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!

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.

Two centuries later, in 1820, Daniel Webster, the U.S. orator and stateman (a great storyteller!) spoke at a gathering where five grains of corn were placed on each plate, as a remembrance.

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

Share Your Wealth of Stories

I trust that you have enough to eat today. But no matter how bare your larder, you have a feast of stories to share. If you are fortunate enough to have friends and family to share them with, then you are truly wealthy!

Please ask others for their experiences today, both of hardship and of gratitude; please listen well. And then take a turn to share your own.

If you wish, you could place five kernels of corn on each plate, and ask each person present at your meal today to remember five losses or worries, and five moments for which they are grateful. I promise this will draw you all closer.

A Scarcity of Stories?

What keeps people from telling their stories? Here are the top three items mentioned on my subscribers’ survey results:

• Lack of confidence.
• Fear of not holding listeners’ attention.
• Don’t know how to learn a story (for the uninitiated, this often takes the form “I don’t know how to memorize a story.”)

Over the years, I have constructed audio lessons, supplemented by exercises and more, to help storytellers at all levels tell stories with a minimum of effort and a maximum of effectiveness.

These include:

1. The Beginning Storytelling Toolkit (a beginner’s guide to learning to command attention through storytelling)
2. The Storytelling Workshop in a Box (all the key information for intermediate and advanced tellers)
3. The Image Riding Toolkit (how to create vivid stories by connecting with your mind’s ability to think in images)

My Thanksgiving Gift

For the first time this year, you can get all three of the in-depth collections listed above, in the most convenient possible form: pre-installed on a new iPod.

I call an iPod with story instruction installed on it a Story-Pod.

I sell the Story-Pod all year round. But for Thanksgiving, I offer a discount, and add $301 worth of gifts.

The gifts go only to the first 12 to order.

Please check them out:

http://www.story-pod.com

And let me know how your Thanksgiving stories go, by adding a comment on this article, below.

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 might not care whether the court appoints you a good lawyer, because you know you were home with your friends at the time of the murder.

Surely this is a big mistake, and will be over quickly, right?

That’s what Gary Drinkard thought. But then his own half-sister, facing charges in an unrelated robbery, made a plea deal: she’d testify against Gary in exchange for dismissal of all charges against her. Her common-law husband, also implicated in the robbery, joined her in fingering Gary.

Then Gary’s lawyers failed to even interview the people Gary was with at the time of the murder. They failed to call to the stand the physicians who would have testified that Gary’s back injury made it impossible for him to have committed the murder. Worse, the police themselves bruised Gary and then exhibited his bruises as proof that Gary had fought with the murder victim.

Before he knew it, Gary was on death row, awaiting execution.

Gary Was One of the Lucky Ones

Naturally, Gary appealed. For years, the verdict against him was upheld.

Then, fortunately for Gary, some excellent volunteer lawyers joined his case. They won an appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court. He was granted a new trial on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct. He won his case. After 6 years in prison, he was released.

The Story Isn’t Over…

There are 130 people in the U.S. who, like Gary, were released after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. (Others weren’t so lucky. Their exonerating evidence came to light only after they were executed.)

You might think, “Well, once you’re released, the story is over. You get back to your life.”

For many of those 130, you’d be wrong. Their years in prison not only disrupted their lives, they disrupted their faith in society. Many are so angry that they have turned to drink or drugs. Others have lost all that mattered to them before their wrongful conviction. The life they might “get back to” no longer exists; or they can no longer live it.

But Gary isn’t one of those. Gary has channelled his outrage into a cause. And his chief weapon in this fight is his story.

Helping Them Tell Their Stories

Last weekend, I travelled to Philadelphia to coach Gary and seven others like him on telling their stories. Even though they have all done public speaking (through the organization Witness to Innocence, http://www.witnesstoinnocence.org) I gave them the key tools I give any beginning (or advanced) storytellers: tools for imagining, remembering, organizing and adapting their stories.

Like others I have worked with, these eight exonerees took well to what I taught. A little suspicious at first (after what happened to them, they’re suspicious of everyone!) they left feeling empowered to make their stories fit their cause, their purposes, and each unique audience.

A Brotherhood of Heroes

But for me, this group was unlike any other. As I see it, these men are truly heroes. They have travelled past the boundaries of ordinary life, conquered a dragon of injustice, and returned to offer us the elixir of their truth.

This group was founded to bring their stories to the world. But it has also functioned to bring the exonerees to each other. And they are desperate to know each other.

Can you imagine? You’ve experienced a waking, multi-year nightmare. Wouldn’t you be thirsty to meet others who had experienced something similar? These men have gained solace and strength from being brought together.

To me, these men are heroes in another way: they are fiercely protective of each other. They have formed a brotherhood of death row exonerees, a brotherhood of witnesses to injustice. A brotherhood of storytellers.

The Power Made Visible

I felt honored to be allowed to enter their circle for a weekend. As I left, I could tell they were excited about applying what I had taught them, in order to tell their stories even more effectively.

Even more, I had experienced the power of storytelling, yet again. I saw how it helped these men individually. I also saw how it helped them form a brotherhood and maintain their focus in the wake of their suffering. And I heard how it was changing society.

Their strength seemed to infect me. I felt even more determined to share the transformative power of well-told stories.

How about you? Are there stories that you have lived, witnessed, or heard, that the world needs to hear?

Like these witnesses to innocence, are you willing to put yourself out there, so that your stories can strengthen others?

And are there others like you to join with, so that, through your stories, you can help each other become ever more determined and bold?

2) DO YOU WANT TO LEARN WHAT I TAUGHT THEM?

If you’re interested in the basic storytelling principles, tools, and exercises I taught last weekend (see the article above), they are contained in the Beginning Storytelling Toolkit.

And the Beginning Storytelling Toolkit is now available, for the first time, in hard-copy form: eight CDs plus a notebook of handouts and transcriptions.

Read the details at http://www.storydynamics.com/begin

Yours in storytelling,

Doug