somehow,

how do you think
storytellers will get paid?

SR: I actually have been struggling
with this concept as well.

Is it going to be a subscriber model?

Are people going to say, like, I'm going
to watch this particular person's shows,

and that's how we're going to do it?

CS: I think we should buy
a passport to Shondaland. Right?

SR: I don't know about that, but yeah.
That's a lot more work for me.

I do think that there are
going to be different ways,

but I don't know necessarily.

I mean, I'll be honest and say
a lot of content creators

are not necessarily interested
in being distributors,

mainly because what I dream of doing

is creating content.

I really love to create content.

I want to get paid for it

and I want to get paid the money
that I deserve to get paid for it,

and there's a hard part in finding that.

But I also want it to be made possible

for, you know,
the people who work with me,

the people who work for me,

everybody to sort of get paid in a way,
and they're all making a living.

How it gets distributed
is getting harder and harder.

CS: How about the many new tools,

you know, VR, AR ...

I find it fascinating
that you can't really binge-watch,

you can't fast-forward in those things.

What do you see as the future
of those for storytelling?

SR: I spent a lot of time in the past year

just exploring those,

getting lots of demonstrations
and paying attention.

I find them fascinating,

mainly because I think that --

I think most people
think of them for gaming,

I think most people think of them
for things like action,

and I think that there is
a sense of intimacy

that is very present in those things,

the idea that -- picture this,

you can sit there
and have a conversation with Fitz,

or at least sit there
while Fitz talks to you,

President Fitzgerald Grant III,

while he talks to you

about why he's making
a choice that he makes,

and it's a very heartfelt moment.

And instead of you watching
a television screen,

you're sitting there next to him,
and he's having this conversation.

Now, you fall in love with the man

while he's doing it
from a television screen.

Imagine sitting next to him,

or being with a character like Huck
who's about to execute somebody.

And instead of having a scene

where, you know, he's talking
to another character very rapidly,

he goes into a closet and turns to you
and tells you, you know,

what's going to happen
and why he's afraid and nervous.

It's a little more like theater,
and I'm not sure it would work,

but I'm fascinating by the concept
of something like that

and what that would mean for an audience.

And to get to play with those ideas
would be interesting,

and I think, you know, for my audience,
the people who watch my shows,

which is, you know, women 12 to 75,

there's something interesting
in there for them.

CS: And how about
the input of the audience?

How interested are you in the things

where the audience
can actually go up to a certain point

and then decide, oh wait,
I'm going to choose my own adventure.

I'm going to run off with Fitz
or I'm going to run off with --

SR: Oh, the choose-
your-own-adventure stories.

I have a hard time with those,

and not necessarily because
I want to be in control of everything,

but because when I'm watching television
or I'm watching a movie,

I know for a fact
that a story is not as good

when I have control
over exactly what's going to happen

to somebody else's character.

You know, if I could tell you exactly
what I wanted to happen to Walter White,

that's great, but the story
is not the same, and it's not as powerful.

You know, if I'm in charge
of how "The Sopranos" ends,

then that's lovely and I have an ending
that's nice and satisfying,

but it's not the same story
and it's not the same emotional impact.

CS: I can't stop imagining
what that might be.

Sorry, you're losing me for a minute.

SR: But what's wonderful is
I don't get to imagine it,

because Vince has his own ending,

and it makes it really powerful
to know that somebody else has told.

You know, if you could
decide that, you know,

in "Jaws," the shark wins or something,

it doesn't do what it needs to do for you.

The story is the story that is told,

and you can walk away angry
and you can walk away debating

and you can walk away arguing,

but that's why it works.

That is why it's art.

Otherwise, it's just a game,

and games can be art,
but in a very different way.

CS: Gamers who actually
sell the right to sit there

and comment on what's happening,

to me that's more community
than storytelling.

SR: And that is its own form of campfire.

I don't discount that
as a form of storytelling,

but it is a group form, I suppose.

CS: All right,
what about the super-super --

the fact that everything's
getting shorter, shorter, shorter.

And, you know, Snapchat
now has something it calls shows

that are one minute long.

SR: It's interesting.

Part of me thinks
it sounds like commercials.

I mean, it does -- like, sponsored by.

But part of me also gets it completely.

There's something
really wonderful about it.

If you think about a world

in which most people
are watching television on their phones,

if you think about a place like India,

where most of the input is coming in

and that's where
most of the product is coming in,

shorter makes sense.

If you can charge people more
for shorter periods of content,

some distributor has figured out
a way to make a lot more money.

If you're making content,

it costs less money
to make it and put it out there.

And, by the way,

if you're 14 and have
a short attention span, like my daughter,

that's what you want to see,
that's what you want to make,

that's how it works.

And if you do it right
and it actually feels like narrative,

people will hang on for it
no matter what you do.

CS: I'm glad you raised your daughters,

because I am wondering how are they
going to consume entertainment,

and also not just entertainment,

but news, too.

When they're not -- I mean,
the algorithmic robot overlords

are going to feed them
what they've already done.

How do you think we will correct for that
and make people well-rounded citizens?

SR: Well, me and how I correct for it

is completely different
than how somebody else might do it.

CS: Feel free to speculate.

SR: I really don't know
how we're going to do it in the future.

I mean, my poor children have been
the subject of all of my experiments.

We're still doing
what I call "Amish summers"

where I turn off all electronics

and pack away
all their computers and stuff

and watch them scream for a while
until they settle down

into, like, an electronic-free summer.

But honestly, it's a very hard world

in which now, as grown-ups,

we're so interested
in watching our own thing,

and we don't even know
that we're being fed, sometimes,

just our own opinions.

You know, the way it's working now,

you're watching a feed,

and the feeds are being corrected

so that you're only getting
your own opinions

and you're feeling
more and more right about yourself.

So how do you really start to discern?

It's getting a little bit disturbing.

So maybe it'll overcorrect,
maybe it'll all explode,

or maybe we'll all just become --

I hate to be negative about it,

but maybe we'll all
just become more idiotic.

(Cyndi laughs)

CS: Yeah, can you picture
any corrective that you could do

with scripted, fictional work?

SR: I think a lot about the fact
that television has the power

to educate people in a powerful way,

and when you're watching television --

for instance, they do studies
about medical shows.

I think it's 87 percent,
87 percent of people

get most of their knowledge
about medicine and medical facts

from medical shows,

much more so than
they do from their doctors,

than from articles.

So we work really hard to be accurate,
and every time we make a mistake,

I feel really guilty,
like we're going to do something bad,

but we also give a lot
of good medical information.

There are so many other ways
to give information on those shows.

People are being entertained

and maybe they don't want
to read the news,

but there are a lot of ways to give
fair information out on those shows,

not in some creepy, like,
we're going to control people's minds way,

but in a way that's sort of
very interesting and intelligent

and not about pushing
one side's version or the other,

like, giving out the truth.

It would be strange, though,

if television drama
was how we were giving the news.

CS: It would be strange,

but I gather a lot of what
you've written as fiction

has become prediction this season?

SR: You know, "Scandal" has been
very disturbing for that reason.

We have this show
that's about politics gone mad,

and basically the way
we've always told the show --

you know, everybody
pays attention to the papers.

We read everything.
We talk about everything.

We have lots of friends in Washington.

And we'd always sort of
done our show as a speculation.

We'd sit in the room and think,

what would happen
if the wheels came off the bus

and everything went crazy?

And that was always great,

except now it felt like
the wheels were coming off the bus

and things were actually going crazy,

so the things that we were speculating
were really coming true.

I mean, our season this year

was going to end with the Russians
controlling the American election,

and we'd written it, we'd planned for it,

it was all there,

and then the Russians were suspected
of being involved in the American election

and we suddenly had to change
what we were going to do for our season.

I walked in and I was like,

"That scene where our mystery woman
starts speaking Russian?

We have to fix that
and figure out what we're going to do."

That just comes from extrapolating

out from what we thought
was going to happen,

or what we thought was crazy.

CS: That's great.

So where else in US or elsewhere
in the world do you look?

Who is doing interesting
storytelling right now?

SR: I don't know, there's a lot
of interesting stuff out there.

Obviously British television
is always amazing

and always does interesting things.

I don't get to watch a lot of TV,

mainly because I'm busy working.

And I pretty much try not to watch
very much television at all,

even American television,
until I'm done with a season,

because things start
to creep into my head otherwise.

I start to wonder, like,

why can't our characters wear crowns
and talk about being on a throne?

It gets crazy.

So I try not to watch much
until the seasons are over.

But I do think that there's a lot of
interesting European television out there.

I was at the International Emmys

and looking around and seeing
the stuff that they were showing,

and I was kind of fascinated.

There's some stuff
I want to watch and check out.

CS: Can you imagine --

I know that you don't spend a lot of time
thinking about tech stuff,

but you know how a few years ago
we had someone here at TED

talking about seeing,

wearing Google Glass and seeing
your TV shows essentially in your eye?

Do you ever fantasize when, you know --

the little girl
who sat on the pantry floor

in your parents' house,

did you ever imagine any other medium?

Or would you now?

SR: Any other medium.

For storytelling, other than books?

I mean, I grew up wanting
to be Toni Morrison, so no.

I mean, I didn't even imagine television.

So the idea that there could be
some bigger world,

some more magical way of making things ---

I'm always excited
when new technology comes out

and I'm always the first one
to want to try it.

The possibilities feel endless
and exciting right now,

which is what excites me.

We're in this sort of Wild West period,
to me, it feels like,

because nobody knows
what we're going to settle on.

You can put stories anywhere right now

and that's cool to me,

and it feels like once we figure out
how to get the technology

and the creativity
of storytelling to meet,

the possibilities are endless.

CS: And also the technology has enabled
the thing I briefly flew by earlier,

binge-viewing,
which is a recent phenomenon,

since you've been doing shows, right?

And how do you think does that change
the storytelling process at all?

You always had a bible
for the whole season beforehand, right?

SR: No, I just always knew
where we were going to end.

So for me,

the only way I can really comment on that

is that I have a show
that's been going on for 14 seasons

and so there are the people
who have been watching it for 14 seasons,

and then there are the 12-year-old girls
I'd encounter in the grocery store

who had watched
297 episodes in three weeks.

Seriously, and that's a very different
experience for them,

because they've been inside of something

really intensely for
a very short period of time

in a very intense way,

and to them the story
has a completely different arc

and a completely different meaning

because it never had any breaks.

CS: It's like visiting a country
and then leaving it. It's a strange --

SR: It's like reading an amazing novel
and then putting it down.

I think that is the beauty
of the experience.

You don't necessarily have to watch
something for 14 seasons.

It's not necessarily
the way everything's supposed to be.

CS: Is there any topic
that you don't think we should touch?

SR: I don't think
I think of story that way.

I think of story in terms of character
and what characters would do

and what characters need to do
in order to make them move forward,

so I'm never really thinking of story
in terms of just plot,

and when writers come
into my writer's room and pitch me plot,

I say, "You're not speaking English."

Like, that's the thing I say.

We're not speaking English.
I need to hear what's real.

And so I don't think of it that way.

I don't know if there's a way
to think there's something I wouldn't do

because that feels like I'm plucking
pieces of plot off a wall or something.

CS: That's great. To what extent
do you think you will use --

You know, you recently went
on the board of Planned Parenthood

and got involved
in the Hillary Clinton campaign.

To what extent do you think
you will use your storytelling

in the real world

to effect change?

SR: Well, you know, there's --

That's an intense subject to me,

because I feel like the lack of narrative

that a lot of people have is difficult.

You know, like,
there's a lot of organizations

that don't have a positive narrative
that they've created for themselves

that would help them.

There's a lot of campaigns

that could be helped
with a better narrative.

The Democrats could do a lot

with a very strong
narrative for themselves.

There's a lot of different things
that could happen

in terms of using storytelling voice,

and I don't mean that in a fiction way,

I mean that in a same way
that any speechwriter would mean it.

And I see that,

but I don't necessarily know
that that's, like, my job to do that.

CS: All right.

Please help me thank Shonda.
SR: Thank you.

(Applause)