INSIGHTS INTO CHOOSING AND TELLING A PERSONAL STORY

By Don Herald

PART ONE

At the April, 2014 meeting of Peterborough Storytellers, I facilitated a workshop discussion on one aspect of personal storytelling. To help guide the discussion, I provided the twenty-two participants with a list of fourteen key elements that appear to be important in choosing, preparing and telling a personal story. I put this list together after doing some research on-line, from storytelling publications I have in my library and my own experience in telling personal stories in a variety of tell-around settings.

Below is my list of the key elements.

A GOOD PERSONAL STORY…

·         Is one that you really love and so you love to tell it to others.

·         Is not so personal that it’s embarrassing to you or to identifiable others.

·         Is perfect for your audience’s interest while appealing to individual curiousity.

·         Conveys a strong sense of truth, sincerity and authenticity to the listener.

·         Has a clear beginning, middle and end.

·         Has ‘good bones’: a strong skeletal structure, plot direction and purpose.

·         Has well-defined character(s) that can be human, animal or machine.

·         Has some kind of trouble or conflict that is encountered by the main character(s).

·         Has an understandable resolution to the conflict.

·         Has a ‘hook’ at the beginning that grabs the listener’s attention.

·         Encourages a relationship between the characters and the listener.

·         Has an ‘ah ha’ moment or opportunity for personal growth or  change.

·         Creates vivid, memorable images in the mind of the listener.

·         Moves the listener in some way during the telling. Or stimulates thinking about the story afterward.

I asked each participant to think about their own experience in telling or listening to personal stories and choose four of the above elements that they felt were the most important to them as a teller of and/or listener to personal stories. Each person recorded their selections on a chart and the following five elements were the most selected.

• ·         Moves the listener in some way during the telling. Or stimulates thinking about the story afterward.
• ·         Creates vivid, memorable images in the mind of the listener.
• ·         Has a clear beginning, middle and end.
• ·         Conveys a strong sense of truth, sincerity and authenticity in the listener.
• ·         Has some kind of trouble or conflict that is encountered by the main character(s).

I provided a short, personal commentary for each of the most important key elements that the group had selected and then invited comments. And what a rich, insightful and lively discussion it was! It seems that everyone has opinions and ideas about the telling of personal stories, whether they enjoy just listening to the stories or telling them.

In Part Two, I will share some of the ideas that came out of our discussion of the five key elements and a couple of additional topics that also stimulated interest about the choosing and telling of personal stories.

Don can be contacted at peterboroughstorytellers@cogeco.ca

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FEEDBACK FROM A STORYTELLING WORKSHOP

By Betty Bennett

In late February, I attended a storytelling workshop in Kitchener-Waterloo with one of the other Peterborough storytellers.  The workshop was led by Gail Fricker, in partnership with the Baden Storytellers Guild.  It was an excellent workshop with a great deal of useful information and skill-building presented in a well-planned format.

 

Gail came to storytelling from a theatrical background, and went on to pursue a Master’s degree in storytelling arts, so her perspective is very interesting and insightful, especially on the interface between acting and storytelling.

  

The morning started with a brief mixer exercise, and then Gail told the story of “The Lion’s Three Whiskers” in the first person, using gesture, song, and a suggestion of accent to set the scene and establish the narrative character.  When she finished, there was discussion about what we had observed and about the point at which storytelling slips across the line into theatre.

 

Before the break, Gail told fragments of two other stories, again in the first person.   Once more, she used a specific gesture to help set the story in its context – not too much, and not too little.  She also discussed the use of props and how to avoid stepping over the line from storytelling into theatre when using them.

After the break, we divided into groups of two or three to work on the beginning of a story that we had brought with us, the idea being that we would transpose it into the first person from the third to make it more immediate.  Of course, we had already absorbed several useful lessons from Gail, but the learning didn’t stop there.

I found it very helpful to have input from other storytellers who had never heard me tell before.  When we meet in our own local group, we become accustomed to each others’ style of telling, and sometimes we overlook subtle ways in which we could make our storytelling even better.

 

It was also very interesting to hear the types of stories being shaped and shared.  One teller was working on an oral narrative to commemorate a significant anniversary of her church.  Another was developing an oral storytelling performance around several events in local history.  The specific story was about the demise of the local cinema/ playhouse from the perspective of the last owners.  A third teller was shifting the perspective of a Welsh legend from the third to the first person in preparation for World Storytelling Day.  I learned almost as much from the other workshop participants, as I did from Gail.  It was a most worthwhile morning.

 

In the last half hour of the workshop, we re-gathered and some of us told the beginning of the story we were working on.  Again, the feedback was very helpful.  For instance, I learned that too many gestures can be quite distracting, while no gestures at all can flatten the telling.  As a chronic hand-flapper, I found that insight very useful – make the gesture serve a purpose.

On the morning of June 7, 2014, the Peterborough Storytellers will be hosting our first storytelling workshop, Our History is in Our Stories with guest facilitator, Jim Blake from nearby Haliburton, Ontario.

Jim writes, “One of the best ways to make history come alive is through the telling of stories. We can list facts, rhyme off dates, look at artefacts and identify the locations where things happened; but it is the stories about the people and the events that really capture our interest. Since we usually don’t have a record of what people said or what they were thinking it takes a creative mind to make these stories come alive.”

Jim continues. “This workshop focuses on how we can use bits and pieces from the past and, with some research and imagination, turn them into compelling stories about our local history. Sometimes these stories are best told in the first person and other times in the third person. We will also look at these and other aspects of historically-based storytelling.”

The interesting thing to me is that many of the skills involved in telling local history apply just as much to telling personal stories and family history.  And once again, shifting the point of view can make a well-known folktale or fairy tale, fresh and newly-engaging. 

What I have learned from the workshops that I have attended is that there is always something new to learn, and often a different direction to take the skills already acquired, and, of course, there is no substitute for exchanging ideas with other storytellers.

You can contact Betty at peterboroughstorytellers@cogeco.ca