Story Dynamics – Stories

Taking time off from storytelling can be a good thing. But watch out for “Time-Off Poisoning.” It can sap your confidence in your telling, and even cause you to quit altogether!

Oklahoma has taught me lessons about storytelling, including to avoid “traffic,” to not be fooled by the appearance of sameness among my listeners, and to learn from Native American tradition to tell stories instead of haranguing.

This is part 2 of “7 Lessons Storytellers Can Learn from Oklahoma“.

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…

We tend to assume that a story has a single meaning. “I need a story about cooperation,” you might say to a group of storytellers, as though the meaning about cooperation is fully embedded in the story itself.

But is this an accurate assumption? What is the exact relationship between a story and the meaning or meanings that a listener experiences?

Here’s a story for the time of year – and the times in society – when the darkness can seem all-encompassing. And a blessing based on the story.

In hard times, is storytelling just a frill? Or can it be part of a strategy to survive and even thrive?
When times get really hard, people change their eating habits. They look for food that is…