Tell Me Something Good: Storytelling: The Full Experience by Ken Shaw

I have told many stories throughout my life through preaching, teaching, and my Santa business. Before taking the storytelling classes at South Mountain Community College’s Storytelling Institute, I was just winging it, doing the best that I could. Now that I have had these classes, I have some great tools at my disposal to help me form better stories. It has also opened my mind to look for stories online and formulate them into my storytelling. Some of the tools that I use to create the stories, like storyboards, I found useful for me to visually learn my stories and not just memorize them. Rote memorization is very difficult for me to master.

I listen to a lot of comedians, and it just so happens that the comedians I love the most are storytellers. I think this love of stories comes from my Uncle Mark and his father who I’m named after. I remember visits to grandpa’s house where Uncle Mark would come over and the stories would just pour out. The TV was rarely on so this was a great form of entertainment. Now that storytelling lives on within me and my children. Now that they are older and living their own lives, we don’t get to spend as much time together. When we go out to a restaurant to eat as a family there will always be new and old stories being told by everyone. Now with the tools from these classes I hope to have better telling of some of the older stories.

I have learned that I have warring halves of my brain. I am creative, but through this creativity I am very unstructured, so nothing gets done. I’m not sure if it is a learned discipline or some base part of my personality, but I have to use organizational processes to be able to finish my work. With tools picked up from storytelling classes, I have found a way to express my creativity but have a structure to allow me to finish the story.

When I talk with most people today I find that they want an experience not just time wasters. That has been the one thing I have tried to put into my Santa performance. Draw in the child and their guardian to create an experience of meeting Santa for all. Storytelling is a big part of it, as through stories you can activate more parts of the brain than with information alone. If I can create a 45 to 90 second story that engages the whole family, they will all feel the experience together.

This process will fulfill the experience driven lifestyle most are pursuing today. I know that this journey will be a great experience for me. I hope my journey I will meet many of you, so we can enjoy an experience together.

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