Tell Me Something Good

Growing Hope through Storytelling by Melissa Fees

Stories have always been a time-honored means to teach, inspire and entertain others. More recently, neuroscientists are studying the effects of storytelling on the brain. In this case, personal stories are read to students while their brain is being scanned. These functional MRI studies give us a glimpse into what parts of the brain are firing when we are listening and processing personal stories.

Dr. Immordino-Yang’s presented a talk entitled “We feel, therefore we learn” at the 2011 Mind and Its Potential Conference. Her conclusion is that our biological bodies and social minds are completely integrated. Today neuroscientists are helping us understand what is happening in our brains when we hear stories of struggle and resilience of real people.

The work of Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang of the University of Southern California showed the results of fMRI scans of people who had heard these types of stories and what part of the brain had increased blood flow. The results showed that the very systems that keep us alive like the medulla, the insula, and the mid-brain were activated. When people say they felt something in their gut when they heard a compelling story, they were telling the truth. 

Her work has also demonstrated that when teenagers hear stories about the resilience of others they report being inspired, even hopeful about their own future. She stated in a webinar for The Center for Scholars and Storytellers in 2019 that “. . . Hope is an interpretation that you construct. Hope itself is a story you tell yourself about the possible spaces in the future. . .”  Her lab is continuing to study the individual differences in how people create hope for their own future after listening to inspiring stories of others. Meanwhile, we storytellers will keep on crafting inspiring stories for all ages.

How Stories Don't Get Old - They just Develop Roots by Sharon Gilbert

I began my official storytelling journey in 2006 and received my storytelling certificate in 2010. So, I have been developing stories for a long time.

Recently I took another storytelling class, this time on zoom. Sacred Storytelling From Around the World, and while I was developing my last story to tell, I realized that many  personal stories are indeed sacred stories.

I knew that family stories or personal stories were going to be some of the stories I developed over the years but in the beginning most of the personal stories I told  were along the lines of a Donald Davis story with a little funny twist at the end. But always, in the back of my mind there was a desire to unravel my relationship with my mother through story. My aunts told me that my mother was painfully shy, but through my growing up years I experienced her as a stern mother who seldom shared her stories or her emotions. I was greedy for every little tidbit she told me about her childhood but what I had to build on were only crumbs. In one of my Personal Storytelling classes I told a short story that was more of an anecdote than a story and I ended up shelving it for a little over ten years. I was unaware that this was going to become the story I was trying to tell.

Storytelling is more powerful than the public believes and even if you value and understand what a treasure storytelling is, once you begin telling,  you just keep building  and learning. The more you learn and the more you practice your craft the more you understand how to take a personal story and share while keeping your audience safe, how to really think about the points that will be universal and valuable to them. My recent experience taught me that a story lying at rest is worth revisiting, it hasn’t just been collecting dust, it’s been growing roots.

So, my advice is if you're taking a storytelling class, keep taking them now and then, and if you have a little bit of a story don't throw it away, keep that idea and let it grow roots. 

"Pick me, pick me!" by Diana Dinshaw

How often have you heard someone say, “I didn’t pick the book, the book picked me.”?  If you are a storyteller you have probably had the same experience where the story that wanted to be told kept whispering in your ear, “Pick me, pick me.”

I started the 2023 Spring Semester in which I was taking the course, Sacred Stories with a goal and a preconceived idea. 

Goal: Retell stories from my repertoire

Preconceived Idea: What Sacred Stories are. Hence, I had already picked the stories from my repertoire that I was going to tell during the semester; Legend of St. Christopher, Folktale of the Woodcutter and (Archangel) Behram Yazad, and the Myth of Baldr the Beautiful. 

You may notice that personal stories did not make the cut. 

I decided to tell the story of the Woodcutter and (Archangel) Behram Yazad as my first story. But a personal story started whispering to me, “Tell me, tell me.” I kept pushing it aside because it didn’t fit my preconceived idea of what a sacred story is; sacred stories are religious stories and stories of belief.  The sound not only started getting louder and louder but while I would be practicing the story of the Woodcutter I would all of a sudden start thinking about parts of the personal story I had told almost a year ago for Mother’s Day. It was time to surrender.

So, I dug out the storyboard for my story, “I Am My Mothers” and saw it with fresh eyes. It was no more just a story about three women who had cared for and nurtured me. The story allowed me to deeply reconnect with the love of each of these women; my aya (nanny) Taro, my Katy mummy, and my mother, Arnavaz. After all, what is more sacred than love?

Building My Personal Repertoire: Finding Sacred Stories by Bryce Barraza

Are you thinking about adding a ‘sacred’ story to your repertoire? If so, then you and I are in the same boat . . . and I certainly appreciate your good company!

Recently, as part of a storytelling course, I have been learning and practicing how to better interpret stories and their sacred elements with the intent to add more stories to my personal repertoire.

As a novice, I think I am achieving some success in finding ‘sacred’ stories that I want to better learn, craft, and add to my repertoire. With that said, I wanted to offer some information that I found helpful in my learnings and practice for your consideration. 

Hope this helps!

What’s Your Definition of Sacred?

‘Sacred’ is referring to a specific type of story. Sacred stories are those that involve the subjects of life, death, the continuity of generations, and how we relate to others and the world.

Additional characteristics of sacred stories to consider include:

• Explain the world: sacred stories teach about how the world, animals and humans were created, and why humans do what we do. (E.g., Creation myths and pourquoi stories) These teachings more likely were at one point in time believed to be universal truth –or may be considered fact today.
• Codify beliefs, cultural norms, and behaviors: sacred stories may be used as integral parts of cultural and religious rituals, teach lessons of morality and other rules, and can encourage adherence to certain practices and behaviors.
• Transcend cultures and time: the morals of sacred stories apply no matter when in time the story takes place, and the moral is applicable across many cultures.

Sacred can also mean different things for individual storytellers. That is not to say ‘sacred’ is completely subjective –however, it recognizes that you personally may be drawn to certain sacred stories more so than others. And it’s helpful to reflect on why you gravitate to a particular story as you develop your own interpretation of sacred.

In my attempt to develop my definition of ‘sacred,’ I took to reading multiple myths and other traditional stories, and subsequently made a list of the stories that I liked. Once I had a list of ‘likes,’ I identified common themes, morals, and story types that –for whatever reasons –I naturally gravitate.

Picking A Story: Do You Like the Story? Like, Really, Really Like It?

When working to identify sacred stories to add to my personal repertoire, I ask myself the below questions in sequential order about each story under consideration.

• Do I like the story? Like really, really like it?

The first step of my review process when determining to add a story to my repertoire is to ask the question, “Do I like the story? Like really, really like it?” In other words, I want to be “delighted” and have a strong “desire” to tell the story in efforts to ensure a stronger delivery. When a storyteller is “delighted” by their selection of the story, the storyteller will have a stronger “desire” to share and communicate the story with the audience. An increased “delight” of the selected story, and an enhanced “desire” to share the story, produces a stronger “delivery” of the story.  (Warren, L. 2008)

• Does this story communicate one of my core values I consider as sacred?

Storyteller Laura Packer explains that the authenticity of a storyteller includes sharing stories that represent their core values. So, knowing your definition of ‘sacred’ will help you identify stories that can help communicate your interpretation of values you consider sacred.

• Do I have a personal experience to help anchor the story?

For me, I like to have a personal experience that I can relate to the moral of the story. Now, this is not to say I have personal experiences that directly tie to the plot of the myths of ancient Gods and Goddesses such has being struck by the golden or lead arrow of Cupid or Eros, but I can directly relate to the human experience of infatuation, love, and indifference.   

Research The Story

Once I find a story that I like –like really, really like –I spend time doing a little research.

A few notes on what I attempt to accomplish when conducting research:

• Learn the Story’s Origin and Current Use: What is known about where the story came from? Are there similar stories in other cultures? Is the story still used in cultural or religious rituals today? Is it appropriate for me to craft and tell this story, given the cultural origins and current use?
• Note the Similarities and Differences: Read different versions of the same story. Reviewing multiple versions of the same story may help identify critical characters to include and similar plot elements to structure a newly crafted version. Alternatively, identifying differences in plot or imagery used can support ‘creative license’ when crafting a new version, and differences may also serve as other points of research to better understand why versions vary.
• Leverage the Imagery: The reoccurring images are probably in there for a reason. So, take note and google it. I try to notice nature and earth elements referenced (e.g., specific plants or trees; herbs and spices; or reference to water, wind, fire.) I also try to trace the geographic locations referenced in older stories to modern-day locations –which may assist with physical descriptions of setting and provide a sense of cultural history associated with the location. You may also want to try to learn if there is significance to specific numbers or colors referenced.
• Read, Listen and Watch: I gain value in reading multiple versions of the same story. But auditory and visual examples can also be helpful. Therefore, I also search whether other storytellers have publicly published recorded audio or video of their telling of the story (e.g., I’m Telling Podcast or YouTube). Listening and watching other storytellers tell the same story (or different stories) helps me better hone my techniques –and serves as inspiration as I continue to practice my storytelling.

Reference:

Bascom, W. (1954). Four Functions of Folklore. The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 67 (266), Pg.339-349.

Packer, L. (2019). From Audience to Zeal: The ABCs of Finding; Crafting and Telling a Great Story, Pg. 9,Appropriation; Pg. 13, Authenticity; Pg. 120, Research; Pg. 139, Sourcing.

Warren, L. (2008). The Oral Tradition Today: An Introduction to the Art of Storytelling, Ch. 2.

Finding Who You Are by Lauren Besich

I recently read a book called Island Wisdom that explored the question, “what does it mean to be Hawaiian?”  To answer this question the authors used the themes of Aloha (deep, innate love), ‘Ᾱina (the land), Mo’olelo (the art of storytelling), and ‘Ohana (the family) to paint a picture of the Hawaiian culture.  Storytelling serves many purposes in Hawaiian culture.  As a culture rooted in oral tradition, storytelling was how they passed down their knowledge, connected with family members, and preserved their history through the dancing of hula (which I learned is a sacred storytelling art in Hawaii). There is a saying that goes, “Know who you were so you can know who you are.”  We need to know the generations of people that populate our family tree, because their stories are our creation myths. 

Since I love the theme of “finding who you are,” let us explore how knowing the stories of our ancestors helps us find meaning in our lives.  Moana is a story about a young woman who lives on an island that she is prohibited from leaving.  As the chief’s daughter, and next in line to govern the island, her dad makes it very clear that no one sails beyond the reef because it is too dangerous.  However, their island is dying, and the solution lies in far away places.  Her sweet grandmother prompts Moana to accept her call to save the island and journey beyond the reef to do so.  She leads Moana to the revelation that her ancestors were voyagers, and with this knowledge of who she was, Moana is able to complete the difficult task of saving the island, and presumably the rest of the world.  Knowledge of her ancestor’s stories helped her know who she was to become—a voyager once again. 

Another favorite story of mine is the tale of Elsa in the movie Frozen.  She was born with powers that seemed to her shameful, after inadvertently harming her sister with them.  She spent her youth trying to hide them from her community and her sister.  After accidentally exposing her powers on her coronation day as Queen of Arendelle, she ran away.  The mystery of her powers continued to haunt her until she learned that her mother was from the Northuldra tribe in the Enchanted Forest.  Once she learned stories from her mother’s childhood, Elsa finally understood her powers, saved her people, and realized her purpose.  Again, knowing the stories of her ancestors brought meaning to her life. 

As for me, I recently lost my grandmother.  I know some basics about her life, but I feel like I’m missing the pieces that give me a clear picture of who I have been.  How did my grandma handle raising four kids after her divorce? Why did she never remarry? What led her to become a travel agent? What did she love about growing up in Tennessee? What was her favorite flower? What kind of friend was she? Did she have a midlife crisis?  I have so many questions, but now I have to get the answers from secondary sources.  Thankfully I’ve not been tasked with saving the world by discovering my family secrets, but I do hope to leave more stories for my children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren to know who they were, so they can know who they are.  

Image Credit: "She Will Find What is Lost" by Brian Kershisnik

 

Sacred Flowers by Kathy Eastman

This winter all our lovely rains have resulted in a profusion of wildflowers.  The attached picture is from my front yard.  The flowers with their rare beauty are bringing me so much pleasure!  While spending time enjoying all the flowers and pulling weeds, I was listening and watching all the pollinators.  It was only natural for me to think about the sacred nature of flowers.   Life as we know it on planet earth is based on the ability of plants to convert sunshine into chlorophyll.  Our civilization and agricultural practices depend on flowers and their codependent pollinators.  The first reason flowering plants are sacred is because they provide our primary sources of food, fiber and medicine. Most of the plant material we consume is from flowering plants including fruits, veggies and grains.  Here in the southwest cotton is a famous fiber plant.  And, the medicinal properties (and corresponding devastation) are well known for the opium poppy. 

The second reason I find flowering plants sacred is the co-evolution of flowers and pollinators.  Of course, there have not always been flowering plants, it is thought they first evolved about 130 million years ago.  Even in our current times, there are still many examples of non-flowering plants.  Think of the spore producers, such as ferns.  Flowering plants make an extraordinary investment in time and energy producing flowers.  The flowers are for sexual reproduction and seed formation.  Really, plants have the most exotic sexual habits and often require participation of pollinators.   This year’s profuse blooms are attracting pollinators of all sorts, and the desert is singing with their activities. Thank goodness!  Life as we know it would not exist without flowers! 

Beyond their direct utilitarian uses, flowering plants are the basis for our spiritual, artistic and literary endeavors. The third reason flowers are scared is the powerful metaphors they represent in our lives. Whether you are consciously thinking about it or not, flowers are present at most of our major life transitions.  The rose alone is used to represent romance, love, beauty, courage, friendship, desire, appreciation, sincerity, appreciation and innocence.  In Buddhism the eastern lotus flower speaks of purity and spiritual growth.  Since it is Easter season, think of the white lily with its association with the Virgin.  For the non-secular, think of sunflowers “with their uncanny ability to lock you into its stare”.  Shakespeare used a myriad of flowers as metaphors.   Culturally, the Dutch are famous for tulips. 

In some creation myths flowers are not metaphors, but the very source of creation.  For example, in ancient Egypt the day blooming blue lotus appeared at the beginning of creation.  Brahma the Hindu god of creation emerges from an eastern lotus flower.  Flowers are a powerful source of life and have the power of transformation.  You only need to step outside to see the amazing colors and profusion of flowers.  The flowers are all dressed up and not going anywhere, because they are the party.  Find a moment and enjoy the gifts of sacred flowers. 

Author note:  I referenced material from internet sources and the book:  Seven Flowers and How They Shaped the World by Jennifer Potter.  

Acknowledging the Land by Doug Bland

“In order to restore the land, we must re-story it.”

---Gary Paul Nabhan

Land acknowledgements have become common practice as a way to honor past, present, and future contributions of Indigenous people.  Here in Maricopa County, we occupy the unceded lands of the Akimel O'odham and Pee-Posh people.

Collectively, the Akimel O’odham and Pee Posh call themselves the People of the River, both the Gila River, which flows into the Colorado River, and the Salt River which flows into the Gila.

The Akimel O’odham have been here in this place thousands of years.  They are the northernmost group of the O’odham family, which includes the Hia C-ed O’odham – the People of the Sand – and the Tohono O’odham – the People of the Desert. Together, the O’odham are the people of the Sonoran Desert, which encompasses part of northern Sonora, Mexico and most of southern and Central Arizona.

The word Arizona comes from an O’odham word meaning “many springs”.  

The Pee-Posh moved here from their traditional home further south on the Colorado River sometime in the 1500s as an alternative to enduring ongoing attacks from the Mojave and Quechan peoples.  In the 1800s a formal alliance was made and the Akimel O’odham invited the Pee-Posh to be of this place, too.

Today, these peoples co-exist on the Gila River Indian Community, a sovereign nation of around 20,000 residing on around 375,000 acres, and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, a federally recognized tribal community of around 10,000 residing on a little over 50,000 acres.  There are more than twenty federally recognized Indian Communities in Arizona, and more than a quarter of Arizona land is tribal land.

Spanish colonizers who came into this place in the 16^th century are the ones who called the Akimel O’odham the “Pima” and the Pee Posh the “Maricopa”.  I live in Maricopa County. My in-laws live in Pima County.  

As People of the River, the Akimel O’odham and Pee-Posh relied on river water to irrigate their farm crops.  But as early as 1868, their farmers started reporting unexpected water shortages. The cause of these shortages was that settlers from the United States were moving into the upper parts of the Gila River and diverting Akimel O’odham and Pee-Posh water without consideration of the native communities downstream.  

At about the same time, in the 1870s, other mostly Anglo-European settlers were also starting to farm in the Salt River Valley where Tempe and Phoenix are now.  There were no active Akimel O’odham and Pee-Posh communities in the Salt River Valley at that particular time; when the settlers found the eroded walls of multi-story homes, plazas, granaries, and outdoor ballcourts from what had been a thriving community, they were quick to call them ruins and attribute them to an ancient, long-gone people.  When the settlers also found nearly 600 miles of irrigation canals created by the ancestors of the O’odham, they immediately started putting those canals to use for their own farming, without making a connection to or an acknowledgement of the existing native communities.  

There was a time when the O’odham Tribes completely disappeared - hence the word “Huhugam”, which is the label for this period when the O’odham suddenly packed up and left.  

By the beginning of the 20^th century water shortages and crop failures were so common that the People of the River begin to go hungry and many starved.  As one way to feed their families, they cut 100,000 acres of mature mesquite trees on the reservation to sell as firewood to get money to buy food.  In 1925, an irrigation project that was supposed to restore water to the Akimel O’odham and the Pee Posh ended up effectively drying up the Gila River.  After that, the People of the River went to court, and in 2004 – after nearly 80 years in court and nearly 150 years of active resistance and self-advocacy – the Gila River Indian Community won a decisive Water Rights Settlement – one of the largest in U.S. history – access to over 650,000 acre feet of water annually.

(The image at the top of the post is the great seal of the Gila River Indian Community.) 

Woman at the Well of Story by Susan Valiquette

It’s my 53^rd birthday and we are all going to the Moth storytelling event at the Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix. It is a monthly treat for me to listen to the stories of individuals who vulnerably tell their own stories. This month I don’t have to go solo. I was not prepared to put my name in the ‘hat’ and tell a story that evening, even though my friends were encouraging me to do so. I did, however, take on the challenge of writing a story and sharing it with my friends over dinner. I followed the ‘rules’ of Moth. I told a story that was mine and kept to the theme and designated time. The theme was ‘leftovers’. My story was from childhood memories. It was not riveting or even very memorable to my friends, but it would have sparked a lot of memories for my family. It was more a story of nostalgia. My brother took to the story wholeheartedly and responded with enthusiasm in his email reply. This was completely unexpected given that we don’t speak very regularly.

Following my nostalgic story of ‘leftover change,’ he insisted that I ‘do my homework for life’. I had no idea what he was talking about. The next email said, “You gotta read ‘Storyworthy.’” I am still lost which I explain to him. He promises to buy me a copy of the book and have it delivered. It is not reminiscent of my brother. The book arrives and I start reading immediately as I can’t wait to learn what ‘doing my homework’ means.  The author, Matthew Dicks, has won the Moth storytelling like some 35 times. He holds storytelling workshops, and now I am reading his book and learning how to tell a story.

My colleague, Doug, has been modeling and telling me this for some time. “Stop preaching Susan and tell a story.” This is the kind of confidence that I wish I had. After a few classes with Liz Warren and listening to incredible seasoned storytellers, I am led to the conviction that we remember stories, not sermons. How can I be a storyteller too? How can storytelling become more integrated into my preaching? After one opportunity to tell a story in Liz Warren’s class, my confidence grows.

The Sunday’s scripture is the woman at the well. It is my favorite story. I could tell you the story without reading it. I could give you commentary for as long as you could listen. This story is the reason I still believe. So, I imagine everything I can about this woman from the biblical story that has been written and create a story of transformation to replace the sermon. I step forward to the center of the sanctuary, no notes, no script and I begin the story, “Neska had finished all the water the previous day . . .”

The Hero In All by Elizabeth Wunsch

As I am emerged in the stories from my classmates, I feel honored as I recognize the hero’s journeys of each of their lives. And through each of their stories i am introduced to their challenges, strengths and adventures. All so different yet intrinsically tied to one another. Many generations represented, each wrapped in a filter that allows a sameness to appear differently.

We are all in each others stories, finding a spot in each others journey. An illumination into our psyches and truths. An understanding of the stories we want to tell but are unable to, or the sudden volume turned up on rumblings within that have a need to emerge, be crafted and spoken. Joy, laughter, strength, heartache, tears, forgiveness.

Journeys in story that provide a sense of oneness to each other and the generations that came before us.

It is an honor to be part of this.

A Proud Storytelling Novice by Louis Soto

I am a novice at storytelling. I say this not in lack of confidence, instead I say it proudly. I don’t have much experience in telling stories in public, or in an academic setting. That did not stop me from telling my first story. In fact, it is very natural to feel apprehensive about doing any academic, or personal work that may require you to speak. Let me tell you why you should consider exploring telling stories.

 Stories have great abilities to transport you to far off places. They aid in understanding a different point of view. They can even teach you about another person. Most importantly they can teach you about who you are, and where you are going. One just needs to listen to their heart.

Albert Einstein in 1931 said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” (source) https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/01/einstein-imagination/

Storytelling, whether personal, fact-based, or traditional, calls on you to use your abilities to envision scenarios, plot, narratives, mood, and many descriptive elements that light up the brain. In fact, imagination creates more neurons and allows the brain to heal and develop. Why not use it? Not only to enrich your wellbeing, but to enhance the lives of your audience, friends, and family.

Jaimar Taurez from Neurotray, a website about neuropsychology states, “Imagination is the ability to create, at a cognitive level, images (or scenes) that are not present in the perceptual field of the person who articulates them and can be spiced by the inclusion of elements evoked in any sensory modality. In such a way, it is possible to reproduce situations from the past that not only involve visual content, but also the sensations that accompanied them (positive and negative). It also allows you to explore intangible ideas or concepts, and even combine them to generate innovative products that never existed or were not directly experienced.”

Liz Warren made me do it! What I mean by this is she is always challenging us to express our goals in an academic setting. In my short paragraph about my goals, I state "I have always been an animated type of person and have always created scenarios in my brain that are far-fetched in a real setting but have freedom in a story. Images of castles, spacecrafts, aliens, and fairies in an enchanted forest. These things are dear to me even if they are not quite plausible sometimes. In a story, they become, and they are alive more than ever no matter how far-fetched it is someone is always willing to listen.”

This is when I realized that stories were more than just words on a paper, more than beginning, middle, and end. I realized that stories were helping me understand myself and the world around me. I understand why I keep coming back because my brain is not only learning but healing.

If you’re worried about what storytelling can do for you, don’t be. There will be a moment of tension, there even might be a slight moment of discomfort, but I promise you that once you speak, allow yourself to tell a story. You will become free again. Be a proud novice and use your imagination.

References: Tuarez, Jaimar 2021. Nuerotray “What part of the brain controls imagination?”  Accessed on January 18. 2023. http://neurotray.com//what-part-of-the-brain-controls-imagination/

Make it Visual: Brainstorming Story Ideas by Bryce Barraza

If you’re like me, before you can craft a personal story, you kind of need a story idea. But what if you’re short on ideas? The good news is you have plenty of ideas –you just need to spark your memory to find them! 

Below are a couple of activities and templates that can help you spark memories and document story ideas. Making your ideas visual helps you better reflect on the sequence or location of events, critical crossroads within life, and potential characters of a story idea.

Crossroad Decision Tree

In the book, The Power of Personal Storytelling, Storyteller Jack Maguire offers the ‘Crossroads’ documentation activity. This activity helps identify turning point events or decisions that may have altered your life. The turning points events could represent changes that resulted in positive, negative or a combination of outcomes. This activity initially anchors your mind at a point in time –your age – or ‘when’ an event may have occurred. After brainstorming the turning points, you can then reflect on the characters involved in your life during the event, the resulting sequence of events, and the environment in which a decision or event took place.

For example, when I was 16 years old, my family decided to move from California to Phoenix, Arizona. Upon reflection, the decision was not exactly mine – it was my parents’. Although I have my perspective and understanding as to why we moved, as an adult, I may also want to ask my parents for additional insight as to why they made the decision. This event also introduced a slew of new characters in my life. Immediately following this turning point of moving to a new state, I was enrolled into a new high school and met my two best friends. The memories of this event – how the decision was made, what events happened after the move and the new characters that entered my life – can be the start of a story idea!

Where does your decision tree lead you? Feel free to try the activity using the template in the image at the top of the post!

My Story Influences by Dale McKinnon

Orality is why we are all pursuing the arts of storytelling. I never got to have a storyteller tell stories to my kindergarten and first grade classes. Or second, or third-grade class, or, come to think of it, any class at all. I realize that I first heard stories at home.

But almost all of us have grown up with family stories. I used to think of the stories as familial myths. The first stories in my life were from my father, about Prince Edward Island and Gloucester, Massachusetts, and my mother, about driving across the country in a ’39 coupe, with two children aged six and thirteen, in her fourth month carrying me; four souls to start a new life in San Francisco toward the end of WWII.

Our family storytelling faced strong headwinds with the advent of TV. San Francisco is where television was invented in 1927, but its growth was delayed by the war. By 1950 television sets began to become affordable for middle-class Americans. Six million homes at that time had TV sets. But radio was still the predominant form of mass entertainment and communication across the US since the content of television lacked variety and sophistication. On the radio I listened to 10-to-15-minute comedy sketches of Fibber McGee and Molly and the crime sleuth series, The Shadow. Dave McElhatton (KCBS radio) read the comics of the San Francisco Chronicle. The highlight for me was hearing the ongoing saga of Prince Valiant. However, I became a devotee (at five years old) of the very first animated children’s TV program (1950) called “Crusader Rabbit.” It consisted of 4-minute satirical stories, each with its own title, strung together to create a series.

I grew less fond of TV as it became ubiquitous. I couldn’t adequately articulate my dislike of TV. So, my father introduced me to “foreign” films and regional community theater when I was ten. Films like The Red Balloon, Mon Oncle (My Uncle), Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, Wee Geordie and Tight Little Island informed my puberty and in high school my first boyfriend introduced me to Japanese Cinema and Akira Kurosawa. To this day I love samurai/kung fu movies and popcorn when I just need to be mindless. Here is Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa.

But it was in June of 1963, shortly after graduating from high school, that I first heard “Bert and I.” “Bert and I” is a collection of relatively short stories (4-20 minutes long) told by Marshall Dodge and Robert Bryan, both Yale graduates, that chronicled the dry humor and quirkiness of the traditional folk of “Down East” Maine, told in a Maine accent. Dodge, the “I”, and Bryan, the “Bert” (Bryan was pastor-pilot that flew to settlements in western Quebec to collect stories and preach the good word) did extensive cultural and story research for “Bert and I” which was syndicated and published and introduced the regionally distinct Maine accent to the world. I am still moved by the dry hilarity of down east humor.

It was the success of “Bert and I” that inspired Garrison Keillor to create the famous Lake Wobegon series that started on radio in 1974. The weekly stories from “Prairie Home Companion” became a national phenomenon of self-deprecating Minnesotans that overestimated their capacities and qualities. At first, I found it funny, but after a while I began to feel uncomfortable hearing the contrived humor and put-downs of ordinary folks that flowed from Keillor’s story writing.

In 1997 Berns and I moved to Bellingham, WA, 25 miles south of the Canadian border, and discovered we could receive CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation), Radio One, from Victoria, BC in addition to CBC TV via cable. Every morning we would listen weekdays to Julie Nusrallah (a Canadian mezzo-soprano) host her classical music show, “TEMPO” on CBC Radio One. Forgetting that it was a weekend, I tuned into CBC and heard a man named Stuart McClean telling a story about Dave and Morley and their two kids, on a program called “the Vinyl Café.” I laughed until my eyes teared up. It became a Sunday morning ritual for me and Berns to listen to Vinyl Café.

It was unlike any other radio or TV program I’d ever encountered. And it was the first time I began to understand that relatively short oral stories (and some lengthy ones) could bring warmth and laughter into hundreds of thousands of lives, via radio. Years later I discovered that McClean’s unique storytelling style resulted from his efforts at overcoming a severe stutter in his childhood.

In format, Vinyl Café was a musical variety show with performances that ranged from famous Canadian performers like the McGarrigle Sisters, Gordon Lightfoot and Buffy St. Marie to local performers of the towns and cities to which the Vinyl Café production team traveled. The team consisted of researchers that spent a week ahead of the production crew, interviewing local residents to glean stories about the town, its history and notable citizens. McClean took that research and created stories that became part of the performance with the live local audience often laughing the hardest and loudest when they heard Stuart McClean tell it to all of Canada (and northern US states that could receive the programs). Within the 21-year life of the Vinyl Café there are over 400 episodes (the first in the US was via KUOW of Seattle). One episode actually took place on board the dome observation car of the transcontinental passenger train, The Canadian, replete with a live audience. Sadly, Stuart McClean died in 2016 of melanoma. All of Canada mourned, flags lowered to half-staff for a week.

What McClean did was weave together the various stories of the extremely diverse cultures of Canada, (Quebecois, Athabascan, Iroquois, Inuit, Italian, Scottish, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Parsi, Buddhist…), and did so in ways that allowed people to laugh at their humanity. McClean said “I have no agenda to spark…I just think there should be a conversation. We have something to learn from each other – we’re very different.” Canada’s favorite fictional family– Dave, Morley their kids, friends and neighbors–became the template to break down cultural isolation and barriers in the long process of assimilation in whatever form that would take and celebrated the tapestry of Canadian life without pompousness or divisiveness. And this is why, I’m now realizing, I am in class learning to tell my stories, thanks to all of you! I leave you with a Christmas story. 

The Power of Storytelling by Nereyda Martinez

On September 10th, 2019, my husband forced me to get out of the house to attend a workshop. It was a workshop held by a nonprofit for its sponsors. My husband had become a Sponsor by providing photography and videography for this nonprofit, so we were invited.

At that point in my life, I couldn’t think clearly. I was in what you would call survival mode. My daughter, who was my second child, was nine months old. I had hardly left the house since having her. I was overwhelmed with now caring for two children while supporting my husband in his growing business. The last thing I wanted to do was get out of my house and talk to strangers. He didn’t even tell me what it was! I basically went in blindfolded.

Well, what do you know? It was such a gift to speak and connect with other adults. We were told to tell stories. I ended up telling a story about how my marriage almost came to an end during my pregnancy with my daughter and how I realized all the work it’s going to take to keep our marriage thriving. It felt SO good to be able to share that part of my life and for the listener to be able to relate. I was also in awe listening to the teller who I partnered with. She told a story of bravery and strength as she had complications after giving birth. I was so moved by this experience.

That was the day I first met Liz Warren. On September 10th, 2019. I had no idea that in December of 2022, three years later, I would be taking my third Storytelling class, Fact-Based Stories. Storytelling has become such an important part of my life, but I never realized it until finally taking my first class with Liz, herself.

You see, I realized, as mothers, we need to share our stories and listen to stories of fellow mothers. This is how we normalize the hard stuff. This is how we connect and don’t feel so lonely through the ups and downs of motherhood. So here I am three years later using social media platforms and mom circles to share stories with other mothers.

And after taking Personal Storytelling, The Art of Storytelling and now Fact-Based Stories, I have become so empowered and motivated to strengthen my skills. Why? Because through these classes, I have witnessed first-hand the impact others’ stories have on us and the power of connecting with others who may have been considered strangers initially but soon after listening to their stories, have become people I deeply care about. They are now people who I see for who they are and have such a loving appreciation for what they’ve lived. They are people whose stories have left an everlasting impact on me. 

That is the power of Storytelling. 

(The image at the top shows Nereyda at the first workshop she attended holding her daughter.)

Mind Your Ps and Cs by Diana Dinshaw

School was a struggle for me. Science, history, literature, geography – you name the subject I struggled. The only subject I did well in was math. I loved theorems. They were logical and there was structure to it. So, when I signed up for fact-based storytelling, I was having flashbacks to history class in school and having to memorize facts that I could not relate to. I should have known better; this was storytelling.

Stories like theorems have structure and sequence and I found myself using the well-known Five Ps story structures to craft my fact-based story. Then I read ‘The Art of the Tale: Story-Telling and History Teaching’ by  David Kennedy.  While reading this I found myself drawing a parallel between the five Cs in addition to the setting that make a good  historical story; Characterization, Connections, Conflict, Change, and Catharsis, and Donald Davis/LynnAnn Wojciechowicz, Five Ps of storytelling; People, Place, Problem, Progress, and Point.

People - Characterization

The first comparison of Characterization and People is quite straightforward. Most of our history is about people. Even when the focus of our fact-based story is a particular event in history, like the Civil Rights movement, the Great Depression, or the Suffrage movement, there are characters who play a role in making the story move forward.

Place - (Context)

David Kennedy in his article has setting of the story in addition to the five Cs. To keep with the iteration of using the letter C I would suggest Context. Where and when the story took place gives cultural and social context to the story that may not have to be explicitly described in the story.

Problem - Conflict

Then of course there is the Conflict or Problem. Again, an easy comparison. The word conflict is used interchangeably with problem when crafting a story. Without conflict we would not have history.

Progress - Catharsis/Change

Kennedy draws the distinction between stories and history in that stories have a happy ending, and a historical narrative may not end in favor of the character that the listener is rooting for. I believe he has misunderstood the meaning of what we storytellers consider Progress in the story structure. Progress means change and bringing the story to a satisfying end. Even though the story may start with "Once upon a time" it doesn't always end with "happily ever after". Storytellers see that so often in myths. When Hades kidnaps Persephone the story doesn’t end with Persephone living happily ever after with Demeter, her mother. But knowing that mother and daughter will be together for half the year brings catharsis to the listeners and resolves the problem.

Point - Connection

This was the hardest comparison for me but after reading again what Kennedy meant by connection it was quite simple to see how that relates to the point of the story. Kennedy in his article states that there are two ways he considers connection. The first is the connection of the character’s story in context to what is happening in history and the second is the connection of characters with other characters in the story. How often have we as storytellers have asked ourselves, “Why do I want to tell this story?” It is the connection we have to the character, the event or how the characters relate to each other is what makes us want to tell the story.  In other words, it is the point of the story that compels us to tell it.

Thomas Carlyle a Scottish historian said, “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” I would add to this “and women.”

I wonder if I would have enjoyed history as much as I enjoyed math if David Kennedy had been my history teacher.

(The picture in the blog is an open-source picture from pixaby.)

Gwion Tells

I had a dream last night about the Welsh cauldron goddess, Cerridwen, and her two sons. It reminded me of this poem I wrote several years ago about the son who became Taliesin, the greatest of the Welsh bards.

Gwion Tells

Cerridwen had a daughter

A beauty from the start

But her son was so ugly

It almost broke her heart

(He wasn’t a bad or evil guy, just so horrible in appearance that only Cerridwen could bear to look at him.  After I’d worked there for awhile, I got used to him. It was Cerridwen I was afraid of.)

Cerridwen gathered flowers

She gathered dark and light

She spoke her words of power

To make a brew of might

(Gwion Bach – Official Assistant to Herself, aka cauldron boy. Ok - I was the stirrer.  All day.  Every day. For a year and a day. Terrified every minute)

Cerridwen filled her cauldron

With water, earth, and sun

She brewed a wisdom potion

To redeem her monstrous son

(The idea was that this potion would give her son all knowledge, all wisdom – enlightenment.  I don’t know why someone with her power didn’t just make him better looking, but this was what she came up with.)

Cerridwen’s cauldron simmered

I stirred if faithfully

But the wisdom meant for her son

Was all consumed by me

(Accidentally, of course.  I’d been stirring for the year and the day when the nasty stuff spurted up and burned my thumb, I stuck my thumb in my mouth, and well, then I knew everything - seasons, elements, dualities and their resolution, life, death, this world and the next.  And I knew that Cerridwen knew.)

Cerridwen knew my habit

I knew I would be found

I changed into a rabbit

She chased me as a hound

(It was great.  I thought, “I wish I was a rabbit,” and well, then I was!)

Cerridwen was an otter

When I became a fish

I rose up as a swallow

A hawk was then her wish

(If I hadn’t been so scared I would have stayed a fish.  The water was cool and like dense supportive air, only it was, you know – wet.  But so beautiful)

Cerridwen was close on me

A fearsome bird of prey

I changed into a grain of wheat

And fell into the hay

(I really think I could have outrun her if I’d been more familiar with my powers.  Each one was more astonishing, more amazing than the last.  Except for the grain of wheat idea.   Its consciousness was so, well plantlike, that it just didn’t occur to me – as a grain of wheat – to be afraid anymore.)

Cerridwen was a chicken

A-scratching in the hay

She swallowed up my wheat grain.

It was the first of May.

(And so there I sat for nine long months.  Actually, I kept transforming.  From wheat grain to tadpole to a fish again, floating in Cerridwen's ocean.  And then a bird, a mammal, and then I was born again – a baby boy!)

Cerridwen meant to kill me

When first she saw my face

But when she looked upon me

She saw my radiant grace

(She just couldn’t do it. She really wasn’t the type to destroy life needlessly.  It was just that she had been so angry and disappointed when I had received the dose of blessed enlightenment that was meant to redeem her poor afflicted son.  But now I was her son too.)

Cerridwen took a crane skin

And sewed me in it tight

She placed me in the river

At the kiss of morning light

(Well, most people know what happened after that.  I floated, just as I was until next May Day Eve and then I got caught in poor Elfin’s weir.  When he opened the crane skin coracle and saw me glowing in there he said, “Would you look at the radiant brow on this kid!” Which in Welsh is Taliesin – radiant brow that is - and that was my name ever after. I saved Elfin and his family and became the greatest bard who ever lived. But . . .)

Cerridwen was my mother

I owe her my tongue’s skill

She refined me with her cauldron

She turned me in her mill

 

Cerridwen was my mother

She gave me second birth

And through her matrix I became

A bard of highest worth

 

Cerridwen was my mother

Though I feared her at the start

She still resides within me

In my changeless inmost heart.

 

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

 

It’s the Storytellers Who Will Save the World By Karen Burns

“Everyone wants to know that their life has meaning.” Andrew Stanton

Immediately after the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001, the horror of the images and the stories that emerged were either devastating or inspiring. There wasn’t time to mourn immediately, there was too much need. The world rushed to offer help in any way they could. But I couldn’t get to New York. And what would I have offered if I could have made it? I came to the conclusion that my job, my life, was trivial.

I’ve always primarily been a dancer. As lovely as that is, no one NEEDS a pirouette when lives are being destroyed all around. I was appalled at my silly, insipid choice of career. It was fun, but quite unimportant. In 2001 I was a new dance professor at Chandler Gilbert and Mesa Community Colleges, and married with two daughters, who were a tiny four and five years old. But I needed to help New York! I raised and donated funds, my girls had a lemonade stand for the NYFD. It wasn’t enough. I was grasping at straws at how to comfort a city across a continent, and completely ignoring what was right In front of me asking for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or how to do a pirouette. It all seemed so trivial, just a drop in the bucket of what could actually make a difference.

In hindsight, I see that raising people to be responsible citizens and teaching anything, is not trivial. But, just by questioning the usefulness of dance led me to an article in the New York Times about the global sense of uselessness following September 11. I remember only one thing from that article: “It’s the trivial that makes us glad to be alive, so go to the movies, the theatre, concerts, dance, sing, listen and tell the stories that move your soul.” I’ve been pondering this thought since 2001. And I firmly believe this to be true. Well, dance is trivial and a luxury, but it is a storytelling art form that brings wonder and delight and a break from the disappointments around us. Just like storytelling in any art form. This is how we hold on to our humanity in light of the worst parts of living.

After the New York Times article, I started listening to my students with more empathy and encouraging them to tell their own stories in any way they could. I began, at first very quietly, telling them my own stories of struggle and the one success in my choices. As a choreographer I try to create a story that is inspired by the music, which means we tell the songwriters story with bodies. Our stories told in class; mine, theirs, and the music’s, brought us all much closer and ultimately changed us all by the end of that semester. I remain close to so many of my students from the last 21 years. That semester was not trivial. It was vital, for all of us. As storytellers we speak for the human spirit. Even though I wasn’t a first responder on 9/11, I know choosing the creative arts is not trivial, it’s essential.

(I started teaching Casey (pictured at the top of the post) to play the piano when he was 5. I had to tell stories about the music to get him motivated to read music. It worked. He’s 20 now and starring on Broadway telling Cameron Crowe’s story in the musical Almost Famous. This photo is from 10/13/2022. I actually made it to New York.)

Step Out On A Cliff by Louis Soto

Stories for millennia have imparted something special to their listeners. Some call this wisdom, some call it history, while others call it archetypes. Archetypes are small pieces of information that our brain absorbs through the use of symbols. This is done by listening to a story and visually painting images that create scenarios that inform us to understand the particulars of human nature. To some extent, we also achieve these through empathizing with the characters of a story and their trials.

Through this process, we can understand how storytelling can be a useful tool in everyday life. Giving us the potential to create scenarios that might solve some of our dilemmas. For this reason, storytelling is important to me, as it should move you to see the importance for you and the possibilities to help you on this journey called life. This is what this blog post is about – the effects that storytelling can have. Nothing in my academic understanding prepared me to go through a transformation in thought, feeling, and interaction with the world. I asked myself how did storytelling do this?

They don’t tell you that stories imbed themselves in you. They don’t tell you that through your exploration of telling them, you have consequently lived through the eyes, and life experiences of another culture or person. This might sound like a fantasy but as fantastic as stories can be they are based on simple situations that we all find ourselves in. You just don’t know it, but I call to you, step out as if you were on a cliff for the first time, and know that it will be okay, if you are worried or scared or maybe have some doubts about what a story can do for you. I promise you that only beautiful self-discoveries await.

Stories have changed me. In times of sadness, they have caused me to perk up and live. Through times of stress, they have taken me to different times and places that have allowed me to think clearly once again. In times of trial, they have opened doors to solutions. Remember that throughout history stories have been used by all civilizations. Reminding us that what we experience is universal, and if others have yet to experience what you have, you have the power to tell it so that we as a collective may learn from it. All this is available to you if you care to listen, or maybe you care to tell one. Whatever calls to you, you will find something special in storytelling.

The picture at the top, "Man standing on a pillar of kaibab limestore on the rim of the canyon near grandview point. Grca 14738. Circa 1899," can be found here. 

Rules of Thumb Aren’t Rules by Matthew Knotts

When I worked in corporate learning, the rule of thumb was that each 23 minute module took an average of 67 hours to develop (td.org) when you factor in research, interview, development, editing, reviews and production. A Facebook livestream group revealed that each 30 to 45 minute episode takes a month to prepare (brianhonigman.com). So when you see a storyteller take the stage for a 10 minute story, consider the work that occurred before that moment.

I recently prepared a story for the Annual Gathering of The Labyrinth Society. I wanted to bring a story that audience members may not be familiar with, so I started by searching online for ‘folktale labyrinth.’ Google returned 311,000 results, the majority of which dealt with Theseus and the Minotaur. It is a great story to be sure, but also one well-known. So I started searching for alternate words. I searched specific cultures for references to labyrinths. After several hours, I discovered the Icelandic word for labyrinth, völundarhús, which translates to Wayland’s house. In addition, I found a paragraph summary of the Poetic Edda, a 13th century collection of Norse narrative poems, part of which chronicles the life of Wayland. 

This was the spark I needed. After many more hours of searching, I had a copy of the stanzas with an English translation as well as a second document from the 14th century with a different version of the tale. However, there was much more work to be done. How could I condense an epic saga into a 10 minute story? So I began the work of crafting - determining what was important, what elements of each version contributed to the images and the narrative, what precious details I would have to set aside for time. 

I told the story over and over to myself and also to my husband, continually editing the outline I use as guideposts to navigate the story. I then told it to a class at South Mountain Community College for more feedback. What worked well? Were you able to follow the complicated tale? What could I lose to shave off an additional 60 seconds? I will be telling this story to The Labyrinth Society in just over a week. My time on stage will be around 11 minutes. I would estimate that it took me approximately 60 hours of work to bring this story to life. 

Now, I don’t want to scare you off of storytelling. Not every story is this deep or complex. Stories that are well-known or well-researched can come together much faster. This week I’m telling a fact-based story about Nicolai de Raylan. His life and death were documented in newspaper articles, and his story was rediscovered in 2018. Having reliable sources and focusing on the period following his death, the research was quick. Following the chronology of events limited the amount of crafting necessary. This 6-minute story will come together with only 4 hours of preparation. 

So a rule of thumb is just that. Every story and every storyteller is different. With experience, I  will learn which research rabbit holes to dive into and which I need to crawl out of. And most importantly, I have learned that one of the most important drivers for a story is a deadline.

Telling Stories Ethically by Liz Warren

How do you go about finding a story to craft and tell that is both right for you as a storyteller and ethical for you as a person in this time and place?

Selecting the story is the first and most important step in telling a story. The bottom line is this: Choose stories that you like. Really like. Ones that jump in your head and that you know you will be able to tell.  When you learn a story that you have a genuine affection for, it’s much easier to imagine telling it. There is no point in putting in the effort to learn and hone a story that you don’t like.

Beyond that, think about these things:

• Do you have a specific audience or context in mind? Do you want to tell in a meeting at work, at your church, in your child’s classroom, to a friend over coffee? All those things will influence which story you choose and when you tell it.
• Do you have the right to tell the story?

Thinking through whether you have the right to tell a story ensures that you don’t engage in cultural appropriation. Here is the Storytelling Institute’s statement on cultural appropriation: The SMCC Storytelling Institute asks that you be mindful of cultural appropriation as you select stories to tell. Please choose stories that are from your ancestry, cultural tradition, or regional heritage when you can. If you do choose a story from a tradition other than your own, please do the research to ensure you can tell it respectfully and responsibly.

Since the beginning of the Storytelling Institute, the faculty have stressed the importance of respecting the ethics that frame the telling of stories, both from one’s own ancestry and from cultures other than one’s own.  If anything, the need for that ethical orientation is even more important today than it was when we started the Institute 20+ years ago. Cultural appropriation, or mis-appropriation, “is the adoption of an element or elements of one culture by members of another culture. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from disadvantaged minority cultures." (Wikipedia(Links to an external site.) It happens in storytelling, music, fashion, dance, and food to name a few. For example, Kim Kardashian was called out a couple of years ago for wearing dreads to a fashion show in Paris. Alison Roman, a food writer for the New York Times, had her column suspended for her unwarranted criticism of two women of color, and was subsequently also deeply criticized for appropriating ethnic recipes without acknowledging their origin.

While cultural appropriation is most problematic when members of a dominant group take from one with less perceived power, in storytelling we apply it more broadly.  We ask that you very carefully consider the stories you tell, and when you can, choose ones from your own ancestry.  The point of this is not to stifle you, but to help you prepare yourself to work with stories responsibly in and out of class, and especially if you ever plan to tell the story in a public or professional context.

And there is some middle ground. Educators and librarians at all levels of education often have the obligation of presenting stories from cultures not their own to meet the objectives or standards of the course. In a classroom setting both beginning storytelling students and faculty members work with and tell stories from a range of cultures that they may or may not be affiliated with. The point of this is to provide exposure to the beauty and diversity of the world’s storytelling tradition. While you are learning, it’s okay to experiment with the stories you like, whether they are from your own heritage(s) or not.  But if you think you might ever tell the story you learned in class in a professional or public context, you will want to engage in deeper research to make sure that you can tell it with respect.

One of the Storytelling Institute's mentors, renowned storyteller Donald Davis, has said that we can tell any story that we can demonstrate to our audience that we have a deep connection to.  To start a story, “My ancestors came from Chiapas, and this is a story my grandmother used to tell me,” would make such a connection very clearly. But we don’t always have a personal or familial relationship with the stories we want to tell.

So, if you find a Bantu story in an anthology, take some time to research the Bantu before you tell it.  Same for the Irish, or the Korean, or the Aztec. What is the landscape like? Where do the people live? What is their social structure like? Why do they tell this story? How are the names pronounced? Can you tell the story respectfully and accurately? Can you integrate that information into the story to bring it to life? The more we can know about a tradition, through consistent and respectful research and experience, the better and more relevant our telling will be.

The exception to this is the telling of Native-American stories by non-natives. For those of us living in the Southwest, respecting the ethics of telling Native-American stories is an ethical, artistic, and human imperative. There are very few, if any, contexts in which it is appropriate for a Non-Native person to tell a Native-American story.  In general, just don’t do it.  Dovie Thomason addresses this in more depth in the “How to Tell a Folktale” chapter from The Oral Tradition Today.

So, what do you do if you fall in love with a story from a people you aren’t related to? The easy answer is to respect the thing you love! Do your due diligence to determine if you can tell the story at all, or what research you need to do to tell it respectfully.  The good news is that thousands of folktale types have been documented and have local variants pretty much wherever there are humans. For example, there are hundreds of versions of Cinderella, each reflecting the culture they occur in, told all over the world. If you recognize or can find the folktale type to which the story belongs, you may then find a similar story from a culture you can tell from. 

To summarize:

• Do choose stories that you really like and can imagine yourself telling.
• Try to choose stories from your own ancestry and heritages.
• Don’t tell Native American stories if you aren’t Native American.
• When you do choose a story outside your cultural heritage, do some research to make sure you can tell it responsibly. Start by making sure you can pronounce the names and know where it is on a map.

The picture at the top is of Kyle Mitchell, Diné (Navajo), telling the story of The Hero Twins. Kyle wove together Diné creation myths with his own experiences as a veteran to create a story that touched on subjects that affect all warriors in time of war.

How to Create a Story by Liz Warren

Stories are things we make.

Most of us don’t have stories. We have memories and experiences that we shape into stories. It’s similar to how home-made baked goods don’t just spontaneously appear on our kitchen counters. We have to assemble the ingredients, follow a recipe, and bake them ourselves. 

Same with stories.

The questions below are designed to help you think through the process of building a story to tell other people face-to-face, in real time and to make a difference by doing so.

Why are you creating a story? For any of these, is there a theme, a focus, a requirement, a season?

• An assignment?
• A performance?
• A family event?
• A work event?
• Other?

What do you have?

• A memory?
• An emotion?
• A photograph?
• An upheaval?
• A moment of humor or embarrassment?
• An unexpected outcome?
• A pertinent experience?
• Something nagging at the back of your mind?

Whatever you have, begin to examine it.

For personal and family stories:

• Roll it around in your mind.
• What are you feeling?
• Who is there?
• Where are you?
• What happened before the memory that you started with?
• What happened after the memory?
• Is there back story on the moment, the people?
• Why is this moment the one you remember?
• What does this moment have to do with the change the story documents?

 For traditional stories:

• What drew you to the story?
• Why do you want to tell it?
• Is it from your cultural or ancestral heritage?
• If not, how will you prepare yourself to tell the story responsibly?
• What part of your life or experience does the story connect to or reflect?

 For fact-based stories:

• What drew you to the subject?
• Why do you want to tell it?
• Do you have enough information to put the story together?
• Do you have too much information? How will you make it a story instead of a lecture?

Go deeper. For any type of story, what more do you need to know?

• Are there family and friends you might want to talk to about the memory/story?
• Do you need to do additional research on the subject of your story?
• Do you need to do additional research on the cultural tradition of your story?
• Do you need to go deeper with your own memories and emotions?

 Begin telling the story.

• It doesn’t have to be finished, ready, or perfect. Just start talking about it to other people.
• Notice where it flows and where it doesn’t.
• Notice where you feel the energy and where you get stuck.
• Notice where your listeners light up, or where they look confused.
• Ask them what they liked or what they want to know more about.
• Let it start to get its shape through telling rather than writing.

 Do a structure check.

• Stories are narrative forms that document change. Does your story do that? Are things different at the end of the story than they were at the beginning?
• If you are telling a traditional story, the structure is already there, but you may want to “book-end” the story with your own personal experience, or to connect with the audience.
• Use a simple story structure to confirm for yourself that you have all the elements of a story.
  • The Five Ps, The Inverted World, How Something Came to Be, or Challenge/Choice/Outcome.
  • Think through your story with the different structures, as they have different emotional lenses and can help reveal part of your story you may not have thought of.
• Is it a big story? Use the hero’s journey model to think through the elements of a longer story.
• Is the story built around moments in time that listeners can “see?”

 Build the engagement potential of the story.

• Dialogue: Include people speaking to each other instead of reporting speech.
• Senses: How did it look, taste, feel, sound, what was the texture or temperature?
• Vivid imagery: Base the critical incidents of the story in specific moments that you can take your listeners to through your description.
• Beginning and ending: Build them intentionally and know them well.
• Need a quick fix for the ending? Can you answer any of these questions for your memory?
  • “After that I always . . .”
  • “After that I never . . .”
  • “That’s how I learned . . .”
  • “From that day on . . .”
• Emotional resolution: Do you know what the story means? Are you ready to tell it?

Adding the “Art” part.

• Universal aesthetic principles such as balance, contrast, rhythm and harmony are as relevant to storytelling and its appreciation as to any other art form.
• How do the parts of your story relate to the whole in terms of duration and structure?
• Is there something symbolic or metaphoric that deepens the story that you can artfully weave throughout it?
• Is there an emotional resonance or tone you want to achieve by incorporating specific language, or color, sound, texture, etc.?
• Is there a line or stanza of poetry that captures something about this story? Can you incorporate it somehow? The beginning or end? Maybe to punctuate the transitions in the story?
• How about a lyric or song?

 Don’t memorize – learn your story – and tell it as often as you can.

• Make a story board.
• Tell it to yourself like a movie in your head to root the images in your consciousness.
• If you need to write, use bullet points, not full text. *See below for more on why.
• Know exactly how you want to begin and end – the middle will usually flow. (Ok, maybe do memorize that part!)
• Tell/practice the story as often as you can with real people.
  • Storytelling is a relational art form – telling it to the mirror doesn’t include the “relating” part.
• Start paying attention to the length of the story. Do you need to add or cut?
• Stand when you tell/practice to let the story get into your whole body. Let the story inform your gestures and facial expressions.
• The goal is to feel comfortable with the story so you can be outer directed (towards your listeners) as opposed to inner-focused (trying to remember the story and/or deal with anxiety).

 Tell the story!

• Commit to enjoying yourself.
• Know as much as you can about the event to prepare yourself: the audience, the setting, the sponsors, the other tellers, the purpose, etc.
• Remember, connecting with your listeners is the goal, not perfection.
• Also remember – it’s a process. Every time you tell your story you will learn something about it and/or yourself. Your story will continue to develop as you tell it over time.

 After telling:

• Wherever you told the story, always try to take time to reflect on the experience.
• If you are in class, take careful note of the affirmations you receive. Don’t discount them. Your listeners are helping you embrace the things you do well. What did you learn from the rest of the feedback that you might want to use to further develop your story?
• Notice what went the way you planned and what didn’t.
• If you left something out, did it really need to be there?
• Did you add something you hadn’t planned? Will you keep that part?
• If you were telling in public, how did it feel? What feedback did you get from the audience?

*Why Develop a Story Orally? As educated people we’ve been trained to rely on reading and writing for our professional and academic tasks. It can be hard to break that pattern when thinking about how to craft a story orally before writing it. One of the drawbacks of writing your story first, is that given our academic training, it’s more likely to come out like an essay with a thesis, supporting points and a conclusion. An essay is a hierarchical form that is meant to inform and in which the speaker is establishing authority. A story is a horizontal form that is meant to engage, and in which the teller is establishing relationships between themselves and the listeners and between the listeners and the story.  When you can, taking the time to develop a story out loud with other people often results in stories that are more rounded and that sound more like you.

Organizing Stories by Rhonda Brewer

We all spend so much time working on our stories.  We all have our own process that includes some variation of the following..  A story must be chosen (or it chooses us); multiple versions must be researched;  an organizer has to be created; the story needs to be crafted; multiple dry runs to family and friends are required; and then, finally, it is ready for the official telling. Although this is a lot of work, for most storytellers, it is a labor of love. 

The story becomes part of us-a treasure to be occasionally brought out, dusted off and retold.  Treasure hunting is fun-deciphering a map, looking for clues, digging through stuff until, finally, we find the treasure. However, most storytellers want to spend their time crafting and telling stories-not looking for them!

It is important to create some sort of organizational system that allows us to very quickly find our stories.  In our early storytelling classes, we were required to create a repertoire of our stories. I religiously completed this assignment and even added story ideas I have yet to craft.  I was very thorough. 

Although I saw the need to provide specific information on each story, I quickly realized what I really needed was a way to quickly access the storyboard and audio recording for each story.  This led me to create my own system. As part of my process, I create a storyboard for each story-usually using the Five P approach.  Limiting myself to eight squares I draw the story.  Because drawing is not my gift, the drawings are very simple-stick figures and preschool-inspired trees. However, I always color my storyboards. I find the more color I use, the clearer and more detailed the story becomes in my head.  Finally, I take a picture of the storyboard. Then I use a recording app on my phone to record the story.  I play it over and over until I have learned it. Often, I make multiple recordings because I need to add details or rearrange some events. But I only save the latest recording.

Currently I create a folder for each class I take and then create a sub-folder for each story.   The picture of the storyboard and audio recording are saved in the sub folder. For example, I have a folder called STO 295. Inside is a sub-folder called The Mexican Fisherman. Inside the sub-folder is the picture of the Mexican Fisherman storyboard and the audio recording.  This allows me to search for the story by class and title.  As I find opportunities to tell publicly, I will modify the labeling system to include the venue, organization, and date.

Considering the amount of time and love we give our stories, it is important to keep them safe and accessible.  I hope my method encourages you to create the system that makes the most sense to you.

Practicum by Mindy Tarquini

prac·ti·cum

/ˈpraktəkəm/

noun

NORTH AMERICAN

noun: practicum; plural noun: practicums

1. a practical section of a course of study.

Practicum, from the Latin practicus is a practical training or application of a skill learned over time. I went to school to become an ultrasound technologist, with plenty of practice and learning on my fellow students, but the real test of my incipient abilities was when I was thrown into the world to ‘practice’ those skills on live patients. My practicum was closely supervised. To the best of my knowledge, nothing I did hurt or killed anyone.

Phew.

Now I’m doing a practicum for my storytelling skills. Fifteen hours of telling in the community is required. Not fifteen tellings, fifteen HOURS. That means I could spend days researching and crafting and practicing for a six minute story, and I can list SIX minutes on my tally.

Six minutes.

I took ten years to write the first novel I got published. Note the difference. Not my first novel. The first novel I got published. That first published novel was the fourth novel I’d written. Six years, two more published novels, and a variety of smaller works, later, crafting a written story has become second nature.

Crafting a story for telling, rather than reading, is a little different. For one thing, I don’t get 80,000 words to tell my story. If I’m lucky, I get eight minutes. Those eight minutes have to demonstrate every turning I craft into my 80,000 words. I have six minutes to tell a story for The Storyline Slam at Changing Hands. I did the math. That gives me 5.5 seconds to hit every one of the sixty-four turnings I consider essential to a complete and cohesive storyline. Five point five seconds.

Nobody told me telling stories would involve so much math.

Though I am working on my last class and my last semester for the South Mountain Storytelling Institute’s certificate program, I won’t be walking with my fellow storytellers this May. I’m not extroverted nor organized enough to craft and tell fifteen hours at various venues outside of my classroom in one semester. So I’ll be working on this the rest of the year, through the summer during my writer-in-residency at Tempe Public Library, and on into the autumn and winter.

The Storyline Slam is my first time telling on a live stage since the pandemic’s start. And a hundred lifetimes ahead of the shaky, terror-stricken mess-of-a-teller who stood up in my first class and told a story in front of my fellow students for the first time.

Wish me luck.

(That first story was titled The Old Woman Who Wanted to Cheat Death. The story involved chicken feathers. The story I’ve crafted for The Storyline Slam involves weed.)

Onward.

Mindy Tarquini is the author of three award-winning and critically acclaimed novels that feature fables, foibles, fairytales, pandemics, past lives & lost loves. Find Mindy and her stories at www.MindyTarquini.com

Saturday Morning - Blog by Diana Dinshaw

Have you ever had a morning where your mind is fully awake and your body is saying, “I am not ready to get up”?

Well that is the kind of morning I had this past Saturday and after I had made all kinds of lists in my mind while I lay in bed very still, I realized that I did not have a story to run through in my head. It’s like the feeling you get the morning after final exams. Don’t get me wrong. While I love crafting and telling stories it was a relief to have a break.

Most mornings I will wake up and have a part of a story that I am working on, running through my head. It may be a part that I am not happy with and am still working out. Or it may be a part that I have crafted and really like the choice of words and want to make sure I remember to say it just that way. Sometimes it is seeing if there is a repetition that can be structured. And sometimes it may be more than one story depending on what events are coming up. But on Saturday morning when I woke up there was nothing.

I had ideas for two stories but had not started my story cycle yet. When I work on a story it starts with the thought, “I want to tell this story” and most times at that initial stage I don’t know the “why”. But over the years I have learned that if a story wants to be told I need to listen and start preparing for it. 

Research: My process for folktales, myth/legends and fact-based stories starts with research. Are there other versions of the story? What details do I want to include in my version? For fact-based stories the research is more intense and time consuming. Personal stories don’t need the traditional way of doing research but research may be needed to support or give context to a detail in the story. Growing up when I was told the story of how I was named the information given was that I got really sick a few days after I was born and had to be taken to the hospital. I asked a friend of mine, who is a pediatrician, what the “really sick” may have looked like given the circumstances of my birth so I could add that detail in my story.

Craft and Learn: For me these two steps go hand in hand. Once I have a fair amount of material I start crating the story. Depending on the type of story I will use a story structure that fits. I will confess that the String of Pearls structure is my favorite structure to use for personal stories. As I am crafting it I start learning the story organically. I like to storyboard the story drawing each scene on a separate piece of paper. This helps me to change the order of events, if I need to, as I am crafting the story. I also learn the story by saying parts of it to myself on my walk. Especially the parts I am struggling with and more often than not I will find the word/phrase or what to move in the story before I get home.  This is a never-ending process and could be a loop in itself.

Tell: Finally, it is time to tell the story to an audience. But this is not the end of the process. Based on the feedback and questions the process starts again with doing the research to find the answer to the question(s), seeing where that would best fit into the story, learning the piece and then retelling the story.

And the cycle starts again.

So now you can understand why I was relieved when my mind was blank and there wasn’t a story running through my head while I lay in bed Saturday morning!

From Storytelling to Healing by Roxanne de la Rosa

I still have so much to learn about myself as a storyteller but through the experiences I’ve had, storytelling has felt very freeing for me. It has become an outlet for me to express myself and who I am as a person in a way that I never could before. Telling stories onstage is a feeling like no other. I recently told a story for Storytellers Project and I was so engrossed in my story that I lost track of time. It was truly a feeling I had not felt before; it felt like the story flowed out of me and it was as if the story deepened within me.

I rehearsed my story in front of an Arizona Republic coach before telling at the Storytellers Project and I received feedback on my story. My story was about how I struggled to accept myself and my struggle to speak Spanish growing up. I wasn’t sure if the feedback would improve my story, but I wanted to try it. The reaction I received at my next rehearsal when I integrated the suggestions by the coach were met with smiles and laughter. I was very pleasantly surprised, and I felt so much gratitude for the feedback. While receiving feedback from the coach he shared a personal story about his struggle to speak Spanish as well and he gave me an idea. I was able to incorporate it into my story which helped make my story even more meaningful. I feel that there is an exchange of energy when we tell and share stories even when we are just rehearsing them. Storytelling makes me feel connected to the people around me in a way that is truly unique.

Another aspect of being able to produce Storytellers Project is that I have the opportunity to help coach people through telling their own stories. A couple of the tellers were so nervous, and I was able to help and provide reassurance and guidance while coaching them. This felt immensely rewarding to be able to give back and seeing the reaction from the audience after hearing the tellers was an indescribable feeling of joy for me. I realized that I love coaching and helping tellers bring their stories to life. It feels just as good to help someone with their story as it does to tell.

Through sharing and telling stories I feel it can be used to chip away at some of the preconceived ideas and stereotypes we may each carry within us. As a budding journalist, storytelling is a way to add another layer of meaning into my work. I know the skills I have gained in Storytelling courses will only help me become a better listener and journalist. Storytelling can be used as a tool to break down barriers and misconceptions we may think about others without even recognizing them. Structuring and connecting the dots of my life to share my stories has healed me and helped me process some of the challenges I have faced in my life. Storytelling has become my therapy.

Cootie Catcher: Sparking stories and breaking ice by Bryce Barraza

A ‘cootie catcher,’ a story prompt, and a group of strangers walk into a room…

No, this is not the start of an ill-attempted joke. This actually happened… and it was fun!

In February of 2022, I had the opportunity to attend a workshop titled, “Playing for Keeps,” facilitated through the South Mountain Community College Storytelling Institute. The workshop introduced participants to the use of toys and games as a tool to help “spark memories that lead to stories.”

While participating in the workshop, it was one toy and game in particular that not only helped spark memories but was also described as a good “ice-breaker” for groups of people in a variety of settings –the cootie catcher!

Yes, the cootie catcher! The strategically folded piece of paper that you remember from childhood sometimes called a ‘fortune teller.’ This cootie catcher, in lieu of omniscient fortunes, was prepared with story prompts to help spark memories that could later be crafted into full stories.

For example, one story prompt read, “Tell me about a time you survived…” and the participant would subsequently conclude the thought.  In my case, I recalled surviving the crippling anxiety of waiting in line to ride my first upside down roller coaster, loving the ride experience and since conquering roller coasters in several other amusement parks!

Breaking the Ice

While not-so-meticulously folding my piece of paper to create the cootie-catcher-story-sparker, I latched onto the workshop facilitator’s statement of how this toy could be a great ice-breaker for newly acquainted teams.

The workshop experience was fortunate timing. I had the opportunity to leverage the cootie catcher during a team building event for work just a couple weeks later. This team building event brought the entire team together, in-person, for the first time in over 18 months. There were approximately 20 of us, a few new faces to the team, and we had only really engaged via video meetings as a result of the pandemic. So, this in-person team building event was long overdue.

As I introduced the activity and distributed the cootie catcher templates, I was met with curious smiles. But the team was up for the game! After breaking into groups and reading the first prompt, the room erupted with energy and sparked stories. And while we connected through play, here are a few things that I observed:

• It’s Kinetic: It gave the team something to do with their hands when initially folding the cootie catcher. And the toy requires hand movement throughout the activity. If you’re like me, sometimes you need to bounce or move to release nerves until you’re comfortable. No bouncing necessarily required for this activity, but you get to use your hands as a nice consolation.
• It’s Collaborative …and competitive: Off the bat, team members were leaning into one another to offer reminders to their partners about how to fold a corner –collaborating in the creation of the cootie catcher. But in the spirit of play, we walked away with a vivid memory of one team member proudly declaring they had been the first to complete their cootie catcher –and subsequently, who was the last. Friendly competition is part of games and play after all.

Additionally, by design, the game requires at least two people –one individual to use the cootie catcher, and the second to respond. The cootie catcher helps facilitate the dialogue between the two people or larger group.

• It’s a Tool to Celebrate Unique and Common Experiences: Diversity is a characteristic of a strong team. It’s people’s unique experiences, life lessons and skill set that add to a team’s ability to manage challenging situations and be more creative in developing and testing solutions. Story prompts help celebrate the diversity in team members’ varied experiences –no two stories seemed quite the same.

On the other hand, story prompts helped highlight common human experiences. More than one team member referenced skipping school or sneaking out of the house in response to the prompt, “Tell about a time you got in big, serious trouble…” A common experience –but also different.

The team reconnected after 18 months through play and sparked stories. Just as I pinched this activity from the workshop, several team members asked for the template so that they could deploy this activity again in the future with their teams.

Make Your Own Cootie-Catcher-Story-Sparker!

In practice, the cootie catcher is not overly complicated to enact. You can find a free template online to download and customize with your own questions or prompts, and then you play! And if you’re like me who needs a little extra instruction, you can find numerous videos showing you how to fold the cootie catcher template.

As for the story prompts, get creative! You can customize the questions to your specific team or event. Below are the story prompts that pulled me into the game!

• Tell me about a time when you survived…
• Tell me about a time when you saw something super crazy!
• Tell about a time you got in big, serious trouble.
• Tell about a time everything changed.
• Tell about a time when you experienced your first…
• Tell about the first lesson you learned from your first job with the department.
• The silliest thing I ever did was…
• Once upon a time, not long ago…

I hope you have fun. Go play, go spark stories!

Story Infographics by Liz Warren

Story Structures Infographics by Liz Warren

Elements of Good Storytelling for Affirmative Feedback by Liz Warren

Affirmations are the foundation of the coaching model we use at the SMCC Storytelling Institute. After someone tells a story, we tell them what we liked about the story and what we noticed they did well. The more precise we can be in telling someone what they did well, the more useful the feedback is to them.

Below are some common elements of good storytelling to listen and watch for as someone is telling a story:

Voice:

• The teller’s voice can be heard.
• The teller uses vocal variety – louder and softer at the right times, emotions and attitudes expressed, characters differentiated.
• The teller is conscious of pacing – faster at exciting parts, slower at thoughtful parts.

 Embodying the Story:

• The teller’s facial expressions enhance the story.
• The teller’s gestures and postures enhance the story.
• The teller has a confident physical presence in front of the room.

 Story Structure:

• The story has a strong, clear beginning.
• The story flows smoothly.
• The story has all the elements of a story (5 Ps, Inverted World, Hero’s Journey).
• The end of the story leaves a clear picture and a distinct emotion.

Distinct Characters:

• The characters in the story are distinct.
• Listeners can “see” the primary character.
• The teller incorporates dialogue between characters in the story.

Relating to the Audience:

• The teller makes eye-contact around the room.
• The teller seems comfortable relating the story to the listeners.
• The teller incorporates the audience and their reactions.

 Creativity:

• The teller brings a fresh approach or interpretation to a well-known story.
• The teller has updated a story to connect with a modern audience.
• The teller has added something to the story – poetry, music, audience participation – to make the story more engaging.
• The teller has taken a risk or tried a new technique.

Teller’s Connection to the Story:

• The teller seems to like the story.
• The story is a good fit for the teller and his/her personality.

 Images and the Senses:

• The images in the story are clear - We can see the setting, the colors, and relative sizes.
• The story proceeds like a movie in the listener’s minds.
• The senses are incorporated – smell, taste, touch/temperature, sound.

Research:

• The teller has researched variants of a story, or the facts of a story.
• The teller is familiar with the cultural/historical background and context of the story.
• The teller states the source of the story and his/her connection to it.

Modality:

• The teller is aware of and makes good use of the modality in which they are telling the story – in-person, online, etc.

The Affirmative Model for Coaching Storytellers by Liz Warren

We have used an affirmative coaching model in our classes since the beginning of the South Mountain Community College Storytelling Institute. We learned the model from the work of Doug Lipman at National Storytelling Network conferences in the late 1990s. It is similar to the well-known Critical Response Theory developed by McArthur Awardee Liz Lerman.

The first director of the Storytelling Institute, Lorraine Calbow, was the person most responsible for us adopting this approach. As a counselor, she was very aware of the prevalence of criticism in our culture and our classes, and the destructive impact it often had on students. She was adamant that a feedback model based in critique, on what was "wrong," was out of alignment with the goals of the Storytelling Institute.

The affirmative coaching model is based in just that – affirmation.

Once someone tells a story, the first thing they are told is what the listeners noticed that the teller did well and what they liked about the story. Any subsequent feedback is at the complete discretion of the teller.  The facilitator will ask the teller if they have questions for the listeners. If they do, they ask and get responses from the listeners. The facilitator will then ask if the teller would like questions from the listeners, and if they do the teller then responds to those questions. Suggestions are not the focus of the model, but if the facilitator deems it relevant, they will ask the teller if they want some suggestions. If the teller says no at any stage after the affirmations, the facilitator accepts that and moves on.

Lipman says that tellers know somewhere in themselves what the story needs, and that through the questions and dialogue about the story, whatever needs to be addressed will come to light. And over time, as the tellers become more experienced, they get better at troubleshooting their own stories and asking for what they need. 

The affirmative coaching model is meant to insure that the power and authority for the story remains with the teller. This can be challenging initially, as instructors are socialized that it is their job to be the authority and provide instruction and correction. It can be frustrating for students, too, who are used to being told what to do. I’ve often been asked at the beginning of a class, “How am I going to get better if you don’t tell me what I’m doing wrong?”

Having used this model for years, I can attest to its power and effectiveness. Here are the main reasons it works:

• The affirmations: People hear what they did well. They know to keep those elements in their stories. They begin to see patterns in the feedback, and that leads to an understanding of their style and its strengths. Receiving affirmations from others also helps strengthen the bonds between tellers.
• The questions to and from the teller: This is where any growth points can be specifically addressed. If, for example, the teller asks if a certain part of the story was clear, and it wasn’t, the listeners have the opportunity (and the obligation) to respond honestly, politely, and in the spirit of collaboration.  Similarly, if a listener asks the teller about a part of the story that was unclear, or that they wanted more information about, the teller can reflect on that as they continue to hone the story.
• Teaching tellers to maintain their authority in the process: New tellers sometimes say to their listeners, “Just tell me how I can make the story better.” This effectively hands the power for the story over to the listeners, which is what we are trying to avoid. When this happens, I intervene and remind them to ask specific questions. This can be challenging, as sometimes the teller just has an uneasy feeling. Part of learning the model is to encourage tellers to ask something like, “I felt uneasy in the part about leaving home. Did anyone else feel uneasy there.”
• Repetition: Over time, as students engage in this process as tellers and listeners, they see its positive effect on themselves and others. They see the effective techniques that others use, and they see what comes up in the questions and how people integrate that information in their next stories. They get used to taking the responsibility for their own creative products, and to eventually relish that.
• Suggestions: Sometimes a suggestion must be made to insure that the teller isn’t inadvertently causing offense or putting themselves in a bad light. This usually has to do with a point of fact or pronunciation. But sometimes it does have to do with cultural values and assumptions that the teller may not be aware will alienate or be offensive to listeners. As you might imagine, this requires care and sensitivity to address.  Sometimes it’s best to speak with the teller privately, but it often must be addressed in the whole class so that others know they are safe and can have continued confidence in the facilitator.

Lerman, Liz, and John Borstel. Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process: a method for getting useful feedback on anything you make, from dance to dessert. Dance Exchange, Inc.; 1st edition (July 1, 2003).

Lipman, Doug. Improving Your Storytelling: Beyond the Basics for All Who Tell Stories in Work and Play. August House; Illustrated edition (January 1, 1999).

Lipman, Doug. The Storytelling Coach: How to Listen, Praise, and Bring Out People's Best.  August House; 1st Edition (October 12, 2006).

Collecting and Recording Traditional Folktales: A Guide for Students by Kathy Shimpock

Traditional folktales were shared orally for many, many, years. Over time, however, when the oral tradition, became less prominent, these stories were saved by folklorists who thought they were important enough to write down. Perhaps none are as famous as the Brothers Grimm who traveled throughout Germany recording stories in the 1800’s. Jack Zipes writes, “The[ir] tales are about children and families and how they reacted to the difficult conditions under which they lived. The Grimms thought the stories and their morals emanated naturally from the German people in an oral tradition, and they wanted to preserve them before the tales were lost forever.” Many other scholars also had the desire to save stories before they were forgotten.  That is why we now have written versions of folktales from throughout the world.

Sometimes folklorists recorded these stories accurately. But other times there were “problems” with either the translation or the transcription. For example, The Brothers Grimm produced several editions of their tales. The earlier more violent versions were closer to the actual stories told, while the later versions were edited greatly in a desire to share the stories with children.

As storytellers, we may assume that all the stories worth telling have already been recorded. But that is not true. Much of the known collection of Irish folktales was written down in the twentieth century. In reality, there are probably many folktales and story variants that have never been recorded. Further, even more stories still need to be translated into English.

So, if there are traditional tales that you were told as a child or if you have grandparents or other elders in your family who know them; you can honor these stories by writing them down and sharing them with others. Perhaps you are able to translate some folktales into English. These stories might be variants told in your town or geographic area. They might even be stories that no one has ever heard before. Either way, record them in an audio file or write them down! You’ll have a record of the stories told in your family, which can be shared with later generations.

But before you begin, there are some things to remember; for recording a story, is a very different process than telling a story. The following are issues to consider:

• Record the story accurately. When we become a folklorist, we want to provide an accurate written record of the story. We want to be sure not to embellish the story or fill in any missing elements. We do not want to edit it. That is what we do as storytellers but not what we do as folklorists. Translate or transcribe the tale, as you find it as accurately as possible.
• Beware of cultural issues. Even if we are recording a story from our family, it may have originated from another country. Do we understand all the cultural issues of the story? Is there any part of the story that doesn’t make sense? It’s easy to misunderstand or misinterpret stories from another culture or mistranslate words from another language into English. Ask questions when needed. The less assumptions we make, the more likely we are to be true to the story.
• Historical elements. Does the story seem to explain an event in history, an historical figure, or a geographic landmark? If so, a little outside research may be helpful to understand the story.
• Words having unique meaning. Words can have unique meaning in particular cultures. For example, a word might have both a common and a slang meeting. Using the English definition might miss the actual meaning in the context of your story.
• Meaning of the story. Many folktales have a moral, teaching or “meaning.” Understanding the values of the story’s culture is important to recording the story accurately.
• Metaphors and Humor. Humor and metaphors contained in stories are especially difficult to translate. For example, the saying “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” could be interpreted literally as being about apples falling. If so, that translation would miss the meaning that sons and daughters are often very much like their parents. If you are able, ask additional questions.
• What you hear may be different. Folktales often include songs and sound effects. Work to retain the original word patterns or rhymes. Retain any repetitions of words or phrases. Explore words that are used for sound effects. For example, a pig says “oink” in English, but it says “Boo Boo” in Japan!
• Remember the source. Be sure to record the source of your tale. If you are translating the story, what is the original source? Provide full bibliographic information. If you received your story from a family member or elder, be sure to record their name, how you know them, when and where the interview took place.

The bottom line is to honor the story and record it as shared. This is what is required to record these stories in its original form. For information on interviewing and recording a story in an audio file, review the “Collecting and Recording Family History” guide.

Telling the Stories Collected

Once the folktales are recorded, it’s time to pick one story to tell! Telling stories is very different from recording the story. Remember as storytellers we stay true to the tale’s narrative. But we are also free to expand upon that to describe the environment and the characters, provide dialogue and sound effects, etc. In essence, we bring the tale alive.

Still there are things to be aware of in telling this story. Understand the story within its culture and history if possible. Use the language of the story, correctly pronouncing the names and places. (Google does a good job of giving you an accurate pronunciation.) Some tellers employ a bilingual approach to a story using terms found in the original culture. This approach can provide the audience with a greater understanding of the story in its original form.

Writing a Book

Folktales are often turned into books.  This is when a traditional folktale or fairy tale becomes part of a literary work. There are many ways this can be accomplished. The first is a simple retelling of the story. These are often published as children’s books. Storytellers sometimes write the stories they tell orally (that is their own unique version of the tale). These are identified on the title as being “compiled by,” “based on a folktale,” or indicated to be a story variant.

The second approach is based on creative writing. Authors of these works expand on a traditional fairy tales or folktales. They can place their own creative twist on the story. They might change one event. How would the story shift if that occurred? What might happen after the story ends? The options are endless. These stories are fantasy stories of individual authorship. The works are not identified as authentic folktales.

For more information on culture and storytelling: Stotter, Ruth, "The Storyteller: Bridge Between Cultures," in About Story - Writings on Stories and Storytelling (np: Stotter Press) 1994.

The image at the top of the post comes from here, another excellent source on collecting folklore.

 

 

Mothers, Daughters, Sisters by Janet Fraser Means

I learned today that Janet Fraser Means passed away earlier this month.  She was so important to the development of the South Mountain Community College Storytelling Institute in the early 2000s, and to the recognition of the importance of storytelling in our broader community. Funny, creative, and fiercely intelligent, she was a remarkable storyteller, supporter of storytellers, and teacher of storytelling. She loved folktales - the quirkier and darker the better. The post below is from a longer essay she wrote in the mid-2000s. I love it because she helped me visualize how folktales and legends grow out of personal experience. The photo at the top is Janet at her Storytelling Graduation. She already had a PhD in psychology, and had studied with the Jungians in Switzerland. She brought that deep familiarity with symbols and archetypes to her telling and her teaching. Go here to see a post I wrote about her in 2009.--Liz

Mothers, Daughters, Sisters by Janet Fraser Means: Every family has its myths and legends, those stories that are passed down from generation to generation, no one ever knowing for sure if they are true or if they began with a grain of truth and then just grew like topsy. They are the family’s own folktales. Imagine this. We are sitting in a cottage a long time ago. It is small but cozy and well kept. The walls have been whitewashed and brightly colored curtains cover the window. The window is shuttered now for it is winter and the snow is piled up outside. In the corner of the room is the ladder that leads up to the sleeping loft above. A fire crackles on the hearth and an old woman stirs the soup. The table is set. Soon the family will gather for their evening meal. Tonight there will be a visitor at the table for the tailor is staying with the family while he makes their clothes for the coming year. The old woman ladles the soup into the waiting bowls and sits down at the head of the table. Her son sits across from her, and three little children sit side by side on a bench. A baby sleeps in a cradle in front of the fire. There is just room for the tailor to take his place across from the children, next to their mother. As soon as the meal is finished, and the plates cleared away the children with one voice say " Granny! Granny! Tell us a story. Tell us about the time you and Uncle Hans were lost on the woods" So once again Gretel tells her grandchildren about how she and Uncle Hans got lost.

"They called him Hansel then," she begins, because he was a little boy, just a little boy. And I was even younger. We loved each other so much that we always stuck together. And a good thing we did too for once we got lost in the woods. We were so very, very poor that we often didn't have anything to eat for days at a time. We couldn't get any help from our neighbors because everyone was as poor as we were. So we just had to do whatever we could to keep going. This little house where we live now is like a castle compared to the one, I grew up in so long ago."

Everyone listens with rapt attention while Gretel goes on to tell her story about how the family was starving and finally there was nothing more to eat all. "Finally, she says, "Mother convinced Father to take the two of us out into the woods and leave us. She said she couldn't bear to watch us starve to death and it might be possible for the two of them to survive if they didn't have to feed us too. Mother said that maybe someone would find us and take care of us. Besides, children were considered replaceable in those days."

"Did somebody find you Granny? Did they?" asks one of the children, although she already knows the answer. Granny tells about the old woman who found them and gave them food and let them stay with her until they could go home again. The story is becoming a family legend now. It has been told over and over and with each telling the details change a little bit and parts are added. The mother becomes meaner and meaner. The woods more and more scary. One person's experience begins to transform into a folktale. The tailor carries Granny's story with him to the next place he stays. He changes the story to make it more exciting, and to make it his own. Maybe he was the one who turned the old lady who rescues the children into a witch who entraps them. And so, a folk tale is born.

Eventually the Grimm brothers will collect the story of Hansel and Gretel and change the mother who abandons her children into a stepmother to make it more palatable. No one wants to acknowledge that mothers can and do abandon their children to die in the wilderness. They did so in the time of Hansel and Gretel, and they still do so today.

I Lost a Lake by Rebecca Love

So….I lost a lake. It could happen to anyone.

I’m taking a Personal Storytelling class, and I want to tell a story to my son about the lake house my paternal grandmother had in Connecticut when I was growing up. We would spend weeks and weeks there every summer. Uncles, aunts, and cousins would all converge on the mid-century modern treasure at the edge of the sparking water with the best screened-in porch in the world housing the best Ping-Pong table ever. I want to tell him about picking blueberries from the wild bushes among all the trees, including the white birches I only ever saw on vacation. I want him to run and jump off the dock with me doing cannonballs into the water and crack open freshwater mussel shells to get bait for fishing the sunnies, perch, pickerel, and bass.

But I’ve run into a huge problem. My memory is fallible, and I have completely fabricated the name of this lake. I am convinced to the marrow of my bones that my grandmother’s house was on Pinehurst Lake. But among the over 3,000 lakes and ponds in Connecticut, there is no such body of water. Google Earth is no help. The office of tourism is no help. And as I also don’t remember the street address of the lake house, I’m going to have to get some help from a live person in some county recorder office (and of course each county has their own property records) to find out if my grandmother owned property in the county. I have to find this lake!

But my fallible memory doesn’t mean I can’t tell my son some stories of lake house adventures. I’m trying very hard to move out of the mindset that my fact-based and personal stories have to be mirror-perfect representations of people, places, and events. There are some things I just can’t know for absolutely, positively sure. I can be true to what I know, research what I don’t know to the best of my abilities, and then tell stories with good intent that are respectful and true to the spirit of the people, places, and events involved. I can work with my imperfect memory, and still tell meaningful stories.

And when I find that missing lake, I’m traveling across the country to take my son for a swim.

Maybe So, Maybe Not by Marilee Lasch

There is a Chinese folktale with a refrain that goes, “maybe so, maybe not.” Here is a summary: A farmer and his son had a work horse, but one day the horse ran away causing the neighbors to exclaim, “What terrible luck!” To which the farmer replies, "Maybe so, maybe not.” The next day the horse returns with a herd of wild horses, and the neighbors praise the farmer’s luck. But the farmer replies “maybe so, maybe not.” The story goes through multiple misfortunes, which later become lucky, and each time the farmers response is the same: “maybe so, maybe not.”

What a valuable lesson. To be able to forget the sorrows of the past, and worry not about the uncertainty of the future, but to live in the present moment.

This is a learning lesson that I am going through right now. Three years ago, I had to sell my house, but I sold it to a man that was willing to rent it back to me for ten years for half of what my house payment had been. What good luck my neighbors exclaimed, and I got myself thinking the same, until two days later after the closing. The new owner was killed in a plane crash, and he had no will!!  Oh no my friends exclaimed, what bad luck, and I did feel the same. But a couple of months later, the house resold to an LLC, and they agreed to the honor the past lease terms. Oh, what good luck my friends all said, but by now I was learning to say, more to be revealed

Three months ago, I got a letter that said the new owners want to go with a month-to-month lease. What bad luck everyone said, “they want you out.” But once the sales contract was reviewed it showed it had to be a year lease. But the sales agent mentioned nothing about the rent being raised, and we all know what is going on with rentals and home prices. Do I get to say, “what bad luck?” I could, but a better response for me is, “more to be revealed.”

I need to create a little distance between the story of this situation and what the ultimate reality might be. As I lay in bed, I remind myself that only time can tell the whole story. But the more important thing is, what is and what will be my attitude be when the next situation comes along? Will I cry and moan, “what bad luck” or will I have the ability to be present in the moment, and believe that there will be a good outcome?

(The picture of Marilee's house at the top of the post can be found here.)

 

I keep reminding myself that at least there will be a story, no matter what the end result will be. More to be revealed.

Stories of Hope by Sally Jo Bannow

There are a multitude of spiritual and religious celebrations and observances, including Christmas, at this time and all through the year. Many of them are steeped in rich and meaningful story. This blog entry is about Christmas, which I observe. It is a time of year that I love. There are many traditions of the Christmas season that I love; the lights, giving gifts to my family and friends, decorating my home with lights and items that are passed down through the generations. As I place certain items, I take time to think of where they came from and the people associated with them. To avoid my least favorite part of the season, the commercialism, I have most or all of my gifts purchased or made by Halloween. I am probably one of the few ‘mature people’ who likes snow and would run out to build a snowman to this day, if only Phoenix weather would oblige.

Yes, I am dedicated to playfulness. Maybe that’s why my favorite part of Christmas is its stories.

There are a plethora of stories and they all seem to be about hope in one way or another – just turn on the Hallmark channel! Hallmark has found a way to tell the same story over and over in (sometimes only slightly) different ways; a woman becomes single because of some tragedy or rough breakup, moves to a small town, falls in love with the vet who saves her beloved pet, there is some misunderstanding and the woman bolts out of fear, the vet shows up at her door with some small cheesy but meaningful gift wrapped in a big red bow, they laugh at their foolishness, her heart melts and suddenly she realizes that this is true love after all. Fin. People flock to this channel like crazy.

To be honest, I have never seen a Hallmark Christmas movie. As you see above, I don’t need to see one. I already have the gist. I have friends who put on their Hallmark Christmas movie t-shirts (Hallmark ain’t stupid) and curl up for marathons. The thing is, these movies are all about messages like “there IS romantic love out there for you,” “you ARE worth saving,” and “you CAN begin again.” Hope. It is at its core a season of hope for humanity.

I am not a Hallmark channel gal…yet. There are many stories of the season that I do love. A Christmas Carol is about a man who has closed his heart after too many painful events in his life cause him to lose hope for a bright future. I think this story is particularly poignant now, because of our collective experience in current events. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is another holiday favorite. It’s the story of someone born with a unique physical attribute that is different from the others. He is shunned, until he is needed (that part is upsetting, but sadly human). Through that need, minds are changed. He is seen and valued just for being himself and everyone sees the error of their ways and opens their hearts to acceptance. Fill in the blanks on the meaning there.

Any oppressed individual or group can play the part of Rudolph in this story. The elf in this story, Hermie, is not shunned immediately because of how he looks, but because of who he is inside. The Island of Misfit Toys is full of ‘unlovable’ toys who don’t fit the preconceived mold. There are many parallels to be drawn in the story of Rudolph.

I could go on and on; The Little Drummer Boy, The Year Without A Christmas Tree, The Grinch, A Charlie Brown Christmas, etc., etc., etc. They are all stories of the hope for change for the better. That’s my favorite part of the Christmas season - the hope I find in the stories I’ve heard and seen since a child. 

Tell Someone I’m Here By Mindy Tarquini

In the early pages of Arthur W. Frank’s Letting Stories Breathe: A socio-narratology, (© 2010 by The University of Chicago Press), Frank recounts a very short story by South American writer Eduardo Galeano titled “Christmas Eve” in which the protagonist, a young doctor, already very late for celebrations at his family’s Christmas Eve, takes a last pass through the ward to ensure everything is in order. A young boy bearing the pallor of impending death follows, slips his tiny hand into the doctor’s, then begs: “Tell someone, I’m here.”

Such a sad story. So evocative. So hopeless. A story I’ve returned to time and again. A story that’s attached to me like a barnacle, rising at odd moments. A story that makes me wonder – why?

Why this story? Why now? Why not in the times I’d read it before?

Because right now I’m taking Personal Stories and at its heart, “Christmas Eve” is a story about the need to be remembered, to be understood, to be seen, to be heard, if only for an instant.

See, a personal story is birthed in memory, a memory that sticks, a memory triggered at odd moments -- by an image, a smell, a sound – because that memory is bathed in emotion, an emotion that needs to be processed. The events filed with the memory provide the emotion structure, give it form. Perhaps so the memory can be crafted into a story. A story that might be passed to a listener, a story that might attach to the listener like a barnacle, evoking the listener’s own distinct memory, the listener’s own emotion. An emotion that sticks. An emotion that demands, like the little boy in the story, “Tell someone I’m here.”

Mindy Tarquini is the award-winning author of three critically acclaimed novels that feature fables, foibles, fairytales, pandemics, past lives & lost loves. Find Mindy and her stories at www.MindyTarquini.com

(Photo Credit: Image by John Hain from Pixabay)

Do You Know? by Carly Davis

Do you know someone whose face “froze” in a grumpy position?

Do you know how your grandparents met?

Do you know what went on when you were being born?

These are three of the 20 questions developed by Marshall P. Duke, PhD, of Emory University. This list, called the “Do you know” scale, measures a child’s familial knowledge. As research items, these 20 questions have two qualities to note; they are designed to be a yes/no answer, and they test knowledge that a child could not have learned firsthand. The child wasn’t present when their grandparents met – so someone had to have told them that in a story. Here we get at the magic of this list. These questions get at the family’s storytelling habits. On a car trip, at a holiday gathering, at the birthday dinners, is the family telling each other their stories? Because when children grow up hearing these stories, and thusly being able to answer these questions, the child is more resilient. They are better able to manage disappointments, have higher self-esteem, and lower anxiety. These good outcomes are the result, writes Duke, of a strong sense of an intergenerational self. The child knows that they belong and where they belong within the family. It is this knowledge that bolters them through life.

That is also why just knowing the answers isn’t enough. Don’t go make 20 flashcards. But go tell 20 stories.

These questions were developed to measure a child’s familial knowledge, but for us storytellers, they make excellent prompts.

“Do you know the names of the schools your father went to?”

Yes.

Lakeland High School, which is where my sister went some 35 years later, and she had their same English teacher!

How rich is that for a story?

I can talk about our small town in Florida, about my parents meeting there, my sister returning there, I can talk about dear Mrs. Harris who my dad thought was old back then!

As we look ahead to the holidays, or look to reconnect after a long quarantine, or just look for new story ideas, take a tour through these 20 questions. Read more here. 

1. Do you know how your parents met?
2. Do you know where your mother grew up?
3. Do you know where your father grew up?
4. Do you know where some of your grandparents grew up?
5. Do you know where some of your grandparents met?
6. Do you know where your parents were married?
7. Do you know what went on when you were being born?
8. Do you know the source of your name?
9. Do you know some things about what happened when your brothers or sisters were being born?
10. Do you know which person in your family you look most like?
11. Do you know which person in the family you act most like?
12. Do you know some of the illnesses and injuries that your parents experienced when they were younger?
13. Do you know some of the lessons that your parents learned from good or bad experiences?
14. Do you know some things that happened to your mom or dad when they were in school?
15. Do you know the national background of your family (such as English, German, Russian, etc)?
16. Do you know some of the jobs that your parents had when they were young?
17. Do you know some awards that your parents received when they were young?
18. Do you know the names of the schools that your mom went to?
19. Do you know the names of the schools that your dad went to?
20. Do you know about a relative whose face "froze" in a grumpy position because he or she did not smile enough?

My Grandmother’s Fruitcake Recipe by Matthew Knotts

My grandmother’s fruitcakes were infamous. Wrapped in paper towels soaked in half orange juice and half whiskey, they packed quite a punch. When I was younger, my parents wouldn’t let me eat them, because she used moonshine from the still in the woods behind my great aunt’s house. Only after the stiIl broke and she had to buy whiskey off the shelf was I allowed to try it. I can still remember the mischievous glint in my grandmother’s eye as she offered me my first taste of alcohol - a teaspoon of whiskey at age 15. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to drink it, but it was delicious in cake form.  

One December, my grandmother announced that I was to carry on the tradition, because she and I were the only two in the family who ate fruitcake. She was going to teach me her fruitcake recipe, and we would create the traditional two cakes. One was for her house, and one was for mine. She sat down at the kitchen table while I stood ready at the counter. I had everything I needed - a pen and paper to record the ingredients and steps, a container of red and green candied cherries, and a large mixing bowl. 

“Step one - Open the cupboard,” she said. We’re off to a good start. 

“Do we have any allspice?” I responded in the negative.  

“Oh, it’s not a problem. How about nutmeg?” We didn’t have any of that either. 

“Well, we’ll make do,” she said. 

Wait! My analytical mind couldn’t process this information. How can you have a recipe where the ingredients don’t matter? How can I be expected to learn a tradition in an afternoon when it took her years of trial and error to know what works and what doesn’t?

I felt the same way as a fledgling storyteller. How could I be expected to craft a story when there are so many options and so few rules? Your story ends with, “Maybe it did. We’ll never know.” That’s fine! Your story begins with a princess stuck in a cave. We have to accept that’s where she’s supposed to be! 

When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I fall back on the basic elements of a story as defined by Donald Davis in his book, Telling Your Own Stories for Family and Classroom Storytelling, Public Speaking and Personal Journaling. Davis’ 5 P’s are: 

• People - My grandmother and I 

• Place - My grandmother’s kitchen

• Picture - Tasting whiskey for the first time; Standing at the counter organized and prepared

• Problem - There is no recipe!

• Progress - Accepting the loss of a tradition

Unfortunately, my grandmother and I never completed that fruitcake, and the tradition died with her. I still cherish the memory of the times we shared, and I am now able to take an uncertain story with no happily ever after and share it with you.

Stories, Grandmothers, and Biscuits - or As Big as You Have Ever Been by Melissa Soza Fees

I love grandmothers.  Today I’d like to thank the grandmother of Donald Davis.  She was an excellent storytelling coach, and her grandson, whom she never met is a storyteller extraordinaire.  She imparted great wisdom to her grandson by teaching his father how to tell his own story.  You see, storytellers know when a story is not ready to be told.  Often that is because we don’t know how it will end or because it’s just too soon to tell it without everyone ending up in tears, especially the storyteller.  Sometimes it is a little of both.  In real life, we don’t get that opportunity to age our story.  We live it every day. 

 

People live through life-changing events all the time, but it's their life circumstance that are changed, not necessarily themselves -- not right away.  Psychologists differentiate between change which is constant, and transition which is the change happening inside the person’s mind.  According to the work of William Bridges, after a life-changing event or ending, there is a period of transition where things are unclear and confusing.  During this transition, you haven’t had a chance to grow and understand what has happened.  At this juncture, the story people tell themselves about the event will greatly impact how they emerge from the transition phase.  If they tell their story once before their emotions have caught up with their thoughts and actions, the narrative can get cooked.  It can get “cooked in the squat” like a biscuit before it rises in the oven -- and stay that way.   

 

This is where Grandma Davis comes into play.  She guided her son to tell the story of his leg being injured with an ax and guided him to tell it from different perspectives and over time.  She said that if a person didn’t tell their story, it could sit on them like a rock.  She told him you are not telling the story to change what happened; you are telling the story to change you.  Stories have the power to change people because the truths they reveal can change a person’s thoughts which can change their feelings and their actions.  Grandma Davis helped her son change his relationship to what happened to him and turn a tragedy into the prologue of his amazing life.  

 

When you are a child and something happens to you, you think you are “BIG” because you are as big as you have ever been.  As time goes on and you revisit the events of your life, you will find that you might have been much younger or smaller than you remember.  Your judgment of yourself and others needs to mature and grow with you.  We can all learn from Grandma Davis and reexamine stories from our own lives to see if they may have been “cooked in the squat” before we were able to keep telling them from different perspectives and over time.

The Big List of Story Prompts by Liz Warren

Over the years I've created dozens of lists of story prompts.  Here is a compilation of my favorites, and the ones that have proved most productive in sparking memory. Enjoy!

The Big List of Story Prompts!

• You and your friends got in trouble in school or college
• A date or an appointment or a meeting went wrong
• The moment you knew you were on the right path – what happened, how did it change you?
• A moment of inspiration or understanding that made a difference for you
• Someone who believed in you and your path – what happened
• A mentor who has guided you, opened doors for you, changed your life
• Someone you admire and how they inspired you
• A key obstacle to you becoming who you are today and how you overcame it
• Something you worked very hard on turned out great – or didn’t – and why.
• A story of a tragedy that didn’t have to happen
• You embarrassed your mother (or father, siblings, spouse, children)
• Your mother (or father, siblings, spouse, or children) embarrassed you!
• A super dramatic, life-changing experience
• That time you beat the odds!
• You were embarrassed by your mother (or father siblings, spouse, children)
• You needed to be rescued or you rescued someone
• You had to make a mid-course correction – what led up to it and what did you do?
• Your most interesting relative – what they taught you?
• You didn’t get blamed when it was your fault – or you did get blamed when it wasn’t!
• A time you faced your fears – what happened?
• You broke or damaged yourself in some way
• You learned a family secret
• You got in big, serious trouble
• You lost your temper, or you caused someone to lose his/her temper – what happened?
• You misjudged someone, or you were misjudged – what happened?
• You needed help and you got it
• You got lost
• You took on a physical challenge
• You advocated for a cause
• You took on a difficult journey
• A journey that was supposed to be easy became difficult
• You were stranded
• You travelled to someplace that was frightening, or made you uneasy
• You went on a hero’s journey of personal growth
• A normal journey turned into a hero’s journey
• You survived something difficult
• You found yourself in a dangerous situation
• You put yourself in harm’s way to help someone else
• Your life or character was enhanced by troubles you survived
• You explored the dark and dangerous corners of . . .
• You forged a path into the wilderness – actual or metaphorical!
• You took a big risk
• You followed through on a bold and crazy idea
• You took a bold step into the unknown against the advice of others
• You found yourself in dangerous weather
• You pulled yourself out of a bad spot
• An environment you thought you knew turned difficult or dangerous
• You made an adventurous beauty or fashion choice
• You made an adventurous relationship choice
• You had a culinary adventure
• You lived to tell the tale!
• Your best friend moved away
• You had your first kiss
• Your first serious relationship came to an end
• Your friend or friends, or significant other came to your rescue
• You came to the rescue of your friend or significant other
• You were caught in the middle between two friends
• A rough beginning to a good friendship
• You survived, or didn’t survive a rough patch with a loved one
• A misunderstanding led to deeper understanding and more love
• You had to let a loved one go
• You received a special gift from a friend or loved one
• A date went wrong
• You said yes to the wrong person
• Love caught you by surprise
• You experimented with on-line dating
• You introduced a new boyfriend or girlfriend to the family
• You got in big, serious trouble
• You played matchmaker, or someone made a match for you
• You had to apologize, or received an apology
• You experienced a wedding disaster
• You experienced a wedding miracle
• You understood the saying, “Friends are God’s apology for relations!”
• You attended disastrous family dinner
• You took part in a family holiday disaster
• You needed to be rescued or you rescued someone
• You experienced the benefits (or the downside) of being the oldest (or the youngest, or the middle) child
• Someone in your family made a bad situation better
• You were sick and someone in your family knew just what to do
• Your most interesting relative – and why!
• You learned the truth (or delivered the truth) about Santa Claus
• You broke something valuable in your or a relative’s house
• You broke or damaged yourself in some way
• You learned a family secret
• You lost a family member
• You got a new member in the family
• You introduced a new boyfriend or girlfriend to the family
• You took a road trip, or vacation, with the family
• An incident that brought your family closer – or pushed them apart
• The joke was on you
• You went to summer camp when you didn’t want to – or you did want to
• You took an endless family vacation, in a car, with your siblings/children
• You got in trouble in the water, or on a hike, or with a campfire
• You had an encounter with a snake, or a bear, or . . .
• Your trip to Disneyland didn’t turn out like you thought – or it did
• You had a problem with a tent, or a camper, or a sleeping bag
• You had the longest airport delay ever
• Your traveling companion surprised you by . . .
• Your hotel was supposed to have something it didn’t have
• You got stranded and you didn’t speak the language
• You were sent to your relatives for the summer
• You had to go to summer school while your friends had fun
• You saved for a big vacation, but . . .
• You thought you knew what you were ordering, but
• Your car broke down in the middle of . . .
• You thought you knew how to work the barbecue, or the fireworks, or whatever
• You attended or threw a memorable party
• You attended or organized a summer picnic
• Your GPS stopped working
• Your reservations were lost
• You got bumped from the airplane

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

 

Story Telling and Story Reading by Diana Dinshaw

I am going to start right off the bat and assert that storytelling and story reading are different. I am not saying one is better than the other especially when it comes to young children who are early readers. I am just saying they are different.

Storytelling is the art of orally telling a story handed down from the oral tradition to one or more listeners. 

One could argue and say that a folktale read aloud to a group of second graders fits the definition of storytelling. And this is where I would explain that for me the key phrase in the definition above is, “the art of”. What makes storytelling an art is the creative freedom the storyteller has to infuse their own personal element into the story without the binding limitations set by having to read a story.

Personal Element

When telling a story, the storyteller is free to create and craft the story. That is why you may hear a well-established story and it will sound different when a different storyteller tells that story. This is because the teller has incorporated their own personality into the story. 

Chesin states, “The storyteller is free to present the tale as he knows and loves it” ¹

At a recent Summer Solstice event I told the very well-known myth, “The Abduction of Persephone.” While I had told this story a couple of times before, for this event I decided to craft it a little differently and told the story through Demeter, Persephone’s mother’s point of view. Though this is quite a serious and some may say a tragic story, I did add some humor to it because that is my style. Later I was told by a guest that she really enjoyed the story and while she knew the story well and had read it to her grandchildren many times, she had never heard it being told this way.

While the story elements; place, characters, plot, were the same, as a storyteller I had the freedom to create a piece of art through which the audience got a glimpse of my personality. 

Binding Limitations

With storytelling the storyteller is not bound by the words printed on paper (or in this time of technology on a device). The storyteller can take a well-established story and make it their own. 

A couple of months ago, I heard a book on CD read aloud by Tom Hanks. He did a fantastic job of bringing the book alive by using different voices for the different characters and changing his pace and tone to express emotion. Nevertheless, he was bound by the words of the author, and he was expressing the emotions of the author.

Because the storyteller is not bound by printed words you may hear a storyteller tell a story again and it will sound different. The storyteller has the freedom to lighten the mood by adding humour if they see the listeners getting too stressed or get the listener’s waning attention by adding a sound effect to the story.

Words are not the only limitation readers encounter. They are also faced with the barrier that a book presents, coming between the reader and the listener.

As a teacher I want to reinforce the importance of reading stories aloud, especially to young students who are emerging readers. And even as an adult I like having a story read to me and often listen to a book on CD on my commute from work. While story reading is important, it is not storytelling.

Storytelling	Story Reading
Storyteller and the listener	Story reader, listener, and the book
Creative and improvised	Bound by the words of the book
Takes effort and work to create	Is easier to do

Watch this short video of Debra Weller demonstrating the difference between storytelling and story reading.

The image at the top of the post can be found here. Is she telling or reading?

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.

The Need for Storytelling in an Increasingly Connected Yet Never More Disconnected World by Laura Mazzocchi

The thing I’ve noticed most in learning about personal storytelling this semester is its ability to connect people. Even in this virtual world, across distances far and near, between introverts and extroverts, among people of various upbringing and experience with perhaps nothing in common, we have formed connections through our stories.

Even before this ongoing pandemic made it necessary for all of us to further isolate ourselves, we were an increasingly disconnected society. Social media has created this disingenuous type of relationship, where users mistake likes and followers for real connection. But you cannot create real connection in 280 characters or through a carefully curated collection of posts and pictures. So instead what we get is advertising from “influencers,” empty laughs, more ways to avoid being present and aware, further distraction and isolation from each other and the real world, and lots of excuses for not thinking about it or our place in it.

Personal storytelling requires reflection and deeper thinking. Random thoughts or memories aren’t simply blurted out. They’re considered and combed-through for lessons learned or progress made, then crafted into complete stories. This isn’t as easy as you might think. It requires honesty, vulnerability, and creativity. I did not know this, prior to taking a storytelling class. I always figured the people who told the stories I listened to just a) had more/better lives and stories to tell than I do, and b) were just somehow naturally good at telling stories in front of large groups of people.

What I’ve discovered in this class is that almost everybody thinks they don’t have any interesting stories to tell, but we all do. Anybody who has lived a life has stories to tell. And listeners will benefit from hearing your stories, perhaps not every listener, but you will always reach some. Your perspective is unique, even if your life and thus your story seems mundane to you.

I’ve also learned that many storytellers are, in fact, introverts, like me. For them, storytelling requires vulnerability not only in considering yourself and your past honestly, but also in sharing your stories with others, whether they are strangers or friends or family. Knowing this makes me admire these storytellers all the more. I can tell you from experience that this is not easy, but most listeners are sympathetic and will admire your courage, and you will reach them, even if you’re nervous.

Storytelling requires an honesty and vulnerability that is not often seen nor required in social media. It is precisely this vulnerability that creates real connection, which is something we all need more of these days. Many have been looking for it in all the wrong places and feeling let down and lost when they don’t find it. Perhaps they should try telling their stories instead.

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

You Don’t Know Jack - but here's why I think you should by Rebecca Love

You know Jack, right? Yeah, that guy with the beanstalk, magic harp, and golden egg-laying goose. But did you know there’s so much more to him?

Jack has been keeping me company for the last few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. And I found out that his adventures are not limited to the beanstalk, but that he fights many different giants (not just the Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum kind), the Devil, a Mossyfoot (a huge, scary monster with the flaming red eyes and enormous feet covered in moss) and has all kinds of other adventures. Jack’s stories have been uplifting when so much of the world seems to be falling apart and everything feels so depressing.

Finding something humorous during a pandemic can be a difficult task, but Jack can save the day. Sometimes Jack makes foolish choices I can chuckle at, like trying to carry milk home in his pockets because his mother told him specifically to use his pockets to carry home his work earnings. Jack has even climbed under a confused, braying donkey to try and carry it home on his back. The princess who saw that ridiculous sight laughed, and I laughed along with her. Jack has even taken delight in his marksmanship while perched in a tree, shooting food off the ends of giants’ forks, causing confusing and comic chaos on the ground. These unusual moments of unexpected humor have hooked me. When I can’t stand watching the news on TV anymore, Jack is there to make me smile.

And though Jack can be a bit of a clown, he is also clever. I appreciate a young man using some smarts when umpteen real-life people can’t be counted on during the pandemic to make healthy choices. In one story Jack outwits some witches, depending on his mother and faithful dogs to save him, because it’s okay to ask for help. Jack also assesses what resources are available to him to proactively help himself, like liberating a silver sword by drinking a potion and then luring giants through a very small tunnel to their doom. Jack likewise learns to adapt his behavior and thinking, for example when he was looking for his first job. Because he had no experience, when shop owners asked what he could do, Jack said nothing, and then was disappointed he wasn’t hired. Jack figured out that he needed to change his answer, and the next time a shop owner asked what he could do, Jack said anything. He was hired on the spot. During this pandemic there has been misinformation and poor decision making. Jack gives me some hope, because he’s able to learn and adapt in positive ways, so maybe real people can, too.

Maybe even more than humor and quick thinking, Jack’s sense of adventure is appealing during this time of forced isolation. Many of Jack’s stories begin when he is a young man ready for some independence. He is forever going off into the wide world to seek his fortune. Jack usually doesn’t have a direction in mind, and he doesn’t always know what his fortune may look like. But that uncertainty doesn’t stop him. Maybe Jack’s fortune will be a real coin he can actually hold in his hand (sometimes he’s never seen one before), or his fortune might be in goods earned through labor or goods traded for what he imagines (not always correctly) are better goods. Sometimes Jack’s fortune is owning nothing at all, because then he isn’t tied down in the world and maintains his freedom. Stuck at home during a pandemic, I appreciate Jack for his willingness to bravely strike out into the unknown world, unclear about what he might find, because he has such a deep sense of adventure and gratitude for the gifts he finds, earns, or are bestowed upon him by sheer luck.

Jack encounters many challenges and some scary situations in his stories. Scary situations and challenges barely begin to describe life during the COVID-19 pandemic. But if Jack can be upbeat and persistent, then we can, too. So, when you need a break, get to know Jack. He’s a good companion on this journey.

The image at the top shows Berkeley Williams, Jr's cover illustration for the 1st edition of Richard Chase's Jack Tales.

Eating Stories by Dean Shapiro

At Passover, the Jewish festival of liberation, we EAT a story. It is the great narrative of our people: we were enslaved; now we are free.

Families gather from all parts. Some clean and cook for days. Tables are set with finery (and often an extra chair or three) and Haggadot – the guidebooks that describe the steps of the elaborate seder meal, complete with explanation. The word “Haggadah” comes from the Hebrew verb “Le’hagid” – To Tell. At the center of it all rests a seder plate, gracefully holding the symbolic foods.

As we tell, sing, and ask the story of the Exodus, we eat foods to heighten the experience – matzah, the bread of affliction, salt water, to remember tears, charoset, a sticky concoction that reminds us of mortar, and maror, the bitter herb. When we bite into bitterness, we experience it directly. That way, we will recognize the bitterness of oppression when we see it in others.

The story of the exodus isn’t told in a linear manner. It is, rather, impressionistic and experiential – like the writing of Virginia Woolf or Marcel Proust, one memory or idea leads to the next. We expound, we digress, we skip, we add a footnote from someone who lived 1000 years ago right next to a question seated next to us.

According to Jean Houston, a myth is a personal narrative written so large that everyone can see themselves in it. That’s the power of the Exodus story: every Jew can identify it as their personal story. In the seder, each person should experience that they, themselves, had left Egypt – if not the literal Land of Egypt, then the confinement, limitation, and suppression that Egypt represents. That’s what makes it our sacred story.

This year, as last, my community gathered on Zoom for a large seder – well over one hundred people! Many of us are good friends who haven’t seen each other in person for twelve months. To combat isolation, to prepare us for re-integration, and to honor the spirit of the Festival (and our Personal Storytelling Class), I divided participants into breakout groups, and asked them to tell a 2-minute story based on one of these prompts:

Tell about a time when...

• You felt free.
• You had no choice.
• You went on a journey.
• You bossed someone around.
• You floated.
• You stood up for yourself.
• A pet died.
• You were in the dark.
• You hid.

What story would you tell?

Magic by Sally Jo Bannow

Stories have always been magical to me. I remember my dad reading stories to me every night before bed. My dad specialized in telling long story-jokes to anyone who would listen. He held the listeners’ attention with fun details and voices, always ending with some corny punchline. And now, like him, I’ve spent my whole life telling stories in one way or another. As a child, I wrote plays for kids in school to perform, I constantly listened to music, and lived the stories that those songs told. I imagined I was the subject of the song, and sang it with the intention of conveying the story behind the song. Later, I got friends together, and hung up a sheet to put on a play; some simplified children’s story that I had concocted.

No surprise that I ended up in the theatre as an actor. I fell in love with being part of an ensemble of theatre artists: actors, directors, choreographers, set and costume designers, prop designers, etc. I am in love with the live theatre, and with film. The idea that adults can sit down, just as I did as a child, and be transported by someone else’s journey into a deeper understanding and experience of themselves, and of another life.

The stories we tell in the theatre and on film are magical to me.

I started directing for the theatre. It’s like giving birth! Combining all of the elements of live theatre into a precisely timed live performance with all of its rising and falling of storyline is an astronomical feat.

Then I began writing plays and musicals. In this practice, the work was mostly internal, and allowed my creativity to go wherever the story led. Most of the stories I’d experienced to that point were fictional.

Then a friend introduced me to the artform called “Playback Theatre.” Playback theatre falls under the category of theatre for social justice. In this form, a teller from the audience tells a true moment, or longer story from their lives. The actors and musicians (who are all improvising), then recreate the story exactly as they heard it and perform it for the teller. There are many ‘aha’ moments, as the teller observes their experience in a new and creative way.

The thing that moves me to my core about all of these art forms, is that through the telling of these stories, the audience members reach a connection – an intimacy, and deep level of humanness.

Now, years after my life in entertainment began, I have ‘stumbled’ into the art of oral storytelling. I am in the process of learning to find stories from my own life, to craft and shape them into pieces of verbal art. It feels foreign and familiar at once. It is an art, and it is magical. It has the power to connect people who seemingly have no other connection. It reminds us of our humanity and of our shared experiences and how very much alike we are. It helps us to know each other and to find the empathy and compassion that lies deep within us all. That is a fine magic trick, indeed.

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

This Is Not a Lie by Bridget Murphy

I come from a long line of Irish storytellers. We love nothing more than to while away an afternoon over coffee, tea (or beer) talking… about anything.  We talk about politics, we talk about what made us mad that week, we talk about the family, we tease each other (relentlessly) over our idiosyncrasies, but our best trick is to take the last big family argument and dissect it later for jokes. People who have witnessed this marvel at my family’s ability to move past our grudges so quickly.  This, I reason, is because we love storytelling MORE than grudges.  We make a game of who can construe the best story out of the last conflict, no matter how devastating the conflict seemed at the time. Who has time for grudges when you are racing to see who can tell the best story.  We can’t wait to see who will spin our weaknesses into a story of redemption, who will make us laugh at ourselves, who will make sense of the senselessness.

When I set about trying to develop my first story for Liz Warren’s Personal Storytelling class, I planned to tell about an event that happened 40 years ago.  I had a scrap of dialogue and a few sketchy details, so I called my brother and asked what he remembered about that Mother’s day.  He said he only remembered what I had told him over the years.  And my parents, who were also there on that Mother’s day, have from what I can tell allowed their scraps of memory to be swayed by whomever they spoke to last.  I was alone to reconstruct the story from my own unreliable and vague memory. And then I got stuck.  I couldn’t figure out how to construct the story without all the facts. I began to question whether I had a story at all. 

Then I ran across a passage from Jack McGuire’s book The Power of Personal Storytelling where he makes this claim: “By engaging in personal storytelling, we unlearn a lifetime of subtle social conditioning not to think or act creatively.”  It was true.  I was surprised at how obliged I felt to tell the story accurately, chronologically, fairly.  McGuire goes on to say that the biggest obstacle for “would be” storytellers is not “the lack of memories, low self esteem or stage fright. Rather, it’s a culturally induced fear of being inaccurate, or misrepresenting things, of failing to be objective, or of committing a lie.”  

I quickly realized that in order to tell my story I was going to have to lie, well, not lie exactly, but I was going to have to somehow fill in the gaps, to make the story whole.  Stephen King once said:  "Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground ... Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world." I love this twist on the idea of the truth.  In this scenario, storytellers are going back to honor sacred ground, digging up dusty memories, carefully reclaiming and preserving the underworld of lost details.  However foggy or degraded, these remnants of our pasts are powerful artifacts that help us make meaning of our past, present and future.  Marilyn Torres says, “our stories are our birthright.” Indeed. They explain the world, each other, and ourselves.  We need to fight for them.  

And if in the end we still have holes in our stories, we can “act creatively” by cultivating devices like metaphors, symbols, and repetition to build on the emotional truth (as Liz Warren says) that lies at the center of our story.  Like any artist, a storyteller curates the details. We pick up the shards of memory and start to piece them together like a mosaic.  We decide what shape it will take and what pieces go where.  

This is not a lie.

Daniel Taylor says, “True means accurately reflecting human experience.” What I have come to understand is that storytelling is a form of meaning making.  It is a work of art.  It is true. 

(The image at the top of the post shows Bridget with her family. The one at the bottom is Bridget with her grandfather in Dingle in 1981.)