Category: Basics of Storytelling
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Oral Tradition – Plus Let Me Tell You Another Story…
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A little mouse told me? Well, not exactly…but somebody did! [This is longer than my other A-Z posts…the musings plus the story…grab a cuppa maybe?!] By definition, personal stories (that is, first-person personal-experience narratives) are not transmitted to the teller through an oral tradition: they happened to the teller. So,…
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6 Ways TEACHING Storytelling Helps One be a Better Storyteller
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The Set-Up I recently had a whirlwind gig: Designing and giving a one-hour training to 350 museum volunteers, to equip them to tell pre-selected traditional stories as part of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science’s upcoming “Mythic Creatures” exhibit.
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Story Slams Making Waves, Part 2 (Or, Does Anybody Read a Blog Published on a Friday Afternoon?)
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“What if we recognized that all stories, regardless of traditional, personal, or other, have value when they are well told, when there is room for the audience and when we remember that stories are about human experience, whether true or metaphorical?” – Laura Packer Could not have said it better…
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“All the Words I Cannot Write”…Oral Stories / Written Stories
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All the Light We Cannot See Have you ever heard, or read, a story that filled you so very, very, very full…of thoughts, emotions, responses, images…? A story you hear told aloud…a written novel you hold in your hands…both are so similar to, and so different from, each other. Both…
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YouTube “Storytelling”…?
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It can be wonderful to see recorded examples of storytelling… But storytelling on YouTube is only a “report” of a storytelling experience – very different from the live experience itself. Just like… A lovely photograph of a location may be beautiful all on its own. It might motivate you to…
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Week…Just 1 Until the Rocky Mountain Storytelling Conference
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The Rocky Mountain Storytelling 2014 Conference is one week away! Storytelling conferences are always a fantastic opportunity to connect, to learn from others (previous blog post!), to learn by doing, to network – and of course to have fun! Rocky Mountain Storytelling holds its annual Colorado conference, “Storytelling: Craft & Connection,” next…
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Story Versions
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Being able to deliver different versions of a story to different audiences… This is an important and valuable ability – both in terms of “stretching your repertoire,” and of respecting and responding to your audiences! As an example: There is a beautiful story from Israel I like to tell, that…
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Stance – for Storytellers and Other Speakers!
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Sometimes one of the biggest challenges for novice storytellers, it seems, is to learn to stand on their own two feet! 😉 Seriously – whether it’s nervousness, uncertainty about how to begin the story, or an established posture-habit – very often there’s a tendency to stand uncertainly, even awkwardly,…
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Respond in Real-Time (Reprising a favorite blog post from March)
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Responding to your audience, to the real-time circumstances around you – – this is one of storytelling’s most distinguishing characteristics. (This is what especially differentiates storytelling from theater, such as a monologue or “one-person play.”)
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Meaning-Making
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“Story allows us to make information productive. Without Story, information is nothing but a lot of bricks lying about waiting for someone to make constructive use of them.” – Aidan Chambers STORIES MAKE MEANING FOR US That’s what stories do. And that’s why humans tell stories.