Storytelling Defaults Things to Do Unless You Have a Good Reason Not To dé • fault: A value or setting that a device or program automatically selects if you do not specify a substitute. (Webster's Dictionary). There are some things when telling a story that we automatically do, unless we choose to do otherwise. These are storytelling defaults. The list below represents many of these defaults. They are rules that are just waiting to be broken by your artistic choices! But please: make sure that if you break these you are making a conscious choice! Standing: in storytelling, we stand. Standing gives us as storytellers—especially beginnign storytellers—more energy, shows enthusiasm, and helps us be more involved in and focused on the story we are telling. Most professional storytellers stand, though I do know several storytellers who always sit when telling. They have made this choice and use it well; they are able to find energy, enthusiasm and focus without standing because of long hours of practice and experience. Other times to sit may be when a character in the story sits or when the situation is not conducive for standing (like an intimate campfire, for instance) Images are more important than information. Storytelling, like all art, is a way to communicate images. Reports, memos, speeches, and lists are good ways to communicate information. Information and images often go together, but while it is often necessary to augment images with information, the image is what engages an audience and keep it interested. Images are what makes stories artistic and fun to watch and listen to. This is, quite frankly, the most difficult of the defaults to maintain throughout a story. It takes focus, concentration, and a real imagining in the mind's eye! Be INSIDE a story rather than OUTSIDE. Being inside a story means that we see the images in the story take place around us. We are in the middle of them, seeing and interacting with them. Being outside a story means that we are somehow distanced from the images and action. Being inside is usually much more engaging than being outside. Our natural inhibitions often lead us to see small models of our stories, taking place in front of us, or taking place in some place that we are not. This is usually undesirable. Overcoming these inhibitions to paint verbal and vocal pictures of the story's images is vital to good telling. Being inside a story means that you are vibrant, surrounded by stimuli, and energetic in your communication of what is going on around you. You are next to Cinderella—or perhaps you BECOME Cinderella for a moment. The floor she is cleaning is underneath your very feet. Being inside a story allows you to better invite the audience to join you as you watch and participate in its virtual world. Stories have a dramatic plot structure. A dramatic structure means that your story have a beginning, middle and and end and will rise to a climax toward the end. Energies and suspense will increase and get more and more exciting to this point. There are episodic stories out there, but you should be aware that most of the stories you will tell will have a dramatic plot structure. Be aware, however, that many folktales have episodic structures. See the workshop on structure for more information. Avoid contemporary colloquialisms. "Like," "goes," "you know," and "um" are some of these. Using "like" and "goes" used to be made fun of as "Valley Girl" talk. Now we all do it, like, all the time. In fact, the other day, my wife goes, "David, you talk just like a Valley Girl!" Of course, the (usually) better choice would be to simply say, "Now we all do it all the time" and avoid the "like" altogether. And my wife "said" that rather than "goed" it. The most compelling reason to avoid such speech isn't to please the grammar police. Instead, using these words means we're not taking advantage of the wonderfully rich vocabulary that we could be using. There are so many wonderful words in the English language, we simply don't need to say "goes" when trying to say "said." We can "mumble" or "bellow" or "yelp" or "whisper" or do lots of other things that are more creative and interesting that either "go-ing" something or "saying" something. Be creative! Using this kind of speech also makes your story very contemporary; often a wonderful mythic mood can be lost with their use. Work from Inside to Out. This is organic storytelling. This means that we visualize things first in our minds (IN), then let these images influence our voice and body (OUT) to do things. The other way to do it is to think up gestures and voice inflections (OUT), etc. and then fill these in with real images (IN). Both processes work, but for the beginning storyteller, much more success is obtained by working from the inside to the out rather than vice-versa. Both Inside and Out have be present in a storytelling performance!