(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.

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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Contents

1) WHAT CAN STORYTELLERS LEARN FROM TULSA?

2) EXERCISE: COMPARING THE STANCES – IS YOURS TULSA OR BOSTON?

1) WHAT CAN STORYTELLERS LEARN FROM TULSA?

Note: I am re-posting this newsletter, which I first wrote in November, 2005, in honor of my upcoming move from Oklahoma back to Boston (scheduled for July, 2009).

Since I moved to Tulsa last winter, the city has been my storytelling teacher.

One day last month, I walked between my car and the car parked next to it, as I was about to leave a crowded parking lot. Fifteen feet ahead of me, I saw a woman in a denim jacket standing there, smiling. I smiled back at her.

II got in my car, then took my time arranging my seat belt and my CD player. Finally, I started the engine and backed out of the parking space.

As I pulled out, the woman in denim walked into the space where I’d been standing and got into her car.

I realized with a start that I hadn’t known she was waiting for me. I had thought she was just standing there, perhaps enjoying the day. I felt a twinge of guilt, because I certainly would have moved faster, if I’d understood.

Then I remembered: this has happened to me before in Tulsa. I don’t always recognize that people are waiting. Why? Tulsans have a behavior that I never recognized in 35 years living in Boston, which I call “placid waiting.”

In Boston, if someone is waiting for you, you know it! Their body language gives many clues, some subtle, some not. The most obvious signs, which are fortunately rare, include glancing at their watches, folding their arms, and even tapping their feet. But the less obvious signs are just as clear. People stand with their weight forward. They may even lean forward at the waist. They have an expression on their faces as if they are about to take a breath and leap into something.

They do not look placid.

Now, whenever I catch myself leaning forward impatiently, I think to myself, “My impatience won’t really make this line at the grocery go faster. I might as well enjoy myself.”

When I can remember to wait placidly, I love it. I feel like I’ve been freed from an evil enchantment and can now enjoy the world around me – including the people who are making me wait.

The Storytelling Connection

You might be wondering, “What does placid waiting have to do with storytelling?”

To understand the answer to this question, you need to realize that your storytelling thrives because of many factors. For example, it’s important to imagine your story well. It’s also important to shape your story well, It’s equally important to be in touch with the emotions of the story’s characters. And much more.

But, in the end, imperfections in any of those factors can be compensated for by one skill. Further, if that one skill is absent, your storytelling will almost cetainly fail.

What is that one skill that, when present, almost guarantees success – and that, when absent, nearly always means failure?

The skill is relationship building. If you build a good relationship with your listeners, you will succeed. Your listeners will forgive you many mistakes, because they feel that you are talking to THEM. Conversely, even if you’re wonderful in every other detail, they will tire of you if you’re not creating an honest relationship with them.

What is the most important part of creating a relationship with your listeners? You must begin by letting them know that you choose to be with them, that you respect and care about them.

Sending the Message That You Care

How do you show your willingness, respect and caring? Don’t try to put it into words. As soon as you say, “I care about you,” your listener will think, “Why? You don’t really know me. What do you want from me?”

Instead, you reveal your attitude through HOW you talk, not through what you say. You convey it with tone of voice, with the pace at which you speak, and through a number of subtle but observable behaviors: How far forward is your weight? How much tension is in your head, your neck, your throat, and thus your voice?

People will respond to these cues, usually unconsciously – but all the more strongly because such signals operate below their awareness, and therefore they can’t compensate for them consciously, as they can for your words.

How do you give the right cues? It’s easier than you might think. To be sure, it’s possible to break these elements of body language into small pieces. You can work on any habitual tension in your neck, say, or on where you place your weight when you tell.

That isn’t usually the best way to improve, though. It’s often counter-productive, and, at best, not a good use of your time. Actually, the best tactic is to find your placid place, your sincerely pleased place inside you.

The Simple Way to Tell Like a Tulsan

As you tell, remember that you’re not in a hurry for the storytelling to be over. You’re not in a hurry for your listeners to like the story – or to like you. Rather, you’re having the time of your life, wanting nothing more than being right here with these people, right now.

If you find that placid place, then your subtle body language will convey a respectful invitation to your listeners. Then, if you follow up well, you and your listeners will form an ever-more-solid relationship. And that is about the most important secret ingredient of your storytelling success.

When you’ve succeeded – when you can look back at storytelling well done – remember to thank the people of Tulsa. They may not have received much recognition for their city yet. But they’re enjoying themselves anyway, while they wait.

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2) EXERCISE: COMPARING THE STANCES – IS YOURS TULSA OR BOSTON?

Want to put the ideas from the Article of the Month (above) into pracitce? I’m giving away an exercise you can do with a partner (or a group), to notice the effect of your stance as you tell.

In this exercise, you will have a chance to learn the effects of a very specific change in your way of telling – a change that can make the difference between success and failure.

Here are the full instructions for an exercise you can do with a partner (or a group), to notice the effect of your stance as you tell.

1. Choose a story that you know well. Tell about 2 minutes of it to your partner.

2. Ask your partner for appreciations: What did your partner like about the story, your telling of it, or the effect on your partner?

3. Now spend a moment finding your relaxed, confident state. It may help to remember a time when you felt completely relaxed and alive, when you didn’t want anything to be different from how it was. Perhaps you remember:

a time you were in a favorite place?
a time you were with a favorite person?
a time you were engaged in a favorite activity?

Focus on how that time felt. Then try to bring that feeling into your body.

4. Now, tell for another two minutes. Perhaps you would like to:

tell the same exceprt or story again.
continue with the next section of the story you told
tell a different story. (This may make #5 less conclusive.)

5. Ask your partner for appreciations. Then ask one or more of these questions:

Was there anything different between the two times, about the way I told?
Did you feel differently toward me during the two tellings?
Did you notice anything different about the way I stood? About the gestures I used? About my tone of voice?

6. Talk to your partner about how the two tellings felt to you. Did you notice a difference. Did you feel differently toward your listener?

If there was a difference that you or your partner noticed, what does that difference tell you?
If there was no difference, check out with your partner which of the following may have caused the lack of difference:

Perhaps you always tell with relaxed confidence.
Does this fit your and your partner’s experience?
Perhaps you were unable during the exercise to become relaxed.
Does this fit?

7 (optional) If you wish – and your partner consents – you can try to tell one more time.

8. Switch roles with your partner and repeat steps 1-7.

Let me know how this goes for you!