Breaking Storytelling Down, A to Z

When I first learned about storytelling a quarter century ago, I figured, "Well, I'll learn some stories, and if I tell them, I'll be a storyteller."

Yes and no. True, anyone can tell a story. But storytelling is an art, and to develop that art, you not only need practice, but an awareness of many elements that make up the storytelling process and go into performance.

Over at True Stories, Honest Lies, storyteller Laura Packer spent the month of May blogging about the art and craft of storytelling in an alphabetical fashion, from A to Z. (Darn it, why didn't I think of that first?)

Laura's observations are always thoughtful, so if you're interested in the art of storytelling (as a storyteller or as a fan of the art form), her posts are worth a read:

Rather than list 26 links here, I'll point you to her summary pages:
index for A through E
index for F through J
index for K through P
index for Q through Z

Not only do I enjoy Laura's writing, but there are a couple of posts that I'm still thinking about with regards to issues that I need to improve in my own work.

My favorite? F is for Fun.

What Transports You?

(Apologies for the lack of recent posts. I've had lots of ideas, but as it takes me about 90 minutes to 2 hours to write a blog post, it's been difficult to carve out time. So I thought up an experiment: with video, I could blurt out my thoughts for a few minutes, and shazam!, instant blog post. (While my internal editor is harsh when it comes to the printed word --a 15 minute burst of creativity turns into a couple of hours of wordsmithing and copy editing-- but when it comes to improvisation, my editor is okay with "what you see is what you get" )



So, when do stories transport you?



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Read more about the story listener's state of transportation in "The Enchanted Imagination: Storytelling's Power to Entrance Listeners," by Brian W. Sturm, American Library Association, September 27, 2006. Link.