An important part of storytelling is to go with your strength. If you are good at movement, let it flow with your stories. If you can do voices, make them enhance the tales you tell. If you enjoy working with pre-schoolers, then focus your energy on working with them and learning stories in that age group. The same goes for those whose likes are with older children, teens, or adults. Go with your strength. One of my characteristics is the use of voice.
Continue reading Voices…
Storytelling Tips
The Three Hats of a Storyteller
I participated in a workshop over a year ago, from Master Storyteller, Elizabeth Ellis. She explained that as storytellers we wear three different kinds of hats. As a storyteller I am an artist, craftsperson, and businessperson. Here are the notes that I wrote at her workshop:
Artist: Researches, writes, new work, how does this part go with that. Does deep thought. What does my work need to meet the needs of the audience; wants to make a connection; what it means to their life.
Craftsperson: Teller: detail oriented; Chooses the stories to tell. Concerned about audience’s reaction and logistics of storytelling situation
Businessperson: Decision maker, marketing – process what is acceptable and accessible to this audience. How are we going to get invited back; Oversees tasks to be done, requires others to do them. Responsible for public relations.
Continue reading The Three Hats of a Storyteller…
Tales for 2
Telling stories on my own requires a lot of work. I have to find the story I like, decide for what audience it will fit, learn the text of the story and then craft it to become a telling tale. This takes time and effort. For the first time in my professional storytelling career I recently learned a story to be told in tandem (two people telling a story together, in this case my fellow storyteller, Debbie, and me). Learning this story added new challenges to the telling a story process, for now I was working with another individual.
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Evolution of Story
As I build upon the repertoire of stories that I tell, I constantly step back to watch how they evolve.
The first part of telling a story is finding the one that you want to tell. In some instances it’s a story that has been picked years ago with the foreknowledge that someday I will tell it. In others it is one that I hear that just grabs me the right way and I want to research and tell it as soon as I can. There are times when because of a storytelling job I’ve been hired to do, based on a certain theme or audience, I actively search out stories of that type to fit the audience I will be performing for. In this case the story, doesn’t fall in my lap as do the first two types.
Regardless of how I come upon the story, the time comes when it is time to learn the story and watch it grow. Continue reading Evolution of Story…
Personal Stories – Using Story Prompts
Finding ideas to write about in your own personal past is sometimes difficult to do. I’ve listened to a number of tellers, who tell stories about their childhood and their families and events that happened in their lives. I’ve often thought to myself that I would love to tell lots of stories about growing up, but I really don’t have many stories that are exciting enough to tell. At least not that I can remember on my own.
That’s where the book, Telling Your Own Stories, by Donald Davis comes in. The cover description states, “For Family and Classroom Storytelling, Public Speaking, and Personal Journaling.” What he has done in the book is come up with a number of story prompts that can be used to trigger the memories you need to develop these stories. You can use the book for yourself, or use the prompts to get others to tell. Granted not all of the stories shared will become great tales to tell, but some of them might. Over the next few writings I hope to respond to some of the prompts in the book.