Story Dynamics – Stories

In storytelling, paradoxes abound.

In every case of paradox, we need to notice not just the effect we intend to create, but also the potentially opposite effect.

Continuously noticing the effects of our storytelling like this is demanding and sometimes unsettling. But it can also help our telling.

This article looks at three paradoxes that concern meaning – and how they might affect our storytelling.

Imagining is the most important storytelling skill. If you cannot imagine a story, then you have nothing to communicate.

The words of a story are much less important: they are just a medium through which you stimulate others to imagine. In this sense, words are like a fireplace: the container that shapes the fire and makes it efficient, not the fuel that burns.

But, in another sense, imagining is the act that puts you in contact with the unknown…

Two years after their first Thanksgiving feast, the Pilgrims faced starvation, living for a time on a ration of five kernels of grain a day.

Gratitude is sweeter when we remember times of scarcity. And scarcity is sweeter when we season it with gratitude for what we do have.

Stories are, themselves, a form of wealth. And telling our stories – both of scarcity and especially of gratitude – is a form of wealth no one can take from us.

As I move back to Boston after 5 years, I think over the 7 things Oklahoma has taught me about storytelling. This is part one; part two is at http://www.storydynamics.com/ok2

Compared to Bostonians, Tulsans have a different style of waiting. This has big implications for telling stories effectively, as this article describes. There is also an exercise you can do to determine if your storytelling stance is more Tulsa or more Boston.

Everyone can make up stories. If you think you can’t, it may be due to the “seed and the tree” problem.

When you are faced with the seed of a story, you may not recognize it. This is in part because story seeds can vary so much from each other.

But it’s mostly because, until you’ve made up a lot of successful stories, you probably haven’t had many chances to connect story seeds with the stories they grow into.

Last weekend, I had a chance to meet and work with an extraordinary group of people. Let me tell you about one of them.
One Day, They Arrest You…
Can you imagine being unjustly accused of murder? At first, you might not be too worried, sure that the truth will set you free. If you’re poor, you [...]

When I was six and a half, my parents, my brother and I moved from our little one-bedroom apartment. We left behind the bedroom that barely held two single-sized beds and moved to a house in the suburbs. Our parents got a double bed. It seemed enormous!

Even more miraculous, my parents’ new bed was covered with the most luxurious object I had ever come across…