Humble Magic: Being a Storyteller is More than Telling Stories by Liz Warren

“Everyone is a storyteller.”

I’ve read or heard that sentence, stated as an emphatic and definitive truism, more times than I could ever count. 

It is not true.

Everyone has stories, and sometimes they tell them, but not everyone is a
storyteller.  Here’s a parallel: Most people can cook, and some people can cook very well. But to be a good cook is not the same as being a chef. A chef is someone who has been trained and become expert.  She is someone who has deep facility with traditions, techniques, and tools.  She is responsible for building on those skills to innovate, to train others, and to serve people with fine dining experiences.

It’s the same with storytelling.  Most people can tell stories or can learn to tell stories. Lots of people can and do tell stories to great effect in their homes, careers, or on public stages.

To be a storyteller, however, is to intentionally take on a specific calling in the world. As with the chef, a traditional storyteller has been trained and has developed a deep facility with oral traditions, story creating and refining tools, and performance techniques. Once so equipped, storytellers then use these skills to make a difference in their communities. They entertain, train, and impart wisdom.  They organize, teach, connect, and advocate. They listen and help bind up the holes in their communities with empathy and insight.

Novelists, filmmakers, cartoonists, marketers, and journalists all rely on and utilize the power of story (“narrative” in academic terms) to connect, inspire, delight, surprise, inform and affirm in essential and profoundly meaningful ways. I am an enthusiastic and regular consumer of many of these forms of story.

The kind of storytelling I practice, and that the SMCC Storytelling Institute perpetuates, is the foundation of all these modern forms: traditional storytelling. It is oral, face-to-face, and done in real time – the timelessly relevant art of telling stories to other people in person. Even when we translate our stories to online, written, or recorded formats, we rely on the deep, enduring, and global practices of traditional storytelling to inform our work.

Listening to a well-told story can transport us to another world, even as none of us leave our seats.  It is a transparently magical experience; a humble magic that all our ancestors understood and is still relevant and important for us today.

But that by itself is not enough to make someone a storyteller.  I have been deeply moved by hearing the stories of accountants, nurses, chefs, and athletes. That is what effective stories do.  They engage our hearts, minds, and spirits.

What effective storytellers do is to intentionally use the knowledge they have gained, the skills they have learned, and the talents they have honed, to wield the power of story to make the world a better place. That includes traditional oral storytellers like me, poets and writers, filmmakers, and truly anyone with that specific, committed intention for their work with story. Barry Lopez, quoted in his recent obituary, states it clearly:

“I can tell you in two words,” he said when asked about his motives for writing. “To help. I am a traditional storyteller. This activity is not about yourself. It’s about culture, and your job is to help.” (Barry Lopez, 1945 -2020.)

(The picture at the top of the post includes Irish storytellers Aideen McBride, maroon sleeveless top, and her father, Jack Sheehan, holding the hat, after telling for the students in Study Abroad Ireland in June 2017.)

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