Storytelling

Stories describing events in images and in oral and written language are at the heart of world cultures. Stories serve as entertainment, education, cultural tradition, and morality instruction. Scientific research reinforces the idea that the human brain is wired for storytelling, because people have been telling stories as a means of creative expression and comprehension of the world since Paleolithic humans painted the animals and warriors on the walls of the Lascaux caves in southwestern France twenty thousand years ago.

Advanced technology has transformed storytelling methods, bringing narratives from cave walls to movies, digital technology, and video games. But despite increasingly sophisticated technology, the human need to tell individual and collective stories remains the same. Storytelling is a way for people to tap into their common humanity and contribute their individual experiences and insights to the crucible of the human condition.

Background

Throughout the centuries, people have told stories orally and through writing, shaping their methods and mechanics with the tools of their times. Ancient cultures, including Australian Aboriginals and Native Americans, painted the symbols of their stories on cave walls as prompts for the storyteller, who often used music and dance to help bring it to life. Storytellers have used carved tree trunks, sand, leaves, tattoos, and other methods of containing genealogical and other information to record stories in pictures.

Stories in the oral tradition are preserved by passing them down from generation to generation; they are constantly changing as they are told and retold. Early humans created oral myths that were sometimes later transmuted to written language. Common elements of these stories across many different cultures include ways to explain the changing faces of nature, descriptions of the origins of people, and the exploits of people with superhuman attributes. As stories developed over generations, they often became central to the identity of the storyteller's culture, laying the foundations for religious beliefs and mythology that would in turn influence later stories and storytelling rituals. Despite the worldwide popularity of written, televised, and digitalized stories, people continue to memorize oral stories that are important to their family and cultural history and bequeathed them to the next generations.

From the earliest practice of carving cuneiform symbols on clay tablets, people have used their written language to record their stories. Albert Bates Lord, professor of Slavic and comparative literature at Harvard University from 1950 to 1983, emphasized the intimate connections and changing natures of oral and written storytelling. When he examined the texts of such time-honored tales as the Odyssey and Beowulf, he discovered that a major part of the stories were composed of text that had been improvised during the oral recitation of the stories.

In his book The Singer of Tales (1960), Lord demonstrated that European and Asian epics had established a tradition of both oral performance and oral composition, and he argued for a distinction between the oral storytellers and the scribes who later wrote the stories down. He contended that the stories consisted of individual variations, not one definitive text. Storytellers use formulas to create or repeat stories from common stocks of phrases that they have themselves heard and used before, generally changing only details. Similarly, the themes of oral stories are drawn from general examples, often grounded in universal religious or psychological experience. This view of storytelling was developed as the fields of anthropology, sociology, and psychology grew in the twentieth century, with notable contributions in mythological studies such as The Golden Bough (1890) by James George Frazer and The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949) by Joseph Campbell.

Stories have developed and changed alongside the evolution of language, and they have been recorded on such diverse materials as bamboo, pottery, clay tablets, bark cloth, silk and paper. The invention of the printing press and the rise of widespread printed media shaped societies' relationships with storytelling, as oral traditions were largely supplanted. The concept of authorship and related ideas such as copyright shifted people's view of stories toward individualism. By the twentieth century, stories were recorded on film and later digitally by computers, further pushing the boundaries of what is considered storytelling.

Storytelling Today

Twenty-first century storytellers have broadened traditional storytelling forms such as fairy tales, mythology, legends, and fables to include historical and educational topics, personal anecdotes and memoirs, and business and cultural teachings. Technology innovations such as video and conference calling systems, the internet, and social media have made it possible for individuals to easily collaborate on group stories across any physical distance, pushing back on the idea of stories as generated by a single author. Interactive web documentaries use narrative storytelling techniques to involve viewers, and interactive video games have expanded the platforms on which stories are created and told.

Stories are the foundation of television shows, movies, plays, radio shows, novels, comics, urban legends, songs, video games, tabletop role-playing games, and many works of nonfiction. Some experts divide stories into four categories: those that are funny, those that surprise and delight, those that touch deep emotions, and those that move the spirit.

Institutions from corporations to churches have discovered that using the basic storytelling elements of conflict, character, and plot engage people and help them achieve their objectives. For example, managers in business may use narrative conversations instead of confrontation to resolve conflicts and overcome challenges. Collective narration in group discussions can influence participants and help unify the group by linking the past, present, and future. Storytelling helps people reason and persuade others. Using stories instead of abstract arguments and statistics helps provide context and make complex situations understandable.

Storytelling is used in contemporary advertising because stories provide graphic visual representations, they are easy to remember, and they allow sellers to create strong emotional bonds with customers. The film industry originated the idea of using multimedia techniques to create worlds for stories to evolve. Commercial examples include the “Happiness Factory” that Coca-Cola created and the “Hidden Valley” home of the Jolly Green Giant.

Several storytelling organizations originated in the United States in the 1970s, including the International Storytelling Center (ISC) and the National Association for the Perpetuation and Preservation of Storytelling (NAPPS), which later became the National Storytelling Network (NSN). A professional organization that organizes resources for storytellers and festival planners, the NSN connects people to and through storytelling and advocates the preservation and growth of the art of storytelling. The ISC sponsors the annual National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, which originated in October 1973, and inspired a storytelling renaissance across the United States.

Many storytelling festivals take place worldwide, and World Storytelling Day is celebrated every year on the day of the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere (which is the first day of the autumn equinox in the southern hemisphere).

This American Life (1995–), a long-running radio show from WBEZ in Chicago introduces listeners to new stories every week told through traditional storytelling methods, and The Moth is a New York-based nonprofit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. The Moth (2009–) hosts storytelling events around the United States and on the radio each week where professionals and amateurs can engage with audiences about amazing or unusual events that happened to them.

Bibliography

Davis, Donald. Telling Your Own Stories. August, 2005.

Denning, Stephen. The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. 2nd ed., Jossey, 2011.

Gottschall, Jonathan. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. Mariner, 2013.

Lamb, Nancy. The Art and Craft of Storytelling: A Comprehensive Guide to Classic Writing Techniques. Writer’s Digest, 2008.

MacDonald, Margaret Read. Storyteller’s Start-Up Book: Finding, Learning, Performing and Using Folktales. August, 2006.

Maguire, Jack. The Power of Personal Storytelling. Tarcher, 1998.

Mellon, Nancy. Storytelling and the Art of Imagination. 3rd ed., Yellow Moon, 2003.

Miller, Carolyn Handler. Digital Storytelling: A Creator’s Guide to Interactive Entertainment. 2nd ed., Focal, 2008.

Simmons, Annette. The Story Factor. 2nd ed., Basic, 2006.

"Storytelling." National Geographic, 19 Oct. 2023, education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/storytelling-x/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.

Truby, John. The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. Faber, 2008.

Walsh, John D. The Art of Storytelling: Easy Steps to Presenting an Unforgettable Story. Moody, 2003.

"What Is Storytelling." National Storytelling Network, storynet.org/what-is-storytelling/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.