Embodied Story

Yesterday I attended an all-day workshop titled "Thinking Like a Storyteller" given by two accomplished storytellers. We each brought a story that we wanted to "work on," and then the leaders gave us several activities to use to craft our stories. We never used paper or pen, note taking was discouraged, and the leaders never expected us to get out the stories and read them. What I learned to do is imagine my story with such detail and care, that I could begin to remove myself and any opinions or preconceptions I may have about the story from my telling. The leader would tell the participants, "stop acting, just tell us the story." She talked about seeing the story so completely that the telling was an unfolding of that vision for the audience. The other leader had a saying that exemplified that. It comes from East Africa.
The Griot says, "I have been and I have seen."
The listeners respond, "See again so that we also can see."

The lessons were similar if not identical to the ones I've learned in writing classes:
1. The narrator has to be believable, whether it's fiction, memoir, or storytelling, the audience has to trust the narrator or it won't work.
2. Be concrete. Show don't tell.
3. Let the story take on its own life. A story that is proving a point isn't a story. It's politics or advertisement or manipulation. A story follows the facts and leaves space for the listener (reader) to have their own experience within the story.

But there's something so powerful about learning storytelling not as a writer, but as someone who will embody that story for an audience. It's so intimate. It's a call to slow down and really live within the story.

All during the workshop I felt like I was taking the story that I had read and pushing it out in front of me. I was imagining the details of it like a movie before my eyes. I was sitting with the characters and contemplating the choices they made. I was trying to know the story with my senses.

And I watched the other participants doing the same. I listened to the leaders critique other stories, and as they slowed us down and pared the stories down to their essential cores, it became clear why a simple scene like an old man sitting beside a well, underneath a tree, dusty from travel, about to eat a cake baked by his wife and sacrificed by his 100 children was immensely powerful. The well reaching down to the underworld, the tree reaching up to the heavens, and an old man facing his only sustenance, the symbol of his family's love and trust. It became a moment of suspense, a moment of wonder.

It's made me think about something I heard once about discipleship. I heard that Christianity was never about the written text. Jesus left no written records. And following Jesus was never about adhering to a creed. It was about living out the stories.

I feel like learning to craft story in this way will be a source of rich life for me. As I heard all day yesterday, "stop trying to figure it out, don't worry about getting it right, just be present to your audience and stick with the story."