Contents

1) EMOTIONAL AUTHENTICITY FOR STORYTELLERS

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1) EMOTIONAL AUTHENTICITY FOR STORYTELLERS

Let emotions flow through you—and make it safe for your listeners to feel.

(Twelve Skills of the Storyteller, Part 4)
The prior four articles in this series described:

• “Preface”: The dangers of focusing on storytelling skills;
• Part 1: Imagination skills;
• Part 2: Oral language skills.
• Part 3: The skills of relating to your listeners.

In this article, we’ll take up the skills of emotional authenticity.

The first of these skills is to imagine and communicate the emotions essential to a story; the second is to make it safe for your listeners to experience those same emotions.

Skill 8: Allow Emotions To Flow Through You

The best tellers imagine all the emotions felt by each character in a story, as well as the likely reactions of their listeners. Emotions, after all, are a significant part of human experience.

But here’s the rub: you’re a human, too. You have lots of emotions inside you. Some of these emotions are fully processed and easily available to you, but some aren’t.

Telling a story that requires only fully processed emotions isn’t hard. It’s like a pleasant review of a well organized photo album. You “open” the feeling, tell about it, then “put it back” where it was. In this case, imagining how your character felt is not too different from imagining the color of your character’s eyes.

Other emotions, though, aren’t just memories; they are more like unfinished tasks. Letting these unprocessed emotions flow through you while you try to guide your listeners isn’t so easy.

Your Emotional Closet

Telling a story that brings up unprocessed emotions is not like paging through a photo album. Instead, it’s like opening the door to a closet crammed with a thousand loose photos.

First of all, you’ve probably learned to avoid anything in that closet, because you know what a big project it would be to get the photos back inside if you were to open the door even a little.

Second, you can’t just go straight to the photo you want; you’ll have to at least paw through the ones on top of it, tear off the ones stuck to it, and look at each photo closely to decide if it’s really the one you want.

Third, some of the photos will have unfinished tasks associated with them, like sending the copies you promised to Aunt Nancy or deciding whether to order more copies of your publicity shots.

In other words, the fully processed photos in an album don’t require much of your attention; you can go straight to them and easily close the album when you’re done. But the photos piled in the closet represent a backlog of demands on your attention.

Telling About a Dog

If your dog died last week, telling a story about Jack’s dog might remind you of your unprocessed grief. It may well bring tears to your eyes, tears that desperately need to be shed.

In this case, you’ll be torn between your need to serve as a guide for your listeners and your need to clean up your own emotional closet.

Please note: the issue here isn’t that you might cry while you tell. If you can clearly indicate that you’re okay while you cry, you may be able to guide your listeners through your tears. Rather, the danger is that the pull of the unprocessed emotion can compromise your ability to fully attend to your job as your listeners’ guide – or that your listeners might perceive your abilities to be compromised.

Closet Cleaning

“Unsorted” feelings need to be processed emotionally. You need to cry the uncried tears, laugh away the unprocessed backlog of humiliation or light fears, face the accumulated anger, etc.

Interestingly, the fully processed emotions also seem to get “albumized” along the way. That is, they get stored mentally in a way that allows you easy access to them – with little mental overhead.

Now you can appreciate what Skill 8 really demands. It demands that you have cleaned out your emotional closets (or at least the ones relevant to a given story).

When you have done so, you can imagine the emotions in a story fully and relaxedly. You won’t need to keep the closet door rigidly shut or else let out the whole mess; you’ll be able to open it exactly as much as makes sense for your audience’s optimal experience.

The Hollow Reed

Here’s another way of describing this skill. Think of yourself as a hollow reed. Images and emotions come in one end of the reed and flow out the other to your listeners. Everything in the story flows easily through you.

The key here is to let the reed be hollow. You want to clean it out before you tell, so that feelings don’t get stuck on obstructions in your reed. You also need to hold the reed gently; if you hold it in a death grip, it will narrow and stop the flow.

In advance of telling, clean out the reed. At the moment of telling, though, remain relaxed and delighted with the emotions flowing easily through it.

Skill 9: Create Emotional Safety

When you have hollowed your reed (or cleaned out your emotional closets), you have made it possible to feel your emotions freely. Congratulations! You are halfway there.

What’s the other half of your job? You need to make it safe for your listeners to feel the story’s emotions, too.

Keep in mind that we humans are designed to respond to unspoken attitudes. That’s a survival skill, allowing us to distinguish between would-be allies and enemies. This means that your listeners respond to your attitudes about your telling, not just to what you say or do.

I have learned over the years that I can say highly controversial things without producing a backlash, as long as I say them relaxedly. But whatever I’m nervous about saying, no matter how innocuous, is likely to be challenged.

Here’s an extreme example. Suppose I said, “The sky is falling,” in a pleasant, relaxed tone. People would likely show mild interest but no concern.

On the other hand, if I make the perfectly uncontroversial statement, “The sky is blue,” but say it with a concerned tone, people may leave their seats immediately to check out whatever danger might be descending on them.

One part of creating emotional safety for your listeners, then, is to wrap your whole performance in a relaxed attitude. The second part is to lead the way emotionally.

Joy and Horror

Bud Welch, master of leading the way emotionally

Back in 2005, a man named Bud Welch gave an unforgetable keynote address at the National Storytelling Conference in Oklahoma City.

Bud’s daughter was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. Knowing that, I almost didn’t attend. I didn’t want to hear about horror and loss. In the end, I went but sat in back in case I decided not to stay.

To my amazement, Bud spent the first half of his time talking about the joys of raising his daughter. He told, with real enjoyment, how his daughter Julie was born premature with a 10% chance of survival, but lived to become Bud’s best friend and constant companion.

He told how, in the seventh grade, Julie met a girl from Mexico who didn’t speak English. Yet the girl quickly became bilingual, inspiring Julie to want to do the same. By the time she entered college, she had mastered four languages and spent a year living in Spain.

Bud, raised on a farm and the owner of his own service station, said that the day he took Julie to college in Wisconsin, “I didn’t have a shirt that would fit me, because my chest was swelled so big with pride.”

Bud told about Julie with such joy and love that I opened myself to him. To this day, I feel that I, too, love his daughter Julie, who I never met.

Julie Marie Welch. September 12, 1971 - April 19, 1995

Julie’s love of reaching out across language boundaries led her to take a job at the federal building in Oklahoma City, assisting immigrants and the disadvantaged. That’s why she was one of the 168 people killed by the bomb set there by Timothy McVeigh.

If Bud had been angry and tense at the beginning of his talk, I would have discounted him. If he had been completely unemotional, I would have remained uninvolved. But he shared his feelings about Julie for nearly 30 minutes, relaxedly and unabashedly. He was clearly experiencing feelings of pleasure.

In other words, he walked through the gates of joy and invited me to follow. Once we were there together, I could go with him through the gates of horror and rage, too.

By leading the way, he made it safe for me to feel things I had been reluctant to feel only an hour before. I have been grateful to him ever since.

Still More Skills to Come

In future articles, I’ll describe three skills in these two additional categories:

• Being and showing yourself.
• Flexibility in performance

All six categories of storytelling skills are important. Yet the skills of emotional authenticity have a privileged place among them. With these two hard-won skills, you will have a key for connecting more deeply with your listeners – and for opening your listeners to a more profound experience of your stories and perhaps of the world.

2) FREE CALL ON CREATING WISDOM PRODUCTS

Free calls on "Creating Wisdom Products" in September

Does this sound familiar?

“There are two seasons to my storytelling life: one is called ‘too busy,’ and the other is called ‘too poor.’”

When work is plentiful, professional storytellers run ourselves into the ground earning what we can. But the busy periods are always followed by times when we don’t have enough work to sustain us.

To make things worse, the cycle of “good months” and “bad months” is superimposed on the economy’s cycles of boom and recession, which always seemed to hit our primary audiences of schools, libraries, synagogues, churches, etc., all at the same time.

That was my reality for over 20 years. But it all began to change when I discovered “wisdom products.”

A Sustainable Income?

Wisdom products, if done right, can free you from the cycle of exhaustion and income short-falls.

They can make money without your leaving home. They can even make you money while you sleep. (Just last night, I checked my email before going to bed – only to learn I had made $681.75 while I was watching a movie with Pam.)

And they can be based on what you already know and love to do.

Free Call in September October

This month, I am offering a free call (on your choice of three dates) that will give you a a method for creating wisdom products.

You will learn ways to turn your unique storytelling skills into an income that will sustain you for the rest of your working life.

Read more and register, free, at:

http://creatingwisdomproducts.com

Your Choice of Three Dates Last Chance for This Call

Register now for your choice of these three dates:

• Choice 1: Wednesday, September 14 4-5:30pm EDT.
• Choice 2: Monday, September 19 9-10:30am EDT
• Choice 3: Thursday, September 29 8-9:30pm EDT

I have rescheduled the final call for:

• Thursday, October 13, 8–9:30pm, EDT

You can view a chart of those times in various timezones around the world at http://creatingwisdomproducts.com

A Gift to You In Hard Times

I know that the people who most need this course are feeling the pinch of a sluggish economy.

Therefore, I have decided to make this call available at no charge.

Learn how Wisdom Products™, even as you age, can make your income easier and more dependable.

• Register free – and choose your preferred date

Contents

1) WHAT KEEPS A STORYTELLER GOING?

2) SUBSCRIBER SPECIAL: NEW COURSE ON LEARNING YOUR GIFTS

• Read more or request an application

1) WHAT KEEPS A STORYTELLER GOING?

In many ways, we performing storytellers don’t live easy lives.

We get up early, pack the car, and drive to our audiences...

We spend years developing our skills and our repertory. We figure out how to find audiences. Most of us spend countless hours on the phone arranging performances and negotiating what we’ll tell.

Then we get up early (or stay up late), pack the car, drive to our audiences (or to an airport), and deal with the sound systems, the noisy auditoriums, the sometimes poorly planned events. And then we repeat the process again and again.

Oh, and did I mention that the pay is often low?

So, why do we do all that? What’s in it for us?

Riding the Racehorse

I remember my first time to perform as a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN.

The audience had been listening to stories for two days straight. Their response was immediate and strong!

On Friday and Saturday, I told in short sets: 12 to 30 minutes at a time.

Then came 1pm on Sunday: my solo hour. My listeners were primed and ready. They had been listening to stories for two days straight.

I began my first story and felt awe. The audience’s response was immediate and strong! As the performance went on, I adjusted happily to their amazing responsiveness. It was like spending an hour horseback riding, in perfect unity with a powerful, sensitive thoroughbred in its prime. Wow!

Last in Line

After my set (and the applause) was over, a line of people formed, waiting to thank me individually for the particular ways in which I had touched them.

After 30 years, I remember one person in that line.

He was the last in line. He was perhaps 30, slight of build, wearing a worn, long-sleeve denim shirt. He looked to me like he came from the rural South.

When nearly everyone else had left the tent, he stood about 5 feet from me, as though he were too shy to come nearer. I took one step closer to him and looked in his eyes. They were wide open and moist.

I waited. At last he said, “Things have been kind of hard.” He sounded choked up.

I nodded and waited again.

He said, “Those were some stories I needed to hear.” He began to cry.

I stepped forward, put my arms around him, and held him gently for a few minutes.

Then he stepped back, locked eyes with me for a second or two, smiled, and turned and left.

The Gift

I never saw him again or learned what he had found in my stories that day.

But I didn’t need to. I had received from him a precious gift, perhaps the most precious a teller can receive.

He let me know that I had given him what he most needed that day, that my stories had touched him in the exact way he had needed to be touched – that, in their mysterious way, the stories had spoken through me a message perhaps unknown to me.

The Reason?

Isn’t that what keeps so many of us at storytelling? Sure, most of us love the applause, the attention, the chance to hold sway. But those things aren’t the deepest motivators.

My deepest motivation became visible that day in Tennessee, in that one man’s face: storytelling gives me a chance to give people something they need. It gives me the feeling of offering just the right thing, of being the right person at the right time.

That feeling doesn’t depend on all my listeners being generous enough to tell me what it was like for them. In fact, the more often I feel it happening, the more I learn to sense it – to know that, even when no one thanks me for it, someone in the crowd has received a unique gift.

That’s what keeps me coming back. That’s what keeps me going as a storyteller.

What about you? I welcome your reasons at http://www.storydynamics.com/current.

2) SUBSCRIBER SPECIAL: NEW COURSE ON LEARNING YOUR GIFTS

Over the years, I learned that I can give people just what they need by performing – but also by other ways.

I discovered the joy of teaching about storytelling, of helping people find the “missing second leg” in their communication, the leg that propels the heart and the imagination, not just the intellect.

I also learned the joy of coaching, of helping other tellers to overcome obstacles they face in their storytelling, helping them move closer to being the unique tellers that only they can become.

Help Others Learn to Help Others?

They I began to think: If meeting people’s unique needs is my prime motivation, and if I can learn multiple ways to meet people’s needs, then could I maybe help other tellers get that same satisfaction, using their unique gifts in new ways, too?

I tried multiple approaches, from “mastermind groups” to four-month, online courses with 20 people.

But last year, I pioneered a new approach: a telephone plus web course with only 6 people. The small number meant that, in the 6 sessions of the course, I could schedule two coaching sessions for EACH participant (one of them for a full hour) as well as two meaty lessons.

Better yet, the group of 6 would gain from hearing each other be coached to make such significant progress. They would become a mini-community of people learning to use their storytelling skills to meet customers’ needs in unique ways.

Course Starting in October

I am offering such a phone/web course again this fall. Its six sessions will begin the first week of October and be over by the Thanksgiving holiday.

Learn to use your gifts in new ways - without leaving home

It may happen, of course, that not every participant gets the coaching they need in the first 6 sessions. If that happens, we’ll schedule additional meetings in January. I promise to give enough coaching (in the class or privately) that each of you in the course will:

1. Discover a group (a market) who is hungry for what you have to offer;
2. Create the title and outline of a digital product that will attract just the people in that group.

(If you want further help in actually creating the digital product from your outline and offering it to members of your new market, additional optional courses will follow in the winter and spring. In fact, with one of the additional courses, I will offer free websites optimized to help you reach your market.)

Save By Just Asking for an Application

To make this $795 course more affordable to you – and to encourage you to sign up early – I’m offering an Early Bird Special discount.

All you need to do to lock in your discount is to request a simple, 5-question application. Just click the large button toward the end of this web page:

http://IrresistibleOfferCourse.com

You may want to read the page, even if you’re not interested in the course at this time. It contains useful information about how to “get off the storytelling treadmill” by adding to your storytelling income.

• Read more or request an application

(Twelve Skills of the Storyteller, Part 3)

The prior three articles in this series described:
“Preface”: The dangers of focusing on storytelling skills;
Part 1: Imagination skills;
Part 2: Oral language skills.

In this article, let’s take up the skills of relating to your listeners.

Skill 6: Respond to Your Listeners

When you tell a story, you begin by imagining your story. Then you use oral language to stimulate your listeners to imagine the story in their own ways.

Your listeners, in turn, respond to you by constructing images in their own minds. But they also respond with oral language: facial expressions, posture, laughter, even how they breathe.

The communication streams in an endless feedback loop

Then you respond to their response. Each moment builds on the ones before.

For example, you might begin, “There was once a girl so small that she could have hidden in a pea pod.”

Perhaps your listeners lean forward. Some of them smile a bit.

Then you respond to their responses. You smile back. Or perhaps you repeat, “Yes, a pea pod.”

Now maybe some of your listeners laugh a little. Or more of them smile.

Buoyed by their positive responses, you continue in the ”groove” you have created together – which, in turn, weaves the spell even more tightly.

Adjusting As You Go

Of course, your listeners don’t always respond the way you want. In this case, you respond by adjusting your telling to produce a different response.

For example, if your group of 5-year-olds begins to snicker at the word “pea” (taking it for its homophone “pee”), you might say, “Yes, she could hide inside a green bean!” If they laugh at her tiny size (instead of at the saying of a forbidden word), then you’ve gotten the response you want – and you’ll likely replace “pea pod” with “green bean” for the rest of the story.

The Loop Called Rapport

The feedback loop of responding to each others’ responses builds a state of synchronization between you and your listeners.

When you respond to your listener's response to your response, you create synch, a sense of rapport

Have you ever seen the tandem storytelling duo Gerry Hart and Leanne Grace (“Hart and Grace”), of Pennsylvania? They tell stories as a team, and they tell well. But what distinguishes them most is the almost magical rapport they display with each other as they tell. Sitting down and facing forward, if one crosses her legs, the other does, too – uconsciously, at nearly the same instant. If one puts the palms of her hands on the sides of her chair seat, so does the other. They are always in synch, both mentally and physically.

In storytelling, as in other communication situations, when synch builds, the feeling of rapport builds, too. When you are in such a state of rapport with your listeners, your influence is magnified.

At this point, a nearly invisible raising of one corner of your mouth, for example, may create a ripple of laughter. But if you break the rapport, you lose the “multiplier” effect of synch, and will need to expend more energy again (perhaps you will need to speak louder or gesture more broadly for a moment) to have as much effect.

Intense rapport with an audience is a highly rewarding experience. It requires you to maintain a sometimes precarious balance between attention on your listeners and attention on your story. A moment of distraction (such as when someone new enters the room or when your mind wanders) can sometimes be enough to break the spell. Then you need to re-create it.

Learn to pay close, delighted attention to your listeners. Learn to respond, and to swim in the currents of the resulting endless feedback loop.

Skill 7: Feel Your Listeners

Some years ago, I asked several professional tellers how they experience their audiences during a successful performance. Some talked about responding to individuals: “Tell to one listener at a time,” one said. “If you can get one person on your side, the others will follow.” Many tellers, however, described a sense of the group as a whole.

One veteran teller said, “It’s as though the audience offers their energy to you so you can mold it for them. Their energy seems to meld together above their heads. My job is to give it a shape without trying to take it away from them.”

When Pam McGrath and I give workshops called “Dancing with the Audience,” we have each participant tell a story to the group while blindfolded. Afterwards, we ask what the teller noticed about the audience. Most tellers describe being more in touch with their listeners than usual. I believe that, denied the convenience of sight, the tellers turn to additional ways of sensing their listeners – ways that great tellers call into play at all times.

The Power and the Burden

When you connect deeply, with all your senses, to your listeners, you form a bond of trust with them. The audience gives you a gift of power over them.

The power is not yours to exploit, however. As soon as you use your power to aggrandize yourself or to manipulate, your listeners begin to withdraw their consent. In a way, you are like a coach driver: you are hired to direct the horses, but the horses don’t belong to you. If you mistreat them or drive recklessly, you lose your job.

Such power comes with responsibility, which can feel frightening as well as exhilarating – perhaps like taking the reins the first time you drive a coach-and-four.

Talking About the Ineffable

All this talk about connection with your audience is necessarily a bit indirect, because the bonding happens primarily at a subconscious level. Generally, connection is experienced consciously only after it is established; it is created through a myriad of adjustments, each too small and rapid to be noticed individually.

Describing a strongly connected storytelling event, we often use words that suggest being highly present in the moment, such as:

• immediacy
• vibrancy
• vividness.

More commonly, though, we turn to metaphorical language to describe the effects of connection with your audience. These effects are difficult to analyze but unmistakeable to experience. To describe these effects, we compare them to:

• physical force:

• powerful
• compelling
• captivating (which derives from “to make captive”)
• moving
• “She had her audience in the palm of her hand.”

• being engulfed or submerged:

• - absorbed
• - engrossed
• - immersed

• the effects of magic:

• conjure
• “The teller cast a spell…”
• enchanted
• spellbound

If you want any of these qualities in your telling, pay attention to how you respond to your listeners. That’s where the magic lies!

(Twelve Skills of the Storyteller, Part 2)

This series describes the skills practiced, consciously or unconsciously, by masterful storytellers.

To be sure, effective stories can be told with just a subset of these skills. But familiarity with the advanced skills can help you advance your abilities and even recognize skills that you have been unaware of having.

In Part 1 I described three Imagination Skills. Now, on to the skills of oral language.

Oral language

Oral language has its own operating principles, strengths, and limitations.

At its most basic, storytelling involves imagining or remembering scenes, then describing them to your listeners.

In in-person storytelling, you describe scenes using oral language (spoken language), which differs from its close relative, written language. Oral language has its own operating principles, strengths, and limitations.

For example, written language relies chiefly on words, which vastly overpower the lesser channels, such as punctuation, typeface variations, etc. Oral language, though, uses many communicative elements in addition to words, such as:

• Tone of voice
• Facial expression
• Gestures
• Body language
• Eye behaviors
• Orientation in space (facing toward or away from listeners)
• and a dozen or so more.

Further, many of the communicative elements of oral language, such as tone of voice, are powerful enough to completely overpower words. Sarcasm, for example, uses tone of voice to give words an opposite meaning. Said sarcastically, “Right!” means “Wrong!”

Skill 4: Master the Elements of Oral Language

There are an infinite number of effective oral language styles, ranging from leaping about the stage and declaiming in Shakespearean tones, to sitting quietly on your hands and shading your words with a subtly raised eyebrow.

Whatever style makes sense for a particular teller and telling, however, the masterful storyteller calls on well-developed expressive abilities in voice, face, eyes, hands, posture and the rest.

The masterful storyteller’s voice easily conveys a wide range of emotion. It creates interesting and appropriate shapes through rhythm, repetition, tempo, volume, pitch, pauses, and more.

The masterful storyteller also uses her or his body well, using postural changes and changes in muscular tension to convey clearly the attitudes of characters and the narrator herself.

The masterful storyteller uses her or his eyes well, alternating naturally among the “big four” eye behaviors:

i) Looking up and to the side while accessing images;
ii) Looking down and to the side while accessing emotions and attitudes;
iii) Looking at imagined objects or people while describing them or pretending to interact with them;
iv) Looking directly at listeners.

Each element of oral language has a wide range of expressive potential. It is possible to master each of them in ways that are unique to you.

Skill 5: Master the Interplay of Oral Language Elements

Not only does oral language use a variety of expressive elements, it also uses elements simultaneously and in succession.

Written language is basically linear: the second word comes inexorably after the first word, and so on. But because oral language broadcasts its communicative power over several channels, it is “multi-linear.” The “word channel” may carry its own programming while the “tone of voice channel” and the “posture channel,” for example, may be reinforcing that programming, negating it, or introducing new nuances.

1st photo: all messages the same.

2nd photo: mixed messages

Notice the two pictures of women giving non-verbal messages. In both photos, a woman holds out her hand in a clear gesture of “Stop! Don’t come closer!” In the first picture, all the other oral language channels support that message. The fingers are tightly together; the eyes are hard, the mouth firm, the chin set, the torso squared.

In the second picture, though, the messages are mixed. The fingers of the hand giving the “stop” gesture are somewhat relaxed and separated; the eyes are soft; the mouth is slightly opened (giving a feeling of uncertainty or apprehension); the torso is straight but without tension. The fingers and thumb on the woman’s other hand touch each other nervously. This person is communicating something like “I will stop you” but also “I am uncertain whether I can” and even “I am afraid.”

Taken together, these photos show how powerfully and succinctly oral language can communicate messages, even when the messages are complex.

The interplay of oral language channels also allows complex transitions. Imagine that you are telling about a critical boss’s response to your presentation, like this:

I knew I had said something stupid. Then my boss came charging over to me. He said, “Is that what I pay you to say?”

Suppose your posture begins as your own. Then, when the boss speaks in your story, you switch to the boss’s posture.

	My Boss Got Mad At Me, version 1
What was said	“I knew I had said something stupid.”	Then my boss came charging over to me	He said, “Is that what I pay you to say?”
Whose words?	Narrator’s	Narrator’s	Boss’s
Whose “body”?	Narrator’s	Narrator’s	Boss’s

Even more is possible in oral language, though. You can go beyond alternating between the narrator and the boss by allowing them to overlap. For example, you could shift to the boss earlier in one of the channels than in the other.

To create this effect, you could begin with your own words and posture (“I knew I had said something stupid.”) But then you could begin shifting into the boss’s posture while you continue with your own words as narrator, “Then my boss came charging over to me.”

In this case, your words remain the words of the narrator. But the posture channel shifts to that of the boss, creating an anticipation of the full-out boss qualities that include the boss’s words, “Is that the way I pay you to talk?”

	My Boss Got Mad At Me, version 2
What was said	“I knew I had said something stupid.”	Then my boss came charging over to me	He said, “Is that what I pay you to say?”
Whose words?	Narrator’s	Narrator’s	Boss’s
Whose “body”?	Narrator’s	Boss’s	Boss’s

Masterful storytellers are expert at conveying such complexity through oral language.

An oral language aficionado?

How do you become so masterful? Begin by paying attention to the oral language of others. Notice it everywhere.

Watch videos with the sound turned off, then again with it on. Notice how people walk, stand and sit in airports and shopping malls.

Become an oral language gourmet. Play with it. Be swept away by it. Be tickled speechless by it. Be awed by it.

Try it out in your buddy sessions and your everyday conversation. Go over the top, beyond the limits – and then adjust back to what works. Conversely, start subtly and see which small changes can give big effects.

The ocean of oral language is enormous, offering endless territory to explore over a lifetime. And it fertilizes the river delta of storytelling with its unending expressive potential.

(Twelve Skills of the Storyteller, part 1)

The first ability of the storyteller is to imagine

This is the first in a series of articles on twelve fundamental storytelling skills. These skills focus on the act of storytelling itself (rather than on areas like voice production, finding and researching stories, relating to event organizers, marketing yourself, and other ancillary topics which each have their own skill sets).

Musicians practice low-level skills (like playing scales) as well as high-level skills, like playing expressively and feeling the overall shape of a piece of music.

Every day, though, we each speak and even tell stories. As a result, the lower-level, physical skills don’t usually challenge storytellers very much: for example, we have all developed fluent muscular control over the mechanisms of speech.

But the higher level storytelling skills can be challenging, if only because so few of them are ever even acknowledged in our daily lives.

The Skills of Imagining

The first three of the 12 skills relate to imagining. Why?

At the moment of telling a story, the storyteller imagines the story and then describes it to listeners. The first ability of storytelling, therefore, is the storyteller’s ability to imagine – to “re-member” or re-embody the scenes of a story.

Stories can be told well with even rudimentary imagination skills, just as musicians can produce enjoyable music without having achieved virtuosity.

But the most masterful story-imagining requires several skills, each building on the ones before it. What follows are descriptions of the imagination skills of the story virtuoso.

Skill 1: Imagine Vividly

Imagine.

Imagination draws from sights, sounds, gut and muscle feelings, emotions, and more. Imagine in every sensory mode.

Imagine all the emotions felt by each character.

The more vividly you imagine, the more vividly your listeners will imagine.

Skill 2: Let Your Imagination Act on You

Imagine without holding back!

Allow yourself to be changed by what you imagine.

It’s possible to imagine something without letting it touch you. The best storytellers, though, can imagine in such a way that they themselves are energized, moved, and even transformed by what they imagine.

This is imagining without holding back, without trying to tame the images or to separate yourself from them.

This form of imagining is magnetic. Like a thunderstorm, it draws listeners’ attention by its pure intensity and drama.

Skill 3: Thinking in Images

Mathematicians learn to think in numbers. Musicians learn to think in sounds. Storytellers need to be able to think in images.

This includes the ability to transform images in your mind.

Thinking in images includes allowing unexpected images to appear

It also includes the ability to notice images that come to mind in response to complex challenges (such as deciding on an audience’s needs or responses).

If skill #1 is about vividness and skill #2 is about a relationship to images, this skill is about flexibility and openness.

Young children have easy access to images, but society teaches us to close our inborn connection to images. As a result, few of us go beyond a child’s level of “image intelligence.”

The most advanced imaginers, on the other hand, have developed the most fluid imaginations. They can drink in the flow of images or “pause” it to focus on a single image.

They can do “virtual tours” of what they imagine, seeing it from any view point, hearing all the sounds, feeling all the tensions, cautions, and flows of energy from a group of characters.

They can glide from one image to another, fully responsive to the threads that unite two images as well as the subtle or striking contrasts between them.

This skill involves not just seeing, hearing, smelling, or feeling what you remember or imagine, but also being in touch with what those images could become. It involves a mastery of image dynamics.

Image masters can also allow helpful images to come to the surface. For example, some tellers, when faced with an audience, find themselves imagining scenes from a story they might not have planned to tell.

For myself, I have learned to welcome such unexpected images and to regard them as helpful responses to the complex input I receive unconsciously from the listeners (such as how they sit, breathe, cough, look around the room, and more). When I trust the images and tell the story whose images came to me unbidden, I usually learn later that it was even more appropriate for the group than what I had planned to tell.

More Skills to Come

In future articles, I’ll describe the nine skills in these four additional categories:

• Oral language
• Relating to your audience
• Flexibility in performance
• Being and showing yourself.

All four categories are important. Yet the skills of imagining remain fundamental. After all, images are the very stuff of story itself!

Practicing skills might sound harmless. But it has dangers!

Long ago, someone asked me the question, “Musicians practice scales to develop their skills. What can storytellers practice? To get better, what should we work on?”

I will answer this question positively, in a future newsletter. But first: you must be warned!

Danger!

It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? “Put in your hours practicing basic skills, and you’ll be a better storyteller.”

Unfortunately, this apparently worthy quest for skills can easily lead your storytelling astray.

How? Here are four dangers of “skill work” in storytelling:

Danger 1: Disconnecting

If you focus too much on the mechanics, you can become disconnected from the big picture, from the purpose of your storytelling.

I knew a violinist from the New York Philharmonic, Mischa Borodkin. He heard me dutifully practicing scales on my guitar one day and stopped me. “When you are playing scales,” Mischa said, “always play with soul.”

The last thing we want to get better at is disconnecting from our stories, our selves, and our listeners. “Practicing” can help us improve, but only if we are practicing communicating what matters to us.

Rather than practice mindlessly, tell stories often to caring listeners. As you tell, seek immediacy and connection. Seek to lead your listeners on a satisfying, mutually enriching journey.

Danger 2: Running from Your Fears

The urge to develop skills can sometimes be a response to fear. We can be afraid of doing poorly, of being disliked, of being vulnerable, and much more.

All those fears are understandable. But the way to conquer them is to face them and heal them, not to “build your arsenal of skills.”

Rather than learn skills as a way to not feel afraid, try to embrace the exhilaration of telling, of letting go of the bar on the roller-coaster, of joyfulling riding the story wave.

Danger 3: Neglecting Your Strengths

There may be one best way to play a rapid C-major scale on a piano, but there are infinitely many ways to be a great pianist, a great composer, or a great storyteller.

Think of the storytellers you love best. They do not all tell stories the same way! Instead, they have each found ways of telling that build on their unique strengths.

Build new strengths, of course. But don’t neglect the noble search for the strengths you already have. Rather, notice what works now. Experiment with doing it more – more often and more boldly. Find safe places to tell in new ways, then allow your unique qualities to emerge in them.

Danger 4: Not Prioritizing

There are lots of skills I could use in storytelling. I could certainly make use of Odds Bodkin’s harp skills and Kevin Locke’s hoop-dancing skills. I could use some less obvious skills, too: Donald Davis’s ability to move an audience to long, deep laughter and then on to other deep feelings. Connie Regan-Blake’s deep sense of integrity. Penninah Schramm’s flowing river of connection to Jewish tradition. And more.

But such skills can take decades to develop, so I can’t develop them all. Which skills are, in fact, worth my life’s blood?

That’s the question I need to answer. My answer will be mine alone, and it will likely shift over the years.

This is the fourth danger: focussing on a list of skills can divert me from the path of prioritizing, of wrestling with the question, “Exactly which potential strengths of mine will pay off the most for my listeners and me?”

So What Path Should You Take?

The quest for storytelling skills is an honorable one. But rather than being the safe path it might appear to be, it is strewn with the dangers described above.

The only path worthy of your art is one that keeps you connected and brave, that leads you to the hard choices that assist you in discovering your own flavors of greatness.

(Please look for a list of “The Twelve Skills of the Storyteller” in future newsletters.)

Contents

1) “STRENGTH VISION” FOR STORYTELLERS?

2) SAVE $500 ON MESSAGE TELLING COURSE

• Please read how Message Telling solves a problem in applied storytelling

1) “STRENGTH VISION” FOR STORYTELLERS?

Calling all storytellers: Put on your strength-vision goggles, please!

I was a sophomore in college, listening to the teacher speak about how poorly a student had done on an assignment.

Suddenly I thought, “I get it!”

I had already realized that the atmosphere at this school was very critical. It was both draining and isolating. But at that moment, I realized the implicit understanding of the teacher’s role, as practiced in that university:

The teacher’s job is to hold up a hoop for the students. If they succeed in jumping through it, then the teacher holds the hoop up higher. When each student has missed the hoop and fallen on the ground, then class is over for that day.

Giving challenges to students, of course, is useful and important. But in that school the challenges were more antagonistic than encouraging. And there was rarely a word of appreciation. We heard only what we had done wrong.

Meanwhile, in the Basement…

Elliott Coleman as I remember him (I wish you could see his caring, blue eyes)

Then one day I heard that there was a professor named Elliot Coleman who taught something called the Writing Seminars. In one windowless room in the basement, he practiced a different form of teaching.

The problem was that to enroll for his class I first had to show him my poems in person and be accepted. At this point, I wasn’t sure that I could bear to subject my personal poems to possible rejection.

I got up my nerve. I made an appointment. I handed him my poems – and to my amazement, he told me what he liked about them. I was speechless.

I joined the class. When I read aloud one of my poems, he would speak of it in a way that made me feel he was in touch with my innermost intention in writing the poem. Whenever he had a suggestion, therefore, I eagerly looked for a way to implement it.

One day I was lingering in the classroom after class, savoring the halo of encouragement. Two graduate students from the class remained in the room, too, talking intently to each other. Since I was an undergraduate, I was invisible. So I eavesdropped.

They were talking about a poem that one of them had written. Instead of speaking like Elliot Coleman, though, the other student was listing the poem’s deficiencies. After a time, the poem’s author seemed to be running out of defenses. He said desperately, “Well, Elliot Coleman likes this poem.”

The critical student arched for the kill: “But Elliot Coleman likes everything!”

At that moment I understood two things. I understood what the critic meant, of course: if you like everything, it’s the same as liking nothing.

But I also understood that liking everything indiscriminately was not what Elliot Coleman did. Neither did he pretend to like anything. I understood his great gift: to FIND WHAT THERE WAS TO LIKE in everything.

An Indispensable Ability for Storytellers

The ability to find the likable in a story, even when it is not obvious, allows you to grow the seed of a story into a seedling, and a seedling into a tree. It prevents you from throwing away stories and story ideas prematurely. It helps you focus on your strengths – which are the key to your success.

It also helps you help others. As a result, it helps your storytelling communities grow, becoming circles of artists who develop their unique strengths and support each other to do the same.

Two Ways to Develop…

How do you develop the skill of finding the strengths in a fledgling story – of finding what there is to like about it?

First, study the coaching of those who have this “x-ray vision,” who can see strengths even when they are partially concealed beneath layers of unsolved problems. Be coached by coaches with this ability. Watch others be coached, in person or via recordings.

Second, and even more importantly, practice viewing stories positively. At the very moment that you think to yourself, “Boy, this story has a terrible ending,” go on to ask, “And what about this story is strong, funny, clever, or beautiful? What artistic impulses are evident in this story?” Only when you have identified the story’s existing successes, are you capable of helping the story become even more successful.

This kind of “strength vision” can be cultivated, even in a society devoted to “hoop jumping.” If you learn it well, it will help your own storytelling, the storytelling of those around you, and eventually the growth of the storytelling movement.

2) SAVE $500 ON MESSAGE TELLING COURSE

Message Telling: Leading Your Listeners to Meaning, Through Storytelling

Just ask for an application for the upcoming Message Telling course, and you’ll lock in the $500 Early Bird discount.

If you need to communicate clear meanings through stories, this course is the only full treatment of the tools you need – tools that will help your communication for the rest of your life.

This course includes 9 lessons, 9 coaching calls, individual responses to your online assignments, and much more. It takes you through the complete array of Message Telling techniques.

Dr. Charles Martin is a successful dentist, a trainer of other dentists, and an executive coach. Here’s what he said about his experience with Message Telling:

“I learned how to work with a story to give it a specific meaning, a specific message. But the big revelation for me was this: it’s a lot of fun! Working within the constraints is enjoyable, once I understand what you’ve taught me. Bravo!”

How much does the course cost? Normal price: $1097; your price: $597. If money is tight right now, use the payment plan option: $97 now and $97 a month.

please check out the full story:

http://www.messagetelling.com

To request an application, either use my contact form at:

http://www.storydynamics.com/contact

Or use the link on this page:

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The $500 discount is only valid if you request an application by April 5, 2011.

• Please read how Message Telling solves a problem in applied storytelling

Many Ways to Connect

For me, being present with my audience first happened with a group of emotionally disturbed students. For over two months, they had resisted everything I tried to teach them.

Then one day I told them a story. Less than a minute into the story, their mouths were wide open and their eyes had a dreamy look. For the first time, I had the feeling we were on the same side.

This first connection with my listeners, then, came through unwittingly putting them into “story trance.” Once I felt them responding in that deep, silent way, I settled into the moment. Over the years since then, starting with a story that evokes that trance response has remained a reliable way for me to “show up.”

On the other hand, some people, like my wife, Pam McGrath, can connect with an audience more easily by bantering with them.

One day Pam stood up in front of a live audience to record on video her wonderful forty-five minute story called “Mary and Me: an Encounter with Mary of Magdela.” She spoke into her mic only to discover that it wasn’t working. She needed the mic for the video recording, not to be heard by her listeners.

So, while the videographer tried to get the mic to work, Pam just kibitzed with the audience, asking them questions and telling little jokes. This went on for ten or fifteen minutes!

By the time her mic was working and Pam could start the story, she and the audience were exquisitely connected. They were breathing together. Pam gave one of the best performances she has ever given.

A Wake-Up Call

One of Jay O’Callahan’s ways to become present and connect to his listeners is to make an evocative sound, such as the sound of wind at the seashore or of a parent whistling to a child to come in for dinner.

Such a sound can help the audience wake up and pay attention to Jay, while also enticing them to go deeper into themselves. The sound not only evokes the setting of Jay’s story, it calls listeners to leave behind analytical thinking and to respond instead with the image-creating parts of their minds.

Jay’s sound-making does even more, though. It also helps Jay connect to his story.

When he whistles as his father did to signal dinner time, Jay evokes the scene of the stories he is about to tell, his childhood neighborhood. The neighborhood, in turn, can evoke the ways he became more centered as a child, such as climbing the Big Tree behind his house. High in the tree, he got a sense of perspective, a feeling of his own competence, and an experience of connection to the natural world.

For Jay, then, a single sound not only engages his audience but also engages him with the world of his story. As a bonus, it reminds him of a youthful experience of becoming present.

What Are Some of Your Ways?

Most successful storytellers have more than one route to “showing up” during a telling. Pam, Jay and I all have found additional techniques for becoming present when trance stories, banter or sounds aren’t appropriate. Such techniques can be very personal, such as getting the audience to sing a particular song or recalling the face of a childhood mentor.

Of course, we can’t guarantee that any of these techniques will always work. Nonetheless, they are more effective than simply ignoring the problem.

Each storyteller needs to discover ways to step away from the unavoidable pre-performance preoccupations with travelling, setting up, assessing the physical space, and all the other concerns that are necessary for preparation but that interfere with performance.

In short, each of us needs ways to remind ourself of the glorious delights of the moment, of the privilege of interacting with a unique set of humans in a unique moment.

What ways have you found, that work for you?

(The above article is excerpted and adapted from the Storytelling Workshop in a Box, Lesson #17, How to Be Present.)

I have been uneasy with the idea of standards. After all, humans have been telling stories well for millennia without the benefit of formal standards. More importantly, in our society we tend to misuse standards to rank what can’t be ranked and to focus on that which can be readily measured – as opposed to that which really matters.

On the other hand, storytelling done well is transformative, whereas storytelling done poorly can be boring or inane. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could separate one from the other or at least identify clearly what needs to be improved?

It’s easy to start making lists of things a storyteller must do in order to be excellent. They range from the physical, like “have good diction” to the structural, like “have a dramatic build to a climax.”

As sympathetic as I am to the intent of this approach, I remain uncomfortable with the fact of an abstract list of what makes storytelling excellent. Why? Storytelling is so dependent on the context in which it’s done. We tell stories differently (and hear them differently) depending on the who, where, and why of the storytelling event.

The story that might be transformative in a bar among friends, for example, would be interpreted differently if told from the pulpit in a house of worship. A story that might be moving and memorable when told to your child at night would not necessarily work at the National Storytelling Festival. Of course, the festival story might not necessarily work well if it were told in a corporate board meeting.

Therefore, standards need to be dependent on the situation. As a first step toward clarity about this, let’s look at the six “bosses” that I believe we serve: six sets of expectations that jointly determine our success.

Suppose you are hired to perform stories. First, the person who hired you (the “organizer”) has goals and objectives. If you don’t achieve those, you will not succeed.

Second is the funder – who may be the same as the organizer or not. If you’re telling in a school and a teacher brings you in as the organizer, the funding may come from a Parent Teacher Organization or a state arts council. The funder’s goals must be responded to, too.

Third is the listeners. In schools, students are the primary listeners – and may have very different expectations and needs from those of the teacher and the PTO. To succeed, you must respond appropriately to all these sets of expectations.

Fourth, the situation in which you are telling brings along its own expectations, both implicit and explicit. The way you would tell a story in a 400-student assembly in the cafetorium of an elementary school will likely differ from what you would do in an individual classroom of 30 students or in a private moment with an individual child – not to mention what you would do in a child’s bedroom at home or in the school committee board room.

Fifth, you have goals and expectations of your own. Someone might say, “YOUR goals don’t affect excellence. The goals of the others are the only goals that matter.” But there is a danger to that perspective. If you aren’t finding a way to engage your passions, if you’re not tapping into your vital energies, then, even though you may meet the surface expectations, your storytelling won’t be fully alive. It won’t have the spark of creativity and joy that only comes when you’re having the time of your life.

Finally, there is a sixth “boss” that can trump them all: the needs of the moment. You can go in with a story that is likely to be perfectly suited to the situation, the listeners, the funders, the organizer, and your own goals. But something can happen at the last minute or even during the performance that changes everything. If you do not respond to the needs of the moment you will fail – no matter how well you’ve met the expectations of others.

Years ago, I told at an international conference of several thousand educators. The conference was large enough to have its own impromptu daycare center. There was so much programming that one of the storytelling performances started at 11pm.

The late-night show included four other tellers and me. The show’s topic was so specific that I knew only one suitable story of the right length. As a result, I knew exactly what I planned to tell.

But when we arrived at 11pm, the emcee made an announcement:

“Some of you know that there was an accident today in the daycare center here. A two-year-old fell off a platform. We have just learned that the child has since died.”

Immediately, the audience began murmuring to each other. Parents who had brought their children to the conference left to see them. Parents who had left their children far away left the room to call them on the phone. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, we were finally able to start the show.

What were the needs of the moment? To speak to these people who had just learned that something terrible had happened.

I had a choice: tell the story I had planned or tell a different story that might better meet the suddenly altered emotional needs of the listeners.

I decided to try to introduce the pre-selected story in a way that might somehow make it connect to the fact of the child’s death. It didn’t work. My story would have been excellent had the needs of the moment been different, but as it was, it failed.

When we are thinking about how to be excellent as storytellers, we cannot rely exclusively on abstract absolutes. As important as standard ways of speaking about storytelling excellence may become in the future, we will still need to relate everything we do to the task of meeting the needs of our six “bosses” – who change their demands from situation to situation, and, occasionally, from moment to moment.

Contents

1) BEWARE THE “STORYTELLING VOICE”!

2) FREE RECORDINGS: THE STORYTELLING COACH PODCAST

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1) BEWARE THE “STORYTELLING VOICE”!

Wherever I travel, I try to listen to local storytellers perform. I like to support them and hear what they’re up to.

Much of what I hear encourages me: honest communication, well shaped and well delivered.

But nearly everywhere I also hear something I have learned to dread. I call it the Storytelling Voice.

A Warning!

I have hesitated to write about Storytelling Voice. Rather, I prefer to call attention to the good and let the bad fade away.

But Storytelling Voice is insidious. Unless your attention is called to it, it’s difficult to realize that you have this destructive habit or learn how to free your telling from it.

A Performance Virus?

Some tellers tell conversationally. Some tell more theatrically. Others use a distinctly elevated tone, suggestive of myth or ritual.

But some use an artificial tone of voice, a voice that suggests “I am a storyteller! You can tell by how I sooooound!”

There is no way to convey the sound of this voice in print. Its many variations all have one trait in common: the voice differs from the teller’s conversational voice for reasons having nothing to do with communication or the peculiar qualities of the tale being told. Rather, the teller imitates what the teller has perceived as “the way storytellers sound.”

In short, the teller is imitating (usually unconsciously) a way of speaking that is unnatural and contrived. Doubtless, the teller has picked it up from other tellers and assumed that this way of talking is a sign of belonging in “the storytelling club.”

Said differently, the Storytelling Voice is a virus passed from one well-meaning teller to another.

Sad Symptoms

The Storytelling Voice is not usually a fatal disease, although it can sometimes weaken storytelling communities alarmingly.

You see, when tellers succeed in mastering this artificial voice, they have little incentive to try to convey the nuances of expression that their stories demand. They are less likely to discover their own, unique forms of vocal expression.

Further, an artificially theatrical tone of voice can serve as insulation against truly experiencing the emotions, attitudes, and intentions of the story’s characters.

As a result, tellers and communities infected with storytelling voice tend to skate on the emotional surface of their stories. Their performances tend to lack variety and depth.

Tragically, audiences who come to a performance dominated by Storytelling Voice either buy into the idea that storytelling should sound like stilted acting, or they leave in search of a more compelling artform.

Invisible Symptoms

These symptoms are usually invisible to the well-meaning storytellers. They are unaware that they are doing something artificial. In their minds, they are simply “telling a story.”

Since they are not conscious of the habitual vocal style they have adopted, they have no way to notice its effect on their listeners and their community. When listeners fail to return, for example, the tellers simply bemoan the small numbers of people who seem to like storytelling.

It’s true: if you accept these tellers’ unconscious “definition” of storytelling, few people off the street find it compelling.

What Kind of Disease?

Storytelling Voice is an example of what I call “misdirected effort.”

“Misdirected effort” is a category of obstacle to your storytelling progess. It consists of trying, usually unconsciously, to improve your storytelling by exerting effort that, unfortunately, makes your storytelling worse.

An unconscious attempt to “sound like a storyteller” limits your storytelling. But, since your effort is unconscious, it’s hard for you to stop trying to speak that way.

There is a Cure

It’s not easy for a coach to do, but it is possible to help tellers notice their unconscious, misdirected effort. The easiest approach is to find a way to help the teller to NOT apply the effort for a while. Then you can help the teller notice the difference between what just happened and what the teller usually does.

For example, while leading a coaching workshop once, I listened to a teller – let’s call her Edna – whose version of a folktale was dripping with Storytelling Voice. I asked her, “Would you like some appreciations?” When she accepted my offer, I told her some things I liked about the story, her adaptation of it, and her way of characterizing one of the characters.

Then I said, “Would you like a suggestion?”

She said, “Yes.”

I said, “Before the suggestion, just tell me what happens in the story, in your own words. Don’t tell it; just tell me what happens.”

Edna began summarizing her story. Within a minute, she had begun telling it – but in her ordinary tone of voice. I let her finish, then I asked the others for appreciations. They were unabashedly enthusiastic. One said, “That was magnificent! I imagined what you were saying so vividly!”

Edna said, “But I wasn’t really telling it.”

I said, “How did it feel to “not really tell it”?

She said, “It felt kind of funny.”

I said, “Tell me more about how it felt.”

Edna said, “Well, I was so busy thinking about what happened that I didn’t really try to tell the story.”

I said, “Did you feel that somewhere in your body?”

She said, “You know, it felt a little more relaxed, like I didn’t have to put the story across to you.”

I said, “I think I can see the difference in how you stood. When you were ‘trying to tell the story,’ you leaned forward more. Does that feel correct?”

Edna was quiet a moment while she experimented with her stance. “Yes,” she said. “When I was just telling you what happened I felt more relaxed, almost like I was just waiting for a bus.”

“I can see it in how you’re standing now. It looks very centered, relaxed yet powerful.”

Edna’s eyes sparkled. “I can feel that!”

I said, “Your job, then, is to stand ‘like you’re waiting for a bus’ when you tell. That stance is very inviting to us. You don’t have to push the power of the story forward. Instead, invite us into the story. Does that make sense?”

“I’ve got it,” said Edna. “I can do that.”

Replacing the Misdirected Effort

To help Edna stop using Storytelling Voice, I needed to take her through four steps. Each teller will need unique help, but these steps will apply to most:

1. Tell at least part of a story without using Storytelling Voice.
2. Notice what it felt like NOT to use it.
3. Rescind the decision to use Storytelling Voice.
4. Replace the unconscious intention to use Storytelling Voice with another intention, in Edna’s case to “tell like she is waiting for a bus.”

Now Edna will be free to explore and develop much more interesting and varied approaches to her voice, to her characters, and to her stories themselves.

Treat the Patients Gently

In my mind, Storytelling Voice is a danger to our storytelling movement. It scares off potential audience members and keeps potentially wonderful tellers stuck in slavish imitation of an affected manner of speech.

But that doesn’t mean that we should be harsh toward those who have this unfortunate performance habit.

Instead, we need to treat them gently, like the devoted storytellers that they are. We can offer to coach them supportively, like I coached Edna. We can offer them information about this common problem. (Depending on your relationship with them, you might even be able to give them this article to read.)

We can perhaps say, relaxedly and affectionately, “I wonder if you have a touch of Storytelling Voice? Would you like to experiment telling a story the way you talk to a friend?”

We will need to be creative in approaching this issue and in helping unwitting sufferers recover. It will require patience, respectfulness, and genuine affection.

But the task is too important to ignore. After all, stories have power, and many more people could benefit from experiencing that power.

Even though we can’t afford to drive away audiences with too much Storytelling Voice, neither can we afford to drive away impassioned tellers who, in their eagerness to pass on the living breath of stories, have developed a common bad habit.

We need you; we need them; every true voice needs to be heard.

2) FREE RECORDINGS: THE STORYTELLING COACH PODCAST

Do you want to learn to coach others? Do you want to be an informed consumer of coaching for yourself?

In either case, you need to understand what makes coaching work, and how a coach can support your creative thinking – not substitute the coach’s thinking for yours.

The Storytelling Coach book

Back in 1995, I wrote the first (and still the only) book on coaching storytellers, The Storytelling Coach: How to Listen, Praise, and Bring Out People’s Best. ( http://www.storydynamics.com/tsc )

Now I am recording the entire book (I am actually “telling” it more than reading it), in segments that are 5 to 10 minutes long. I will make these recordings available each week as episodes in this podcast.

These recordings are free for your personal use.

The first episode, “A New Kind of Helper,” is online now. You can listen online, download the file, or subscribe to the podcast.

Please subscribe, to be sure not to miss an episode!

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