The true story-teller, like the true poet, is born, and not made. Talent in this creative art is a gift of nature, like a beautiful voice or skill in painting. But study, cultivation, and practice are necessary to advance the story-teller in his art, as in the case of the singer or the painter. Some practical suggestions may prove of value to beginners in story-telling:
1. ENCOURAGEMENT
There is comfort in knowing that a story need not be perfectly told to interest and delight little children in the home, kindergarten, or the lower grades of the Sunday-school and public school. The imagination of the little child is so keen, so abundant, and flows so freely that it triumphs over external defects of presentation and reaches the heart of things. Though this is true of one child or of a small group of children of about the same age and interests, it is not true, as practice soon teaches, of a large group, especially of children of different interests. Such an audience needs the magnetism of personality to hold it, and some real art in the presentation of the movement and details of the story.
Such professional story-telling is a rare gift, and is as valuable as it is rare. Not every parent, teacher, minister, or educator of youth, who may wish to be a story-teller may have the skill, time, patience, or perseverance to become an artist. Such training would involve the study of the technique of the use of the voice and of gesture, a thorough knowledge of the sources for stories, skill in the selection and preparation of material, practice in actual story-telling, and the hearing of stories told by professionals, the character of whose work unconsciously becomes the ideal of the story-teller. Training for such professional story-telling is given in colleges, presented in a number of interesting books, and encouraged by story-tellers’ training classes and leagues in many places. The hints here offered have the more modest story-teller in mind, the busy parent in the home, and the Sunday-school or public-school teacher, who may not have access to the technical books on the art of story-telling.
2. TELL THE STORY
Tell, do not read, the story. The teller is free. The reader is fettered. The oral story is more spontaneous, the connection with the audience is closer, the effect is more magnetic. It is the story plus personality and appreciation. The story-teller can give his message with his eyes as well as his lips without book or memory of the printed page to burden. The world stories contained in this volume are all designed for telling. After reading them through carefully once or twice, the mind will have the facts ready for telling. Stories adapted for telling must be written with more dramatic action and movement than those adapted for reading. But stories that are in a form suitable for telling are well adapted for enjoyable reading. Hence these stories have a double value, for telling or reading. But let it be kept well in mind that telling a story is incomparably better than reading it to any listener. The charm of a book cannot equal the magnetism of personality.
3. SELECT THE STORY
Select your story with some definite purpose in mind—pure enjoyment or some definite ethical principle, and let the aim be clearly in mind in the preparation for telling it. Select your story also with the child’s story-interests in mind, as presented in Chapter II. Make sure also that it is suitable in length and in style. Children who are accustomed to hearing stories can listen a longer time than those whose ears and brains are quite untrained. With very young children five minutes gives room for a really stirring tale.
4. MAKE THE STORY YOUR OWN
This is not the task of the memory, but of the imagination and the feelings. Read and reread the story. Do not memorize it. Visualize it. Picture it mentally. Fall in love with it. See the images. Feel the emotions of the characters. Breathe the atmosphere. Absorb its spirit, scene, setting, plot, people, and parts. Make it your own creation, living anew in your own soul. Then lay the book aside, and at leisure reproduce it, part by part, in your own thought or words, making sure that you have well in mind the story’s four parts: (1) Beginning; (2) progress of events; (3) climax; (4) end.
5. MASTER THE FOUR PARTS OF YOUR STORY
(1) Your story must have a beginning, which should be brief, concrete, interesting, introducing the chief character, scene, atmosphere, or spirit of the story in the fewest possible words.
(2) Your story must have a progress of events, an orderly movement, giving the essential facts, step by step, and full of action, leading up to the climax without revealing it in advance.
(3) Your story must have a climax that cannot be missed. This is the point and pith of your story. It is that for which it is mainly told and enjoyed. If a moral lesson is to be imparted, it is here that it is enforced. And failure here is total failure. Make sure of this climax, for to miss it is like trying to tell a joke, missing the point, and meeting humiliation and defeat.
(4) Your story must have an end. A successful ending is quite as important as the climax, and needs careful consideration. It must be brief and appropriate, and leave the mind at rest, without any questioning or dissatisfaction. It may be well for the beginner at first to analyze his stories in this way, into these four parts, either in his thoughts or on paper, for it will give excellent practice and make the retention of the story by the memory a simple matter. But with practice and drill these four parts of a good story will take their place in the mind and in the telling most naturally, easily, and pleasantly.
6. INTRODUCING YOUR STORY
The consciousness of having a good story to tell, and a story adapted to the age and interests of one’s audience, is the first step to that ease, freedom, dignity, and repose which are necessary at the start. If the story-teller can select his time, as many parents and teachers can, so much the better. If he is met by an ill-prepared audience, or an audience in an uncomfortable place, or under adverse circumstances, his introduction must serve to put him in touch with his audience. If several stories are in mind, the order may be changed, and a “humorous” story or other introductory remarks may serve to pave the way for the necessary response. Then he may proceed with the intended story or stories with his own eye and heart kindled, moving in a straightforward, spontaneous, self-forgetful way toward the desired lesson in the climax, and ending happily, leaving the audience delighted and impressed.
7. RETELL YOUR STORIES
Practise your stories! “Repetition is the mother of stories well told.” Repeat them. Do not be afraid of retelling them. The younger the children are the better they like old friends. Every one loves a “twice-told tale.” (Hervey.) “Practise! It will go clumsily at first. Imagination will be dull, facts will escape your memory, parts will be confused. But persevere, persevere! Study results. Listen to others. Catch their points of effectiveness. Above all things practise! practise! practise!” (Wells.)
8. LET CHILDREN REPRODUCE YOUR STORIES
Children should be given an opportunity to tell and retell the stories heard. Children like to create, and whether it be with sand, wood, or words, the underlying processes are the same. For a child to retell a story means that he enters into the spirit of it, that he sees clearly the mental picture, that he feels the atmosphere and life of the story. In this way imagination, memory, language, and reason are enriched and, at the same time, the ethical principle of the story is more clearly impressed on the child’s mind, to be assimilated at pleasure.