Ruminations of an Old Goat

By Henry Vogel

Last week I wrote about my "storyteller" moment, when I realized the joy of storytelling. Since becoming a storyteller, I've taken the opportunity to encourage others to take up the art as well. Not as professionals, necessarily, but as an activity to share with family, particularly children. Some people embrace the idea though most offer a reason -- almost invariably one of two particular ones -- why they "can't" be a storyteller.

"I just can't memorize all of those stories!"

This is almost always Reason One why a person thinks they can't be a storyteller. And it's such a poor reason, too; because storytellers do not memorize stories! Anyone who has reached adulthood has accumulated a bunch of different stories, mostly about themselves, their family or friends. People tell those stories over and over through out their life, but each telling is a bit different because you remember the "bones" of the story and only add "meat" to it when telling it. Storytellers do the same thing with the stories they tell.

Take a look at the bones for a story I suspect all of us know quite well, The Three Little Pigs:

• Three little pigs leave home
• One pig builds a house made of straw, one builds a house made of sticks and the third builds a house made of bricks
• A wolf approaches the straw house and demands to be let in
• The pig refuses
• The wolf blows the house down and either eats the pig
• The wolf approaches the stick house and demands to be let in
• The pig refuses
• The wolf blows the house down and either eats the pig
• The wolf approaches the brick house and demands to be let in
• The pig refuses
• The wolf cannot blow the house down
• The wolf climbs to the chimney and drops down it
• The pig have a kettle full of boiling water into which the wolf falls and is boiled to death

For those wondering at the violence, that's how the early versions of the tale go. The good part about storytelling is you can choose to have the pigs get away each time and to have the wolf captured in a big kettle and turned over the police. Which story you choose will depend on your audience (or the parents of your audience).

Now, did I tell anyone anything about the story you didn't already know? I seriously doubt it. Most of you could tell this story without too much trouble.

Note that I didn't go into details such as "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!" or "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!" Those are fun details from the story but the aren't actually required to successfully tell the story. The "bones" are the important events in the story. Once you know them, you simply improvise the rest when you're actually telling the story. Obviously, remembering a story's bones is much easier than trying to memorize an entire story word for word.

After a few years of doing this, I find myself automatically identifying the bones of a new story as I read it. It's entirely possible for me to read a story once, note the bones and then tell the story to a live audience later the same day. I've seen other storytellers do the same thing. As with any skill, it grows easier the more you do it.

"I'm not creative enough to be a storyteller."

I usually hear this after someone has heard me talk about making up bedtime stories for the Boy. They're sure that any story they make up won't be nearly as good as something they read out of a book or hear me tell during a performance. And, truth to tell, they may be right. But that doesn't matter. They aren't creating a story for publication or performance in front of an audience. They're making up a story for their child, who will almost certainly love whatever their parent creates.

I created a lot of stories to the Boy which will never be written down or performed again (except maybe for any grandchildren who come along). These stories always featured the Boy off having adventures of all kinds, usually accompanied by his faithful friend, Roger the Dragon. Roger was a little dragon, no taller than the Boy, who had access to all sorts of transdimensional means of travel. One night, Roger would take Brandt to a magical world to join in the Great Broom Race. Another night, they'd be going up against a space pirate captain, thumb-wrestling for leadership over the space pirates. On a third night, they'd pay a visit to Dreamland to help the Sandman on his rounds. Each time I told the story, the Boy would offer up new twists and challenges, making the stories uniquely our own. It was a lot of fun for both of us and formed memories I hope will last for the rest of his life.

Here's the not-so-big secret about telling stories like that to your children -- you've read a lot more books than they have. Steal from those books shamelessly if it will help you tell the story. Your child won't know and wouldn't care even he or she did know. I promise you, they're more interested in hearing you tell a story featuring them as a character than they are about where the ideas came from. Need some action and adventure? Grab from Edgar Rice Burroughs or E. E. "Doc" Smith or the Arthurian legends. Need something funny? Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are eternal (and don't show up on TV as often any more), but you can also grab from the Three Stooges or Gilligan's Island or whatever will suit your needs. Eventually, your child may stumble across the source of some of your ideas, but that will just help remind them of the fun they had listening to your version of the story.

See? It isn't that hard to tell stories. Give it a try.