Storytelling helps us know what it means to be human...

Storytelling is important, in all times and all places. Storytelling, like all art, helps us know what it’s like to be human, including:

- What we have been in the past;
- What we are like now;
- What we are capable of becoming in the future.

Art does this in myriad ways, from van Gogh’s paintings of sunflowers to great novels about imagined worlds. The art of storytelling does this through both informal and formal exchanges, from folktales told around a campfire, to personal experiences shared in a diner, to concert storytelling performances on large stages.

The Experience Factor

Is it any secret that the pace of our society is accellerating? And that the more we work and the more we consume, the less satisfied we are on the deepest levels?

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy not having to worry about the basics like food and shelter. I also love the fine things in life. I like my tools, including computers; I am very glad they exist.

Yet I also believe in the wise words of the Jewish compendium of writings known as the Talmud:

“Who is weathly? The one who is happy with his portion.”

In a society based largely on consumption, status, and the profit-motive, artists help shine a light on the quality of human experience.

Art Is Dangerous

Any government dependent on deception or injustice fears art...

Because all honest art helps us know who we are as humans, art is important to societies.

Without accurate knowledge of human experience, human nature and human potential, no society can make intelligent decisions about how to use its resources.

At the same time, any government or system dependent on deception or injustice fears the truth about humanity and our experiences – and therefore fears art.

If you don’t believe this, consider how often a new dictator moves immediately to control art. Consider why Franco’s forces killed the poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca even before their full military victory in Spain, or why songwriter Victor Jara was assasinated – and the masters of his recordings burned – soon after a military junta overthrew the elected Chilean president in 1973.

Controlling Art in a Free Society

In our society, we control art not with guns or a Soviet-style bureaucracy, but, in part, with the star system. The star system elevates a few artists to “star” and even “super star” status. Because there is a limited supply of such stars, it’s possible to profit from them by creating a monopoly.

A recording company, for example, can control the supply and distribution of the star musician’s work. And, because the star is now dependent on the company, the company can also partly control the star.

Incidentally, the extravagant promotion of a relatively few artists’ work, in itself, often discourages other artists. (“If you had talent, you’d be rich.”) Still others are kept from seeking their own truth by their desire to “make it big” (that is, by pursuing fame rather than the truth of their own vision).

This is not to disparage the work of famous artists. Often they are magnificent writers, singers, painters, etc. Yet there are many non-star artists whose work is also worthy of being more widely shared, but is filtered out by a system that requires mass popularity for mass profits.

Such filtering affects all artists, but some artforms, including in-person storytelling, are particularly ill-suited to mass consumption. The for-profit organizations that dominate our society are indifferent to such artforms. As a result, performance storytelling operates only along the fringes of society, where resources are in shorter supply.

Sadly, all this works to encourage artists to compete against each other, fighting over the crumbs available to us as non-stars. Our natural gratitude for each other (as companions on the path of art) can be replaced by carping and jealousy. This further distracts us from our true possibilities—and our importance to each other and to society.

Signs of Hope

A new appreciation for people telling their own stories...

In spite of the difficulties currently faced by artists in general and storytellers in particular, I am excited by hopeful developments in recent years. We see, for example, a new appreciation of people telling their own stories, as evidenced in the U.S. by the rise of The Moth, of story slams, and of organized story-collection projects like StoryCorps.

The internet is another source of hope. To be sure, live, two-way storytelling is not yet taking place in significant amounts on the internet. But the strangle-hold of mass publishers over the availability of art is being weakened. It is increasingly easy to create and post audio recordings, videos, books, photographs and more – and it is increasingly easy for others to access and pay for such art.

Further, artists can now easily connect with each other via the web. We can share our work with each other. We can share our experiences, even when separated by oceans.

We can also share how-to information about our artforms, information that would never have found its way into the more limited pre-internet channels of books, broadcast, and recordings.

Thankful for Being A Storyteller Now

In other words, it’s a good time to be a storyteller. No matter how isolated we are locally, if we have access to an internet connection we have a world community at our fingertips. And we have access to information about our art.

In this case, information is power. It gives us the power to be inspired by each other to create our unique styles, to understand the inner workings of our art, and to share what we have learned widely and easily.

It’s a great time to be a storyteller, not because rivers of money are flowing to us or because we are prominent in society, but because it’s a great time to become the storyteller you are capable of being – and therefore to help nudge society ever closer to what it, too, is capable of becoming.

For all this opportunity, I give thanks – and a promise to re-dedicate my efforts.

Contents

1) FINDING THE SCENES IN A STORY

2) FREE DOWNLOAD: 7 OBSTACLES ORDINARY PEOPLE FACE…

• Download your free, 15-page white paper

1) FINDING THE SCENES IN A STORY

The essence of storytelling is the specific scene, the “power of one-ness”:

At ONE moment,
in ONE place,
ONE character
performed ONE action

Of course, there are parts of stories that are best summarized:

“Over the next couple days, she tried again and again…”

These summaries have the virtue of taking us quickly from one important scene to the next, without bogging us down in the details.

The trick in storytelling is to get the right balance: which parts of your story are important enough to deserve a full scene, and which parts should be summarized as briefly as possible.

In order to get that balance, though, you first need to know what the scenes are!

Needing the Scene

When you are first telling a story, you may need to tell much of it in “full scene” mode – at least until you begin to understand the story’s organizing principle, namely, what is most important about it for you.

At this point, the tendency to summarize can hide the juicy details that will make your story memorable.

Interestingly, the same problem arises during the interviewing process, too. If you are trying to elicit stories from someone else, you may need to probe behind the summaries for the power of scenes.

How to Elicit Scenes – not just summaries

Some interviewees will tell full scenes without any prompting. But most often, interviewees will tend to summarize scenes rather than flesh them out.

For example, I once interviewed a survivor of a drunk-driving incident. Let’s call the woman Kathy (not her real name). My goal was to help Kathy tell her story of how the drunk driver affected her life.

Kathy responded to my initial questions about what happened to her by saying simply, “A drunk driver ran into me. That’s how I ended up in this wheelchair.”

Notice how her answer is narrative in form but lacks specifics about the collision. There is no specific place or time, and the collision itself is summarized by the words “ran into me.”

Prodding for Details

As an elicitor of stories, you may need to prod several times to get the details that will make this scene come alive and be meaningful for listeners.

In Kathy’s case, I asked her, “Say more about what happened.”

She responded, “He rear-ended me. I wasn’t even moving.”

I said, “Wow! Where were you when this happened?”

She said, “I was on the highway by my house. I had just driven 20 miles and was about to turn into the road I lived on then. I was about 3 blocks from home.”

I said, “You were just driving along and he rear-ended you?”

She said, “No, I was sitting at the light. It was dark so I was being very careful. If I had run that red light, I’d still be able to walk.”

The Pay-Off

To get the full details of the scene, I had to ask several more questions. Eventually I learned that she had been sitting in her stopped car, waiting for the light to turn, and that there were two open lanes next to her in which any rational driver could have passed her.

With the full scene revealed, I felt her helplessness and the incident’s unpredictability. To me, those are the qualities that made me remember this scene ever since.

How to elicit scenes

When you hear your interviewee refer to an episode that might fit your goals, encourage him or her to tell the full scene. Don’t worry about the presence of irrelevant details at this point. Instead, focus on getting all the details that might be relevant. Ask questions like “What happened next?”, “What were you doing before that?”, and “Where were you at this point?”

Once you have identified a scene that seems powerful, persist until you feel you can fully imagine it.

There are several other potential obstacles in the process of eliciting powerful stories, and many other useful techniques to aid in the process. But the key issues are identifying powerful scenes and then eliciting the details that make them memorable. If you succeed with those issues, you’ll be well on your way to success.

(The above article is adapted from the white paper, “Seven obstacles that ordinary people face when telling their stories to the world – and how to overcome them.” Read on to learn how to download it free.)

2) FREE DOWNLOAD: 7 OBSTACLES ORDINARY PEOPLE FACE…

After my work with Witness to Innocence (you can read about that at http://www.storydynamics.com/witness) I realized how much I care about helping ordinary people tell their extraordinary experiences to the world.

This process involves three main phases:

1. Eliciting Powerful Stories
2. Shaping And Performing Effective Stories
3. Adapting To Changing Contexts

I have made available a free, 15-page download, “Seven obstacles that ordinary people face when telling their stories to the world – and how to overcome them.”

You can download it free here:

http://helpmypeopletell.com

I look forward to getting to know people who share my interest in this work!

• Download your free, 15-page white paper

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