Storytelling as a composite skill

[jducoeur]

Saturday's Tall Tales event was a fine outing -- a solidly good feast (as one would expect given the staff) and a remarkably good collection of entertainments. I don't think any of the performances were less than good, and some were really outstanding.

It was the first time I've done formal storytelling in *years*, and it was interesting to see how I've come to think of it. My big weakness in storytelling is that I really kinda suck at improvisation: when I'm thinking on my feet, I get ever-more pedantic and dull. I think I did decently on Saturday (I told a highly-embroidered version of The Pike Company On the Causeway), but I didn't really think of it as storytelling.

Instead, I put on a combination of my Writer and Ritualist caps. I spent the two days before the event "writing" the story in my head, and rehearsing it probably two dozen times. Never *quite* the same way twice, but gradually finding the gags that I really wanted to hit and memorizing them top-down the same way I do Masonic ritual: first the broad structure and the relationships of each point to the next, then gradually narrowing down the internal structure of each segment. The only real difference was that I omitted the usual step of word-for-word memorization, but even there I'd probably gotten about half the wording down solid before going on. For the actual performance, I had my verbal brain semi-disengaged (as I generally do in ritual), so that I could focus on hitting the emotional notes without worrying too much about the words.

It seemed to work: it got reasonably good laughs, and was probably the tallest tale of the bunch. (I was surprised that most of the war stories told were so *true*.) But I don't quite think of this process as "storytelling", which I envision as a somewhat more verbally-improvised art. I know that several of the people here are highly experienced storytellers, so I'm curious: how does this relate to how you do it? How much rehearsal and pre-structuring do you do, and how much do you just wing it based on a rough structure?

Comments

[hugh-mannity.livejournal.com]

You did very well. I loved the way you were able to hook the "psychology" of Christian's take of Edward the Lame and the Fenceers' Woods Battle to your story. These, and Thorson's stories, were exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to have people tell. Mostly true, with the appropriate hyperbole and embroidery that happens when a bunch of people sit around drinking and saying "No shit, there we were..."

Story-telling for me is very much the same whether I'm telling a story based on oral literary tradition -- Mythology, history, literature, et al. -- or one based on a "no shit, there we were..." or "hold my beer and watch this..." moment.

This sort of thing:
"There were Midrealmers as far as the eye can see! There must have been thousands of them! [dramatic pause] Well, several hundred at least [less dramatic pause] OK a dozen or so. But there were lots more of them than there were of us..."

is as much story telling as:
"King Leondidas and his 300 Spartans faced and enormous Persian army. The emperor Xerxes had under his command 20,000 cavalry, 50,000 infantry the 10,000 Immortals, his personal guards. There were Persians as far as the eye could see and they laid waste to the land like a host of locusts..."

It's all about entertaining the audience, no matter how great or small the story.