The Storytelling Process

There are as many ways to tell stories as there are people in the world. However, some steps are common to all storytellers. Please remember, these are only the BASICS.

1. Love storytelling. Be confident and excited that you will find and deliver a story that matches you and your personality and that you will be successful in telling. This positive attitude is essential to storytelling.

2. Find a story that fits your personality and storytelling style. The most important element when looking for a story is that you must like the story, and you must like it a lot! Add to this element the qualities of universality, individuality and suggestion.

1. A good story is universal, it applies to many people from many backgrounds.
2. It is also individual: there is not another story quite like this one. It has a personality all its own. Though it is universal, it is also unique.
3. Suggestion is the quality that though the story may have a message or even several messages, these “themes” are not always blatantly superficial or readily apparent. If a story has suggestion, each time one recalls the story, new thoughts will arise in the teller and in the listener.

Liking a story, universality, individuality and suggestion are vital touchstones to think about when choosing any story.

3. Read the story several times. Become familiar with its basic event structure. Each story is a collection of scenes or units. Each of these units has a climax and rising action of some sort. Find that rising action and build to the climax in your telling. If each unit is focused on, this will help the story become dynamic and varied in its tone and mood. You must also discover the main climax and build toward it. Each unit will help you in finally reaching the main climax. You need to be aware of these structural elements in your story.

4. Visualize. Form complete visual and other sensory pictures. You must visualize every detail as you tell a story. During your rehearsal process, each time you tell the story over and over again, make sure you are seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting, hearing everything. Get to know your characters: how they smell, how they look, how they talk, their mannerisms, their postures, their moods and their emotions. Build empathy toward them. Feel the mood and atmosphere of the story. This is all part of visualization. IF YOU VISUALIZE EVERYTHING, THE AUDIENCE WILL AS WELL! This is the magic of visualization. Many people find that typing or writing out the story helps them remember images better. Quite frankly, this is usually the weakest link of the storytelling performance chain. We often visualize images when preparing for a story, but when telling a story, we may only remember in tiny flashes. Compare this to a movie. You don't want to go to a movie and see an image once in a while. You want a continuous stream of images that tell the story. Each image has to be complete and vivid, and each must flow to the next.

5. Fine Tune. As the pictures of the story become more and more clear as you practice, practice, practice, you can begin to fine-tune your gestures. Gestures should naturally arise as you visualize, but you may want to alter them slightly to achieve greater effect. This is also the time to fine-tune your voice rate, pitch, volume levels, and qualities. Again, your complete visualization will do much of this work for you. Your fine-tuning of these things enable you to rise to the level of a storyteller rather than just one who tells stories. Remember to always practice as if someone were listening to you. Visualize an audience, in other words.

6. Internalize. Practice, practice, practice! You will have to go over your story over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. As you do so, you will begin to internalize your visual and sensory images. They will become so natural that you will not need to think about them. Your gestures and voice too will begin to naturally adhere to those qualities you have bestowed upon them. Internalizing a story is a never-ending process. There is always adjustment and reaction to the audience during performance, for example, and since you are a constantly changing and dynamic person, your outlooks on life and your perception of the story will be constantly changing. All of these changes must be expected and accounted for as you revive the story for future use. This provides you will spontaneity in addition to all your meticulous rehearsals.

Your performance process will be made up of two types of thinking: Creative thinking and critical thinking. Critical thinking is the type of thinking that is done during your rehearsal period as you watch yourself perform and repeat specific elements of your performance over and over again so internalization can take place. When the story and its accompanying body posture, gestures, vocal variety and images are all internalized, you can begin to think creatively as you tell the story. Creative thinking will allow you to react to the audience and the story in a spontaneous fashion and will also allow you to enjoy your performance more thoroughly as you perform. Critical thinking is to be done during rehearsal. Creative thinking is to be done during your performance.

7. Tell the story with confidence. You have come a long way. The images in your story are crystal clear. You love the story. Your well thought out introduction will reveal this. Each time you tell it, you feel new things and you experience a new thrill. It is a fun adventure when you tell this story. You know your listeners will like the story because you like the story! You are giving your listeners what storytelling guru Ruth Sawyer calls "fairy gold"!