Class 8 - Storytelling

Welcome Back

In this session, we’re turning our attention to storytelling.

Storytelling is something that human beings have done since the very earliest times. We are relentlessly social creatures who spend our days exchanging tales about ourselves and each other. The anthropologist Robin Dunbar has suggested that human storytelling - the endless round of conversation and tall tales and gossip and “have you heard about X, Y, Z…” — evolved as a mechanism for social grooming. When we are chatting with our friends, we are doing much the same as rhesus monkeys are doing, as they grunt contentedly and pick parasites out of each other’s fur.

Whether Dunbar is right about the evolutionary roots of human storytelling, it is clear that stories are something that are of central importance to human life. Before books and films, before computers and online courses, there were stories. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were initially epic story-cycles that were recited, long before they were written. To the present day, in Mongolia, Tuuli storytellers sing poems, stories and proverbs handed down orally. In cultures that depend upon the spoken word, stories are an important way of communicating our values and our beliefs.

The poet Muriel Rukeyser, in her extended poem The Speed of Darkness, wrote, ‘the universe is made of stories, not of atoms.’ The universe Rukeyser is talking about is not the one described by science. It is the universe of human experience: our loves and hates, passions and dreams, interests and enthusiasms, fears and anxieties. It is the universe of the stories that we share with each other, that bind us together into families, cultures and communities.

Stories make us who we are.

The other thing about telling stories, is that if we tell compelling stories — if we paint specific scenes in our reader’s minds — they will remember them, without even having to make any effort.

Discussion task

Think about the books you have read so far for this course. What are the…

• images
• scenes
• stories

… that most stick in your head? Go into breakout groups and discuss this question, without looking up anything about the text. You have about 10 minutes, then we’ll feed back.

Storytellers

Now we’re going to try an exercise thinking about storytelling.

Ask yourself: who are the best storytellers you know? These could be friends, family-members, acquaintances, or the person in the fruit and vegetable shop who always chats. For the purposes of this exercise, don’t think of somebody famous, but simply somebody you have encountered and talked to face-to-face (or virtually). Write down this person’s name.

Now write a short creative nonfiction piece so that you can share this person’s storytelling skill with a wider audience. Remember that this is creative nonfiction, so it has to be true, and a story, and well-told. Write for fifteen minutes.

As you write this piece you may want to relate a single story that the person has told you. In this case, you will be *re-*telling their story. But a lot of storytelling is story re-telling, so it is good to get used to this. You may want to tell the story of how they told you this story (in other words, to tell a story within a story). That’s fine too!

Discussion: What Makes a Good Story? What Makes a Good Storyteller?

Now we’re going to put you in breakout groups to share a section of your writing. When you have all shared, do the following.

• Tell the rest of your group who you have chosen as a good storyteller.
• Talk about what makes them such a good storyteller.
• Share some of the stories they have told.
• Discuss how they engaged their audience.

Homework

For homework, I want you to read the opening chapter of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which is on Perlego. The chapter is called “Heaven and Earth in Jest”. By the end of Sunday night (ICT), post to Canvas, with a short free write in response to something that catches your attention in Dillard’s piece.