Ask the Storytelling Coach

Low-Cost Long-Distance Services

This field changes quickly—but it may pay to use a dial-around service or calling card

Suppose you have enrolled in a storytelling course that requires you to join telephone conference calls. What is the most economical way to join the call?

The answer will not be the same for everyone. It depends on your circumstances and needs.

What Are Your Circumstances?

• Will you be calling internationally or within the USA?
• What state or country will you be calling from?
• Will you be calling from your home phone, from a mobile phone, or do you need a service that will work from hotels or pay phones?
• What other long-distance calls will you be making?
• What other long-distance service(s) do you already have available?
• Do you have the equipment (and the comfort with technology) to use internet telephony like Skype?

It would take at least a complete website to answer the question, “What is the cheapest and most convenient way for me to join a conference call?” for all answers to the above questions.

Worse, that complete website would go out of date quickly, given how frequently long distance providers change their rates and charges.

So, I present some general hints and resources to help you get started in making a decision. Please keep in mind that, although I have tested some of these websites and services, I can’t guarantee that things haven’t changed since I did so. (Actually, I can just about guarantee that they have changed!)

Basic Types of Services

These are your basic choices for long-distance calls:

1. Dial 1 services. Most people have this on their home or business lines. You have made a contract (often with the company that provides the phone line into your building) with a single long-distance provider. Their service is automatically chosen when you dial “1″ plus a long distance number. (Outside the USA you may access long distance differently.) You may even have unlimited minutes for calls within your home country.
2. Mobile (cell) phone minutes. Your mobile phone plan comes with a certain number of minutes per month, valid for a certain calling range (usually within your home country).
3. Internet calling (“Voice over IP”). The best known services are Vonage and Skype. These require broadband internet access and either a computer with a microphone, special phones, or perhaps a special “box” to connect your phones to the internet.
4. Calling cards. These cards provide you with a special access number to call. The access number may be a toll-free number or may be a local call. Once you have connected to the service, you can dial your long-distance call. Some calling cards are pre-paid; others bill you each month depending on your usage.
5. Dial-around services. These work from your home (or business) phone only. Before you make a long-distance call, you dial a series of numbers starting with “1010″; then you dial “1″ plus the number you are calling. Dial-around charges are either added to your phone bill or billed to you separately. Unlike “Dial 1″ services, you can subscribe to more than one of these.

The Short Answer

If you’re taking a course via conference call, you need:

• Lots of minutes per call;
• Only a few calls per month. (One to four?)

Depending on your circumstance (see above), your best bet is likely to be one of the following, in order of convenience and likelihood:

1. Use your existing dial-1 service if you have the minutes pre-paid or have a low per-minute rate.
2. Use your mobile phone if you have the minutes and have good reception.
3. Use a pre-paid card if you need to call from a hotel or pay phone.
4. Use a dial-around service if you are calling from your home or business.

Most people understand the first two choices. The rest of this article will speak to helping you with the last two.

What PrePaid and Dial-Around Have in Common

Both prepaid cards and dial-around services have complex rates. With either, you may be charged one or more of the following:

• A per-minute charge (always);
• A per-call charge;
• A monthly minimum charge;
• A monthly flat-fee;
• A monthly add-on percentage of your per-call and per-minute charges.

On top of this, the services tend to change their rates frequently, adding a minimum charge, say, or changing both the per-call and per-minute rates.

As a result, figuring out which service will be cheapest for you is difficult! Fortunately, some websites provide recommendations. Some even provide calculators where you can enter your expected number of minutes and number of calls per month.

Reference Websites

The following sites claim to stay on top of these changing fee structures and to list calling-card and/or dial-around services. Sadly, even the sites change frequently, so read carefully when consulting them:

• 1010 Phone Rates (has good explanations of how dial-around services work and what to watch out for)
• Cagey Consumer. (Covers much more than just phone rates. Posts bulletins announcing changes in rates by carriers, etc.)

Online Calculators

These sites have calculators that show you (within the relatively small number of services that each calculator lists) which service is cheapest for your calling needs (how many minutes per call, how many calls a month):

• Long Distance Post (LD Post)
• Cagey Consumer Calculator

My Experience and Recommendations

Finally, I can say that I have experience (in years past) with this service. Note: it has closed and re-opened since then, so it may be quite different now!

• Everdial

This service, listed at 1010 Phone Rates looks good to me (but keep in mind that I haven’t used it personally):

• Dial-Around 1010

If you have experiences you’d like me to pass on, please leave a comment below or contact me via my contact form.

All the best,

Doug

Here’s the full question:

“When I’m at a storytelling festival and go to the story swaps, I hear storytellers telling “folktales” from someone’s published copyright book and the old stories have been revised and retold and copyrighted. Now today the storytellers think they are telling traditional stories. Isn’t this destructive for the storytelling movement?”

This question describes a process that happens in many parts of society. I think that understanding this process is important to the storytelling movement, to achieving our common goals. To do so successfully, we need to be clear about the different relationships we can have to traditional stories. Only then can we treat each other with full respect and benefit from each other’s perspectives.

Three Cultures

Folklorist Tristram Coffin uses three helpful terms:

1. Traditional culture
2. Literary culture
3. Popular culture.

As I understand Coffin’s terms, literary culture–based classically on books, but also existing in films, audiotapes, etc.–exists in fixed forms that are passed on without alteration.

Traditional culture does not exist in fixed forms, but exists in the shared and changing life of a community. The process of oral communication changes what is communicated, producing multiple variants of songs, stories, riddles, etc.

Popular culture can be similar to traditional culture in that things are communicated orally. But it is similar to literary culture in that there are written (or recorded) “originals” which are not changed by the process of oral communication.

How is popular culture different from literary culture?

The U.S. Declaration of Independence, for instance,  can be thought of as existing in literary culture. We learn of it through referring directly to its fixed, written form.

In contrast,  most of us learned the “Pledge of Allegiance” to the flag (part of U.S. popular culture) orally. Many of us have even witnessed or initiated changes in the text (“and to the republic, for witches stands”). But popular culture acknowledges only one version, the written version, and refers us back to it. The changes introduced through oral communication never “take root” and lead to independent versions within popular culture.

We Live In All Three

These three forms of culture exist side by side in our lives. In a single day, we may read a book, share items from popular culture orally, and transmit a joke or repeat an urban legend that forms part of our traditional culture.

Further, the same story or song can exist in each of these three types of culture, simultaneously or over time. Thus, we have oral folktales (traditional) that become written (literary) and then enter into popular culture—and from there may even re-enter traditional culture. At this moment, for example, there are “Cinderella” stories in each of these categories of culture.

Some of the disagreements among storytellers are related to the overlap of the three kinds of culture.

When the asker of the above question goes to a storytelling festival expecting traditional culture but finds people behaving as though they expect popular culture, there is a conflict in expectations. It may come out as “those people are all shifting the story line” (from the viewpoint of the one who expects traditional culture), or as “that person doesn’t know the story” (from those who expect popular culture).

The problem is not what the story is, however, but the different, unspoken expectations about stories in the two types of cultures.

Is One Culture Better Than The Others?

In their essence, all three kinds of culture are good. There is no one kind that is superior; they are just different channels of heritage.

But there is another factor. The dominant view in our society values that which can be owned. This view treats the three types of culture differently:

• Literary culture? Great; we’ll write, print and sell the books and recordings.
• Popular culture? OK; we’ll use the channels of advertising and electronic media to influence it and thereby influence what people want to own.
• Traditional culture? Hmm. People don’t own things in traditional culture, at least not in the prevalent sense of “own.” Not interesting. But maybe traditional culture can be a source for what we can sell?

Thus, the dominant element in our society is quite comfortable with the world-view implicit in literary and popular cultures, but can only ignore or “colonize” traditional culture.

Naturally, some of us see the pillaging (or “death on the vine”) of traditional culture, and, rightly, react with outrage.

Who is the Enemy?

While in the heat of this justified indignation, it is tempting to identify popular culture or literary culture as the problem, and see all those who willingly enter into them as the enemy.

The problem is not one kind of culture. The problem is especially not one kind of storytelling, storyteller, or venue for storytelling.

The problem is the dominant view in society.

So What Should We Do?

Our outrage will be wasted if we turn it on each other. Instead, we can educate each other lovingly about

• The overall, society-wide problems;
• The possible consequences of our unaware complicit actions; and
• The power of working together.

Storytelling is an artform that tends to focus our attention on what cannot be owned. Therefore, it has great potential as part of the changing of our society’s dominant world-view.

All of us who understand this power—whether we focus on the traditional, popular, or literary applications of storytelling—are potential allies in the transformation of our world.

The Question

I am a storyteller by nature, love and training, but have had very little time with an audience.

I’ve scraped together a storytelling “group” that has been 2-4 people depending on the month (We just started in Sept and have suspended meeting until Feb – so a different mix for each of 3 meetings). If we can hold it together (unknown) I think it can give me the practice/input I need when I put in the practice ahead of time for my stories.

The real difficulty is finding any kind of a market for something I *have* readied. School teachers are *thrilled* at the idea of my coming in and laud the value of storytelling, until they figure-out I’m not some time-loaded volunteer. Then they cool perceptibly. Others don’t want to surrender any classroom time. The library’s willing to have me (in theory), as a volunteer, but would like to wait until I’m better known around town– especially since I’m looking for an older audience (“young adult”). This is both because of my story choices, and because I feel the young children have plenty opportunities already.

It’s very hard creating the motivation to expand my story-list, or even practicing, when I’ve been unable to find any paying gigs. (Though I have what I think is a reasonable number and range for a beginner).

There are occasional volunteer opportunities, and I can sometimes dig-up an audience for one or two stories, but ultimately it is very frustrating. I have done 4, maybe 6 shows (1/2-hour+ at a time to an audience) in my ìcareerî (the last 2 years), but never the same one, b/c the audiences have been so diverse. I’ve done a nursing home, folk festival family-stage, alternative high school, and elementary-aged kids.

If I didn’t have young children, I might be more interested in volunteering at the schools, but for free, and on their schedules, I’m much less-motivated to dig-up and juggle babysitters. And anyway, I’d certainly like to bring some idea of the *value* of this art to the community. Based on the feedback I’ve been getting locally, that is very lacking.

Do you have any input?

The Answer, from Doug:

Congratulations on your creation of a storytelling group. That will be a huge advantage in the long term.

Thanks, too, for your question. Your situation is not uncommon. I’m willing to guess that what you tell the school teachers you offer is “storytelling”. (Is that right?) I believe that your opportunity for getting a better response lies primarily in how you describe what you offer.

In order for them to be thrilled enough to come up with money for what you do, you will need to show them that what you are offering meets some need that they feel is urgent. There are a few basic steps: 1. Learn more about what troubles them, what frustrates them, etc., in their work. 2. Figure out what your work can do to help with one (or more) of those areas. 3. Describe your work in the terms that they use to describe that problem area.

In the end, you may need to describe what you in quite different terms than you now do. For example, if you decide that your local teachers are starving for ways to motivate slow-learning students around literacy, you might further decide that your storytelling can help get such students interested in writing their own stories – and therefore increase their interest in literacy. So, when you talk to teachers after that, you would not say, “I want to tell stories in your classroom.” Rather, you would say something like, “I have a way to motivate your least-successful reading students to want to learn to write. It requires four classroom visits, and will be enjoyable for your entire class.” Can you see how much more important your work would suddenly seem to them?

In other words, you’re faced with THE classic marketing problem: finding the overlap between what any group of potential customers wants or needs and what you have to offer. The next steps involve finding ways to create relationships with individuals who do, indeed, want or need what you have to offer.

You can find more about this problem on my website at:

http://www.storydynamics.com/Articles/Professional_Development/marketing.html
and
http://www.storydynamics.com/Articles/Professional_Development/marketing_heart.html

After that, you’ll want these CD’s: http://www.storydynamics.com/Services/Telephone_Seminars/marketing.html

I wish you the best, and hope you let me know how things go.

All the best,
Doug

The Question

I haven’t done alot of storytelling but when I have, the response from the audience has been terrific. I have done them at retirement homes and senior groups at church. I’ve only done about 6 or so but now I’m doing one for a ladies tea in April and I have a question. What are some hints on making your voice sound like that of an elderly lady?? I am very excited about getting your free monthly newsletter. Thanks ahead of time for your suggestions.

The Answer, from Doug

Good question. I take this up at length in one of the issues of the Storytelling Workshop in a Box, as well as in the Storyteller’s Voice-Care Toolkit.

The short answer is this:

In storytelling, you don’t create illusion the way you do in traditional theater. Instead, you stimulate people to imagine. Usually, the most important thing to imagine about a character is not their surface characteristics (age, height, national origin, etc.) but rather their intention. Intention, in turn, is conveyed in oral language primarily through posture.

What is someone’s intention? It reflects their relationship to the MIT (Most Important Thing) about a story. . For example, if your story is about generosity, what is this character’s relationship to generosity? Is this a character who is generous, or one who is greedy? Or is this character the one who doesn’t care about material possessions? Etc.

Once you understand a character’s intention, you can bring that out by discovering their posture. Once you have found a posture that convey’s that character’s intention, the posture may have an effect on your vocal quality. Thus, the voice comes last, not first, in portraying a character.

I hope this helps!
All the best,

Doug