Storytelling and Society

Why don't storytellers make better plots?

Why don't storytellers make better plots?

Why don't storytellers (and even many story-writers) make better plots?

Here are a few "plot confusions" that might contribute to the problem:

  1. For many storytellers, plots don't always seem as interesting as characters, places, and points of view—so we aren't as motivated to understand their essence and ways to help them grow;

  2. Indeed, plots often seem abstract and mathematical (they aren't really), whereas most storytellers care more about emotions and experiences. So we don't enjoy good relationships with the world of plot; and

  3. We've been told to "assemble" plots (examples range from misunderstandings of Aristotle to the Hero's Journey, Freytag's pyramid—and many more "plot formulas"!)—so plots don't seem as "artistic" as the other elements of story.

In truth, plot is intimately interwoven with characters, the physical world, and character emotions.

So why do we believe those misleading falsehoods and half-truths?

Midrash—A Key to Interpretation

Midrash—A Key to Interpretation

As storytellers, we know that any teller has the power to "make midrash," and therefore to emphasize any particular interpretation of a story. Obviously, this power brings a responsibility to be thoughtful about the meaning we choose to communicate.

At the same time, we may have another social responsibility: to remind our listeners—and the world at large—of how any story's meaning can be completely transformed by merely adding or deleting certain incidents.

A Great Artist Has Left Us!

A great artist has left us. What can we learn from him?

This Thanksgiving, I'm filled with both sadness and joy.

One of my lifetime heroes, Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, died just a couple of months ago. At the same time that I mourn his passing, I'm filled with thankfulness that he lived and that he indirectly influenced my life.

Theodorakis certainly influenced Greece! When he died this September, the prime minister declared three days of national mourning—and thousands stood in line to view the composer's casket.

The Record on the Wall

The name of Theodorakis came into my life in the summer of 1969…

The Power of the Coaching Buddy

The Power of the Coaching Buddy

We face many cultural misconceptions about innate abilities and the scarcity of “talent.” For most of us, these misconceptions are daunting obstacles to becoming the best storytellers we can become.

Yet there is a simple strategy for overcoming those misconceptions and allowing ourselves to flourish as storytellers: the coaching buddy.

In other words, we can thrive together better than separately. But how do we do that….?

Does the World Need Storytelling Coaches? Why?

Does the World Need Storytelling Coaches? Why?

We live in a time when, in many parts of the world, people purposely spread falsehoods about each other.

Every day, people spew untruths about different ethnic or social groups. About folks with different opinions. About those who recommend different courses of action, either as individuals or as a society.

The Skills of Division

Sadly, the skills for fomenting division and misunderstanding have become better and better developed.

A recent example is the forcible occupation of the United States congressional offices—by a group who was convinced (by some of the country's highest-ranking politicians) to believe that the recently reported election results were fraudulent.

Opposing points of view, of course, are necessary in a democracy. But deception and fabrication weaken the social fabric.

Enter the True Story

How can deception be countered?

Is Hope Too Hard for Us?

Is Hope Too Hard for Us?

…Hope is not merely a sunny outlook, nor a denial of the hard facts of our lives. Rather, hope is an accomplishment. Like freedom, it must be re-won in every generation. Maybe in every year.

I'm writing this in December, when, in the northern hemisphere, we experience the age-old journey of our part of the earth into shadow. We enact the rituals developed over eons to celebrate the return to the light.

Many of us focus on one part of those celebrations: the reassurance that the light is coming back. But the holidays also demonstrate that the road to the light leads, necessarily, through the longest, most discouraging night. And that road is best paved with stories…

The Living-Shape Model of Storytelling

The Living-Shape Model of Storytelling

What do I mean by growing a story? I mean allowing a story to develop through the process of telling it. This is what conversational storytellers have done since we began telling stories back on the African savanna.

And yet we forget what we once knew: how to grow a story by telling it to listeners…

All this can be summed up in a simple but powerful analogy: creating a story is like creating a "living fence."

What’s a Living Fence?

Most of us who need a fence in our lives (to give us privacy, prevent our pets from danger, etc.) build fences. We build them out of non-living materials, such as metal, wooden boards, or vinyl.

But there is another method, usually cheaper if much more gradual: the Living Fence. To create a living fence, you guide a living tree, bush, or vine to take the shape of a fence. You don’t assemble it. You don’t build it. But you guide its growth…

Such fences are magnificent when complete—but take a while to grow. In return for that patience, the fence-planter ends up with something magnificent and unique. It fences the area that the gardener decided to enclose, but in a way that the gardener could never entirely predict.

In short, a living fence is a partnership between the gardener and the organic world.

How the 1918 Pandemic Made Me a Teacher of Storytelling!

The 1918 influenza pandemic (sometimes misnamed “the Spanish Flu”) was especially deadly. Its fatality toll was greater than all the military deaths in World War I and World War II combined!

This form of influenza came to Chicago in the fall of 1918, when my dad was seven years old.

One day that winter, my Dad was stricken with the flu. His fever was so high that he could not get out of bed or even respond to his mother’s soft words.

Minnie

My dad’s mother, Minnie, was a Jewish immigrant from Russia. This whole day, she stayed with my dad, letting her oldest children take care of their other younger siblings.

Late in the day my dad’s pa (father), Sam, came home from work.

Like many immigrant “old world fathers,” Sam left the children to his wife. He was interested in his work and his cigars—and in his “cronies,” other immigrant men he liked to smoke and drink with. He rarely spoke to any of his six children, except now and then to demand something of them.

Child Number Five: Payshe

My Dad, a few years before the flu pandemic…

My Dad, a few years before the flu pandemic…

As the fifth child of six, my dad (nicknamed “Payshe”) came pretty far down in his pa’s priorities. But the day my dad got so sick, Minnie wasn’t willing to accept Sam’s attitude.

Minnie said to Sam, “Your son Payshe is so sick, he might die. You have to go to him. He’ll do anything to please you. Help him know you want him to live!”

Somewhat disgruntled, perhaps, Sam came into the bedroom where my dad and his two brothers slept. Sam saw that my dad’s bed had been moved near the window. Minnie explained, “He’s so hot from the fever. He likes the cold air from the window.”

Sam stood next to the bed and said to my dad, “I hear you're real sick.”

My dad, nearly delirious, could scarcely respond. After a glance at Minnie, Sam went on to say, “Well, I've got something for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a shiny copper penny, saying, “I am going to give you this.”

In 1918, for a son of immigrants, a penny was a fortune! My dad had never owned a penny of his own. Somewhere in his delirium, my dad began to focus on his pa.

A Pretty Penny

Sam smiled, then pressed the penny against the window pane next to the bed. The single-pane glass was frosted with the cold. With his index finger, Sam pressed the penny tightly against the frost on the window. In a short time, the warmth from Sam’s finger warmed the copper penny until the bit of ice under it melted just a little.

When Sam took his finger away, the ice froze again and the penny stayed attached to the window.

“Payshe,” his pa said, “every night that you're sick, I'm going to give you another penny!” As weak as he was, my dad smiled.​

Days later, when there were eight pennies on the window, my dad’s fever broke. For the first time in all these days, Minnie smiled broadly at her husband.​

Further Down the River of Life

This childhood experience of my father’s is my connection to the flu pandemic that he survived. But this episode also connects me to key parts of my life.

You see, the eight pennies were a gesture that was never repeated. Until my dad was grown, he never got that much attention from his Pa again. Yet those eight days made my dad miss that connection with his father—even more than when he’d never yet felt close to Sam.

In time, my dad made a promise to himself:

“When I grow up and become a dad myself,” he thought, “I will not be like my pa. I will know my children. I will be pleased with them. I will never have to be called to their deathbed to show them, at last, that I care about them. My children will know in their bones that I cherish them.”

Growing Up with the Opposite

My dad worked two jobs, so he wasn't home very much. But when he came home late at night he was always glad to see me. He always thought I was the smartest thing he’d ever seen.

He told me stories he loved. He also listened stories out of me; he was the most delighted listener I've ever known.

Saturday Mornings

My dad wasn’t always there on Saturday mornings, but whenever he didn't work his weekend job, he would get up before anybody else—and, somehow, I knew to get up when he did.

At six or seven o’clock Saturday morning, just the two of us would sit at the dining room table while the rest of the family slept. He'd say, “Do you want to do a poem today?”

If I said yes, he’d have me go to the bookshelf. I’d pick one of our four books of poetry, maybe 101 Famous Poems, and bring it to the table. I’d choose a poem for us to read aloud to each other. Then, inspired by the poem we had read, we would each write our own poem.

Or, equally often, I’d say, “I have a question this morning, Dad.”

And he’d say, “Ok, what would you like to know?”

One time I said, “What's a fraction?” Even though I was supposedly “too young to learn fractions,” he explained fractions to me in a way that I understood.

Another time I said, “How do cars work?”

He said, “I don't know how to fix a car. But I know the principle of internal combustion engines. Let me draw it for you.”

Then he drew a cylinder, showed how gas came into it, how the spark plug ignited the gas, and how the cylinder was pushed out with great force—and how all this was repeated, one cylinder after another. That was the principle of the internal combustion engine!

Real Learning

I learned from my Dad that real learning wasn't learning the facts: “This is a carburetor. This is a distributor.” Instead, it was learning what a carburetor does and how it connects with the distributor and with what the distributor does—and how those things work together as processes. Yes, I learned that there's plenty to know about the details. But what I learned about learning is, the sooner you understand the principles, the faster all the rest goes.

And Then There Was School

In school, I was shocked to learn that we mostly got taught the details and rarely got the principles. If I had a question about a principle, though, I'd just ask my dad that Saturday and he'd explain it to me.

I remember being puzzled to see my classmates flounder with a subject that seemed so clear to me—until I finally realized they just didn't have a dad like mine. 

So, when I grew up, I soon discovered that I love to teach. I also discovered that, for me, teaching is based on:

  • Expecting people to succeed;

  • Mirroring back to them their successes;

  • Helping them clarify their own goals; and

  • Helping them understand the principles of what they were doing.

Eventually, I also discovered that, during the delighted hours I had spent listening to my Dad’s stories and having him listen to mine, I had somehow become a storyteller myself.

All this has led me to become a teacher of storytelling!

What I Want for You

First, you don't have to settle for being taught just the facts; instead, you can insist on learning the principles and on finding delight in fitting the facts into those principles.

Second, my dad’s example can give us all hope: we can each turn whatever we may have lacked into a gift for those who come after us.

In short, you can create delight and connection in your life. And, even in a terrible pandemic, you can encourage others to do the same!

Is It Possible to Grade Storytelling Objectively?

Is It Possible to Grade Storytelling Objectively?

Long ago, the public schools in the U.S. (and nearly everywhere else) made a decision that has affected the teaching of storytelling ever since:

Grades are to be objective!

That sounds harmless, doesn’t it? After all, we don’t want grades to be based on teacher bias or on random chance. But, in the case of storytelling, a focus on objective evaluation actually undermines key skills.

The Value of Grading

Grading can be very helpful: done appropriately, it can give students feedback on what they already know well, what they need to work on, and what progress they’ve made in the time since their previous grades.

A problem arises, though, when we try to grade things objectively that are NOT inherently objective!

Does Objective Grading Work with Storytelling?

The “problem” with grading storytelling is actually storytelling's greatest strength: storytelling is subjective. Like much of human cognition and communication, storytelling involves very complex processes that, in turn, have very complex results.

When people tell stories in friendly conversation, for example, they usually seek connection: the vivid sharing of experience that storytelling excels in. They also seek resonance between their experience and the experience of their friends, partly by trading stories back and forth.

As effective as such shared experience can be, though,…

What are your winter stories?

As I write this, we have just passed the longest night of the year (in the Northern hemisphere). This is the time of darkness and cold.

In the summer and spring, of course, we see life budding out around us. We like stories then that speak of action and growth.

What about the dark days of the year? In the dominant U.S. culture, we act as though nothing happens in winter. Of course, a perennial world – including crocuses, daffodils, lilies and much else – is growing and thriving beneath the surface.

To treat this time of quiet stillness as nothingness is to overlook half the cycle of life.

What Do We Need?

In the winter we need time to come into ourselves, to go down below the surface, to nourish the roots of our being. We need to tend to it, strengthen it, and establish our deep connections to it—so that, when the spring comes, we will be ready for the blooming-forth phase of the cycle.

Yes, we can comfort and console ourselves with stories during the long nights and the short days. But beyond that, let’s be thoughtful: what stories do we each need, to nourish our roots? To ground us in the cold but timeless parts of being human?

As you experience the longest nights of the year, try to notice: what stories are you hungry for?

Where Will You Find Those Stories?

We’re unlikely to find our root stories in the popular-culture mills that provide most TV and movie stories.

Instead, we’ll have to turn to books, to recordings, but most of all to each other and to our communities of storytellers. And even there, we may need persistence to uncover what we seek.

My wish to you during this winter season is that you find the stories that nurture your roots. Perhaps the stories you need are dark, or perhaps they are filled with light. Perhaps they are painful or perhaps hopeful.

By letting these stories do their work in you, you will be honoring that part of your life that our society tends to skip over.

What about you?

What’s your sense of your “winter stories”? Does that idea even make sense to you? Add a comment, below.

Can Storytelling Help Make a Better Future?

Can Storytelling Help Make a Better Future?

One day, I was trying to think about the future of our society. (This gave me a major headache and no ideas.)

But then I saw an image of a light-filled city floating above the horizon. When I described it to my listening partner, I saw more: a roadway leading from me to that futuristic city.

In a flash, I had a thought - my first one!

I thought, “I don’t know what a future society will look like. But I think I know some values that will be important in getting us there.

As soon as I spoke that, I had a thought that has changed my life in some important ways, ever since: “I know how to teach those values through teaching storytelling.”

That led me to try to work out…

Don’t Fall for the “Lone Genius” Fallacy!

Don’t Fall for the “Lone Genius” Fallacy!

Somehow, we’ve come to expect creative people to work alone. Yet many of the most successful of us seek out, commit to, and cherish relationships with other artists who help us with our work…. the fantasy of self-sufficiency can be a trap. With rare exceptions, creative people of all kinds like to be around others. 

Why, then, would so many people subscribe to the false idea of the “solitary, tormented genius”? 

Is Conflict Necessary in Every Story?

Is Conflict Necessary in Every Story?

So many experts tell us that every story must center around a conflict. Is that “sage advice,” or just bad advice from would-be sages?

If it’s not true, what else could a story center around? Isn’t conflict essential to life—and therefore to stories? Are there really other centers for a compelling story?

Can storytelling influence values?

Can storytelling influence values?

We know that stories can promote any values: war or peace; the vilification of the “other” or the dignity of all.

But does storytelling—the process, apart from particular stories—have an underlying tendency to promote some values over others?

If so, does this reveal a hidden power of the storytelling art?

Storytelling and Values: Below the Radar?

Storytelling and Values: Below the Radar?

Some storytellers have a social message they would like to deliver, but run into problems about telling stories that promote social change:

  • If they tell stories as part of their living, do they dare risk alienating potential customers or even their own supervisors or colleagues?

  • If they tell stories with a strong message (of any kind), do they risk alienating their listeners?

  • If they need to separate their “social change” storytelling from their bread-and-butter storytelling, how can they have the energy to do both?

But what if there’s a way that storytelling can promote important values “below the radar”?

What if the very processes of storytelling can be enlisted to promote values that will be crucial in making a future society even better than today’s society?

What if…

Tim Tingle: A Choctaw Approach to Authenticity

Tim Tingle: A Choctaw Approach to Authenticity

I first got to know Tim Tingle when I moved to Oklahoma in 2004. After my wife Pam and I had spent time with Tim in several contexts, he invited us to attend the Choctaw Nation’s annual Labor Day Festival in the tribal capitol, Tvshka Homma (Tuscahoma), Oklahoma.

Pam and I had the great privilege there of meeting some of the elders who had taught Tim his stories. But most of all, we got a glimpse of some unspoken parts of Choctaw culture.

A case in point: we heard many stories from Tim and from his friends about the jokes they had played on Tim...

Speech of a Lifetime?

Speech of a Lifetime?

At the recent National Storytelling Conference in Kansas City, I had the amazing honor of being given the Lifetime Achievement Award - the highest honor given in the U.S. storytelling community.

I was allowed just a few minutes to address the gathering. Since this was a once-in-a-lifetime moment, I tried to give the essence of what I most want to pass on, after over four decades as a storyteller, author, teacher, and coach. So here’s what I said...

Can Storytelling Help Your Mindset?

Can Storytelling Help Your Mindset?

Carol Dweck discovered children who loved to fail - because, in their mindset, failure was a chance to get smarter. But our society seems to favor the fixed mindset, in which your smartness is innate and unchanging. Why is that? What role does it play, to keep people imprisoned in a fixed mindset? Is there something storytelling can do, to help others experience the exciting potential of a "growth mindset"?

Do You Have a Storytelling Vision?

Do You Have a Storytelling Vision?

Two kinds of listeners every storyteller needs, and how I helped storyteller Karen O'Donnell of Homewood, IL, conceive and realize her vision for

  1. The effect she wanted to have on her community, and
  2. The support she needed to advance her own storytelling.

Do you have such a vision? Is it time for you to create one?

Days of Darkness

Days of Darkness

Many of us feel darkness surrounding us socially, as well as physically. We feel the lengthening shadows of intolerance, scapegoating, and bigotry. These dark forces seem ascendant. How can we possibly remain hopeful?

South Africa’s Desmond Tutu, no stranger to such situations, said this:

"Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness."

So where is this reputed “light”?

Precious Brightness

Novelist Kate DiCamillo, in her acclaimed novel (later made into an animated film) The Tale of Desperaux, points to a form of light familiar to every reader of this article...