Tag Archives: Arts

Four Key Elements in the Art of Story Development

Posted on by Grace Wolbrink

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Every story we hear, read or tell has a story. The place where story-based artistry begins. So, grab a chair, a stool, or a slice of floor and your favorite muse. Now join us for a brief collaboration in the four key elements of story development. For in story, as in life, its characters are as outlandishly adventurous, deviously mischievous and outrageously zany as any of us truly are.

What is story? Isn’t everything we see, hear and talk about a story?

Story: The place where it all begins: Life is as it is . . .
Change happens . . . Now what? . . .
Life as it has been will never again be the same. A new normal unfolds . . .
The place where the beginning is never the same as the ending.

Story: The narrative and the meaning we attach to the events of our lives.

Storytelling: An interactive art form where storytellers, though their voice and gesture, invite people to join them on a guided tour of vivid imagery.

Destination: Ending’s New Beginning

  • What do you love about the story? I mean really, love about it. If you don’t love it, don’t tell it. By its nature, what we love, naturally grows.
  • What is the ending? It is much easier to get there if you know where you are going! A few short words, phrases or movements guides your story’s journey securely into its destination.
  • Memorizing the ending helps insure you and your listeners arrive at their targeted destination; especially when meeting the challenges of unexpected interruptions, brain farts and cosmic disturbances.

Captivation: Love at First Sight!

  • Besides the story itself, what are some key parts or aspects of this story’s storyline which captures your attention? Why?
  • What do you love, hate, regurgitate or scream about the main characters and their antics? Why?

Engagement: The Meet and Greet of Team Building!

  • Take a few minutes to meet and greet your story’s characters. Who are they? What are they like to hang around with?
  • Revisit the key images in your story – this is correct, not the words of your story, but the images inside your story. Step inside each one of them. Who is there? What is happening around you and/or them?
  • What are the dominate feelings and emotions that you and/or your characters are experiencing?

Listen: Story’s Interactive Unfolding

Supportive, or responsive listeners help us grow our stories. Supportive listeners also allow you, the teller, to see what audience members are hearing. Storytelling is an interactive art form. Responsive listeners support storytellers in naturally bring out unexpected and unrehearsed bits of humor; spontaneous internal dialog; insightful moments of awareness; or newly inspired story-line twists and turns.

Select a few supportive; non-critical, non-critiquing, non-judgmental listeners or consult the services of an experienced storytelling coach. Listeners, per your direction, can either:

  • Listen without comment.
  • Listen and offer what they appreciated about the experience and/or the story.
  • Listen and offer bother appreciations about the experience and/or the story and offer any questions they might have.
  • When working with a professional storytelling coach you may also want to add some suggestions regarding the more technical and artistic aspects of storytelling and story development.

Celebration: A gift from my heart to yours . . . Story’s Story Continues . . .

Your story is a gift to your audiences. Like any gift, it is given from the heart. Invite your audience members to join with you on an interactive journey into the enchanting realm of story’s vivid realism and adventurous journey.

Remember: It’s your story to tell, so tell it like it is; in only the way you can! Let your story be the one long remembered after the performance or presentation is done.

                                                                                     

Until next time . . . Let Your Storyographer’s Journey Begin . . . !

 

 

 

Igniting Images Engage Listeners

Posted on by Grace Wolbrink

19976402Thank you June Barnes of the Australian Storytelling Guild (Vic).

“Well, the story reaches out and touches each listener in a different way. Like an omniscient, it knows each individual’s needs at any given time. It will either speak to a need in the listener or brush by with a caress, or a tap on the shoulder.

The story can act as a catalyst in commencing the process of solving an emotional problem, enlightenment, preserving a culture, helping another, bonding families or communities. The story can generate the healing power of laughter and assist in the education process. Sometimes the story is a trickster, it pretends to entertain just to get inside the psyche, and then it jumps up at the listener with a timely message.

It seems there is no end to the power of the story to seek out that searching part of an individual’s psyche and touch it.

But do I, as the storyteller, know what the story is giving to each listener? No, I am not extended that privilege. Only the story and the listener know this. But wait, sometimes the listener doesn’t even know. The story sneaks in and finds a place to rest and then awakens at the appropriate time in that person’s life. So the story IS the dominant partner.

What about me then, the storyteller, what contribution do I make in this marriage? Well I provide a vehicle for the story to come to life. But the same can be said for singing and other mediums of presenting a story. How am I, as an oral storyteller, different? Am I different? Please say Yes! Well… as an oral storyteller I do act as a personal communicator, I form a personal relationship with the listener. The listener knows me, or a part of me, through the story. Is that my contribution, to assist in preserving the personal relationship in society? Is the listener more (or less) receptive to the story because of the personal nature of the relationship between teller and listener? Is that what makes oral storytelling unique?

Perhaps not! A singer, musician or dancer also establishes this personal relationship.

But do they allow the story to develop and mature because of the interaction between the teller and the listener. In other words do they give the story the freedom to live. Do those other methods of presenting story allow the story to change, in the way a living organism changes, according to the circumstances and community it finds itself in?

Perhaps this is the element which allows oral storytellers to claim their medium as unique. Perhaps, as the storyteller, my role in this marriage is not so passive after all.”

In oral tradition, the story grows inside the teller the more the storyteller tells the story to others. Stories come to live in the presence of a listener or listeners, for without them, a story can never become a reality. Responsive listeners allow us, as storytellers, to see what our audience members are hearing. Storytelling is also interactive, therefore, by its nature, stories require the presence of listeners as well as a storyteller. A storyteller is not a teacher, a preacher, a counselor or a reporter. A storyteller is simply the teller of a tale. How the power of story touches or impacts its audience members is up to each individual’s unique interaction with the story and its storyline.

 

Until next time . . . Let your Storyographer’s journey begin!

Our Stories Reveal Who We Are

Posted on by Grace Wolbrink

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“I do this exercise in my seminars where a person speaks for five minutes about someone who has been very important in their life who has been very important in their lives. I then ask the listeners to write down what they conclude about the speaker. I am not asking about the person the speaker talked about; I am asking about the person who was speaking. It is amazing how much people can conclude from listening only 5 minutes to someone they have never met. People are able to make statements about what the speaker values and what they would be like to work with. When I share the assessments with the speaker’s co-workers or family, they attest to how on target the assessments are.  . . People rarely understand that they tell people who they are every time they talk. ” Linda Garbe

“Once you understand that you will reveal yourself when you tell a story, the next thing to accept is that “here is a mental discipline need to develop to tell a good story. One has to have time and commitment to shaping a good story.” (Denis Bertrand) Except taken from How to Tell a Great Story by Aneeta Sundarara.

The stories we tell are about ourselves whether they are folkloric or life-loric. In the world of storytelling, select a story that you love. Find out who you are in this story and why it is important for you to tell it. Also, is it something your audiences will love to hear?

The images of our lives from the homes and towns we live in to the people we meet along the way often become the images and characters of our stories. Since we are already telling people who we are every time we speak, in the art of storytelling and the artistry of story development, why not be the person we truly are? When we embrace this reality and step further into the reality of our stories, again identifying who we are, we more consciously and with greater confidence, step into the into the vivid reality of our story the unique expression of our voices.

Until next time . . . Let Your Storyographer’s Journey Begin!

Telling a Story? – Tips and Tidbits!

Posted on by Grace Wolbrink

A storyteller, though voice and jester, invites people to join him/her on a guided tour of images, the place where a story begins, change happens and where life or someone’s awareness will never again be the same: knowing that the beginning will never be the same as the ending.

  1. Choose a story, myth or tale that you love – if you don’t love it, don’t do it. Ask your self, why do I love it? Why is this important for me to tell? What is the most important part of this story to me?
  1. If it is a myth or a folktale, then look it up in other sources – book and/or audio. Every storyteller adds his or her own unique style and flavor to a story. This might give you some more ideas as you work up your own version. Try reading it out loud to yourself or to a friend to hear the cantor of the story.
  1. Make an outline of the key events. Know your story – never memorize it. Remember every story has a beginning, something that happens that changes everything, now what – how life is different from when the story started.
  1. Practice by telling a friend or a family member. The more you tell it in front of others, the better your story becomes. Watch your story grow and come alive as you “listen” to what your audience is hearing.
  1. Become familiar with and research key elements in your story – main characters, geographic locations, plants, animals . . . Or try changing the setting or the main character in your story ie, retell it from the mouse’s, wicked step sister’s or tree’s perspective. Maybe the tortoise and the hare decided to race through the plumbing in your school!
  1. Review your original sources. It is important to keep the integrity of the storyline.
  1. Remember the ending to your story.  That way you know were you are going.
  1. Have fun. If you love what your are doing and love your story, your audience will too!

“The mythology of Greece survived for centuries before Gutenberg invented the printing press. To know the stories, one had only to listen to keepers of tales – the storytellers. Today, because we no longer need to rely upon the spoken work to know the stories, we forget that they were vividly entertaining vehicles of culture in a pre-reading era. The best written versions, I believe, remind us once again of the oral power of the ancient myths.” Barbara McBride-Smith in her book Greek Myths Western Style: Toga Tales with an Attitude.

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Until next time . . . Let a Storyographer’s Journey Begin!

“You can’t teach a pig to fly.”

Posted on by Grace Wolbrink

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Can you teach a pig to fly? Great question! A great question desires a great answer. When I find one, I will let you know.

Now in the world of flying or non-flying pigs, I sometimes see myself in the mirror. In the world and reality of single toe ungulates, flying is probably not on their list of goals, go to favorites or even on the list of conscious or semi-conscious reality. Yet for us, in our humanoid form of being, this poses a valid question. Can we teach pigs to fly? Or more importantly, can we teach ourselves to fly.

Porking out on troughs filled with the “I can’t’s . . . I can’t do it . . . If only my boss would . . . The economy . . . I wore pink striped underwear on a blue polka dotted underwear day . . . The list of life’s I can’ts is as long and as creative as the universe itself. In moving through the well crafted, stories of life’s “I can’t’s” let’s step out of the barnyard and into a new story. One that allows each of us to fly higher than we ever dreamed possible. One which elevates us and opens us up to a new level of freedom in our lives.

In your personal life: Who or what is the “pig” you are trying to teach to fly? That ongoing, same old ending story which never seems to change? Capture an image of that story. Go into this image and visually explore other possible outcomes. See and expand on this image. Now, take a few minutes, each day and write down your “pigs” progress. It could be a change in feelings. A change in how people interact  with you. A change in the type of opportunities which come into your life. A change in . . . ? Keep a brief daily record for at least a month. OK, now, how is your pig doing on its flying lessons?

Looking back through your brief, daily logs, it’s content is the basis for a new life story.

What challenges have you overcome?
How is the ending, or where you are now, different from the beginning?
What changes have happened inside of you and your life as a result of this journey?
Who are the “unseen” helpers which have added something unexpected along the way? What are you doing to celebrate your victorious ending?

On the story-development side pig aviation;  think of a favorite story or folktale. Take the main character and ask yourself:

Where are you going?
What seemingly impossible challenges are ahead of you?
Do you care?
Are you so sick of the way life is as it is that you don’t care what might be in the forest ahead of you, or what is across that ocean across from you?
Are you trying to “figure out” how you can get there; if it is even possible; if it is worth all the time and hassle . . . ?
Who and where are you in the journey which lies ahead. Are you willing to allow yourself to do the seemingly impossible which just might be entirely possible?
Where are you in your own pig’s flying lessons?

Now here in lies a new story to tell and an adventurous life to live!

Until next time . . . Let your Storyographer’s journey begin!