Tell Me Something Good

Wear A Story Like an Interchangeable Necklace by Anna Blocher-Rubin

In the past, I have heard of a story as a string of pearls. While I was creating a story that was to be about 20 minutes long, I was finding that I was getting caught on the length of the string of pearls. I was questioning what parts of the story were really needed to meet the objective of my story. I realized the story I was trying to create was more of an interchangeable necklace.  Unlike the string of pearls, I realized I could make the story longer, or shorter; change out the events in the story, like a pendant and decide which parts I want to share or hold back depending on my audience. 

 

A story naturally changes as the storyteller matures and changes in life. I found that as a storyteller, I needed to expand on my idea of a string of pearls and maybe my pearls were turning into interchangeable pendants. The symbolism of an interchangeable necklace allowed me to stop worrying about the length, and including every detail detail of the story, but rather focus on the structure and which parts I wanted to highlight in my story; just as I would decide on a pendant or two, to wear with an outfit.

 

I hope this metaphor may encourage storytellers to reflect on their story repertoire and see how many pendants they can find in their stories, to be changed out, to make an old story new again. 

Transformation Comes from Within By Mindy Tarquini

Every story has a hero. We call that hero the protagonist. Every story has a nemesis. We call that nemesis the antagonist. The hero wants something. So does the nemesis. And in a twist often not clear for much of the story, the hero and the nemesis want the same thing. And in a further twist, the true nemesis is not the antagonist.

During the war of 1812, after the Battle of Lake Erie, Commodore Oliver Perry famously reported, “We have met the enemy and he is ours.” In an equally famous paraphrase, over a hundred and fifty years later, Pogo, a stumpy, somewhat pithy character created by cartoonist Walt Kelly, declares, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

That moment becomes the reason for just about every story, the moment the hero realizes it’s not a matter of having more spells, or more bullets, more bombs, more allies, or better arguments. The moment the hero realizes the outcome is out of her hands, that the only event over which the hero has any control is her attitude, her thoughts, her response. The moment the hero accepts that truth is transformational. The hero may achieve her story’s goal, she may not. At that transformational moment, whatever the story’s outcome, whether the hero lives or dies, the hero has already succeeded.

Mindy Tarquini is the author of three critically-acclaimed novels featuring fables, foibles, fairytales, pandemics, past lives & lost loves. Find her and her social media links at www.mindytarquini.com

Ramblings of a Teller of Tales: Lots of Questions, Not as Many Answers by Diana Dinshaw

In 1996 I was a special education teacher at a private school for children with Learning Disabilities in Greenwich, Connecticut. At the end of a PE class in which we had played dodgeball one of my students asked, “Ms. Dinshaw which team won?” His team had no doubt lost but being a ‘good’ teacher, I replied, “Both teams won, Ryan, because we played fair.” Ryan turned to his teammate and I overheard him saying, “Teachers just say that to make us feel better. We definitely lost.” 

This mindset of “making people feel better” has seeped into my daily life and I see it in my storytelling as well. When people compliment me on the telling of a story I have just finished, my immediate response is, “Oh you can do it too.”  Really? (asked rhetorically).

Just because you have a story to tell does that make you a storyteller? After all, haven't we been telling stories since the beginning of time? Those stories might not be in words as we know them now but the etchings in caves and cliffs do inform us of an incident that happened eons ago. Then the question arises whether an incident is a story or is it just an anecdote?  Liz Warren in her book, The Oral Tradition Today: An Introduction to the Art of Storytelling writes, “Anecdotes relate an event; stories place the same event in a larger context of meaning.” 

This leads me to wonder then how a person would do that, place the event in a larger context of meaning. The obvious answer could be by learning the art of storytelling i.e., what are the types of stories, story structures, where to find stories, how to memorize stories and the list goes on. 

The next question that comes up for me is, is it sufficient to study storytelling to be a storyteller? To this question I would say no. Just like any art studying it is not enough, practice and coaching are integral parts of becoming a storyteller. After all, just because I learned ballet when I was young could I say I am a ballerina?

The natural question that follows is, can you be a storyteller without studying storytelling? To answer this question, I would have to first define ‘studying’. When we look at the preservation of stories through the oral tradition over hundreds of years and we learn how storytelling was taught and studied it is evident that ‘studying’ was definitely not how storytelling is studied today. Just by its definition ‘oral’ tradition was passed down from master to student, whether the student was a family member or an apprentice the master would take on, through verbal transmission. Just by the nature of the story the story structure was learned by the student not taught explicitly the way it is today. The student would spend years memorizing stories that would be told over days. And only after the student had multiple such stories under his belt would he be able to call himself a storyteller.

And that brings me to the million-dollar question; lacking the rigor of becoming a storyteller from the past can I truly call myself a storyteller? Maybe I am just a teller of tales.

The Threshold Guardian by Mindy Tarquini

In storytelling, the threshold guardian is the obstacle, the limiting factor, that which must be overcome if the hero is to continue. In stories, the threshold guardian may be the ferryman on the River Styx, the three-headed-dog sleeping before the gates of hell. Threshold guardians might be liminal entities, wardens of crossroads, or borders, seasons or times of days, present only so long as their purpose persists.

In oral stories, those threshold guardians are often easy to pick out, bearing flaming swords, or speaking enigmatic languages, able to steer wind or weather or coax a mountain to breathe fire. But in real life, threshold guardians are sometimes subtle: the bank manager who won’t approve the mortgage, the grad school admission clerk who insists the paperwork arrived too late, the doctor laying out the possible courses of treatment, each of which is an equally bad choice.

In real life or story, the guardian may be visible, or hidden in a traumatic past. The guardian may manifest as age, disability, loss, grief, perhaps temptation. Always, the hero needs to move forward and the threshold guardian, whether benign or malignant, mentor or companion, at that particular junction has one purpose, either by conscious action or unaware positioning--to be IN. THE. WAY.

In most stories, the hero succeeds, gets past the Ferryman, kills the dragon with the flaming sword, finds another way to finance the venture, replaces a traumatic experience with a good one. Real life is different. The guardians often win and the only way to find meaning in the guardian is to find meaning in the threshold the hero does not breach, the lessons it imparts, of limits and confines, actions to be avoided, mistakes to vow never to make again. That’s why stories are preferable to real life.

But real life is where we live, and those lessons have value. To appreciate what we’ve lost, to nurture what remains, to assess time and opportunity by a different measure. Of satisfaction in work done well, joy in a relationship cultivated, accomplishment in a new solution.

Then we go on, just like the hero, to meet the new challenge.

The image at the top of the post can be found here.