Roland Allen's Notes on Notebooks and How to Tell a Great Story

"Writing a diary made me happier; keeping things-to-do lists made me more reliable (which in turn made those around me happier)..."

Nov 25, 2024

Meeting authors is a dangerous proposition—especially if you admire their work. One bad interaction and I’m put off from their writing; it’s harder to enjoy a person’s work when you know they’re a jerk. (To be clear: this has only happened to me twice—once in graduate school and once in my early teaching days.)

So, it was with some trepidation that I agreed to meet Roland Allen, author of The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, at a diner in New York this past October.

It turns out that Roly is just as delightful in person as he is on the page. And it was lovely to chat with someone as obsessed with notebooks as I am.

Here’s a photo Roly took of me at our meeting with one of my Noted notebooks.

Many of you have already heard of Roly’s excellent history of the notebook. But if you haven’t, I can think of no one better to introduce the work than Roly himself:

At the end of our meeting, Roly said, “I feel that I’ve made a new friend.”

I agree. So with that, let me introduce you to my new friend Roly’s notebooks!

Allen’s Diary

After finding his grandfather’s pre-war diaries, Roly decided to pick up the journaling habit. Thus began decades of keeping a diary. Here’s how Roly describes it in his book:

I started keeping my own journal in 2002, and each year added to a steadily growing heap of battered notebooks. Writing a diary made me happier; keeping things-to-do lists made me more reliable (which in turn made those around me happier), and I learned never to go to a doctor’s appointment, or a meeting of any kind, without taking notes of what I heard…

So, I was very excited to see one of Roly’s diaries. They are tightly packed pages with his signature red and blue colors for contrast.

Here’s a page many of us can relate to:

UGH
COVID

When Roly wants to disguise an entry, he’ll write in really bad Polish. Having spent some time in Poland, he knows a bit of the language. He told me that his Polish is so bad that even a native speaker wouldn’t understand what he has written.

Allen’s Storytelling Notes

Roly trained himself to write by studying the great style and storytelling manuals. He transferred the lessons he wanted to keep into a notebook, complete with an index.

Those who have read Allen’s book will know that he’s a talented storyteller. Telling the “history of thinking on paper” requires a lot of stories. Roly has a talent for finding the drama in the notebook’s history and telling the story in such a way that we keep turning the pages.

Here are a few graphs Roly drew from books about storytelling:

But the greatest tool for storytelling, according to Roly, is the word that began this sentence: the coordinating conjunction “but.” Roly learned this lesson from Matt Stone and Trey Parker (creators of South Park).

Here are Roly’s notes on this video:

Roly took Parker and Stone’s lesson to heart. He highlights “but” and “so” throughout his notes. Let’s consider how Roly employed these techniques for his public speaking engagements.

Allen’s Public Speaking Notebook

To prepare for publicizing the book, Allen kept a small notebook he could carry in his jacket pocket.

Here, we find Roly using Parker and Stone’s advice as he lays out narrative beats. Notice how he links beats with “so” and “but…until”.

(A) Appropriation and
Repurposing/
Readers as much as writers
(B) Business people took notebooks home and turned them into Zibaldoni
SO
(C) Meanwhile—also changing the way writers write
SO
(D) Some of these ideas TRAVEL —even though Zibaldoni themselves don’t
BUT…UNTIL
(E) So later, the common-place book arrived, another new application for the notebook
SO
(F) Hard work that resulted in a sophisticated audience…that could cope with sophisticated new literature.

On the right-hand page, notice how Roly highlights the plot structure:

State the theme
inciting incident!
all goes well
But Z[ibaldoni] don’t make it out of Tuscany
Until…
Triumph

On subsequent pages, Roly expands on each of these points. Here he expands on C and A:

Notebooks from a Writer’s P.O.V….
(C)
4) this has two effects on writers—
-helps them write better
-but it also helps them develop an audience
(A)
This is a story of appropriation and repurposing, and it is as much a story of readers as it is of writers…

Want more from Roly? Besides reading his wonderful book, check out his interview on Intelligence Squared while following along with his notes for this conversation:

Intelligence Squared w/ Albert Read / 28.2.24
Origins of the book
—Discovery of some of grandfather’s diaries. Pre-war. Interesting life and they brought him to life. SO I started keeping a diary,
—BUT started noticing people’s creative notebooks at same time
—SO started to wonder where this invention comes from…

Notes on Roly’s Notes

Disguise private notes: I love all the ways people encode their notes (Beatrix Potter’s cipher remains a favorite). Roly’s habit of writing secret diary-entries in bad Polish strikes me as another ingenious technique.

Turn ideas into graphs and use color for contrast: One of the best ways to absorb new information is to translate it into a different form. Illustrating ideas in the form of a graph is a great way to do this. I also admire the way Roly uses red and blue pens to highlight important information. The color-combo reminded me of Lee Shearman’s notes from our second anniversary edition.

Pay attention to coordinating conjunctions: Even if you aren’t using the actual words (but, so, and), figure out which coordinating conjunction fits between the beats in your story or paragraphs. If a string of “ands” unite your paragraphs, you don’t have a story; you have a list.

Noted is fueled by you. Your ❤️’s and comments inspire me. As always, I would love to know your thoughts.