Spring Break
Learnin y'all on conversationalizing
Scott Dennis
Issue date: 1/22/09 Section: Forum
Storytelling has existed ever since humanity created language, and perhaps even before. Today, the art of storytelling exists not only in movie theaters and literature, but in the conversations we experience every day. Just listen around - you'll hear people relating to each other tales of personal victories, comedies and hardships.
With storytelling being such a critical part of social interactions, you're bound to hear a lot of narratives, some better than others. In these sorts of casual conversation anecdotes, a narrative's deficiencies are usually not due to the weakness of the experience being retold; you can make anything sound stimulating if you tell it right.
No, when someone's attention begins to wander despite a friend's enthusiastic oration, the fault lies most often with the narrator's poor delivery. You'll see it sometimes - somebody explaining what had happened the previous night while laughing wildly at the memory, the audience chuckling politely and wondering how many jelly beans they could fit into an 11.5-oz. soda can.
There are a couple of ways to make one's past experiences sound gripping enough to hold people's attention. You could have an experience that is so fascinating in and of itself that screwing up the retelling would be darn near impossible. An example of this could include extraordinary adventures, like the time you found that crystal skull and fought Russians in Peru and … OK, bad example. But you get the idea.
Another way to make your stories more enthralling is to have a heck of a great speaking voice. People who use this route, like James Earl Jones or Christopher Lee, can make anything sound epic. Unfortunately, this is something you normally have to be born with, so unless you're up for some vocal chords surgery, let's move on.
Learn the art of storytelling from the pros. You could take classes like short fiction (Writing 224) and learn the proper way to structure the retelling of your narrative-worthy experience. Though Writing 224 deals primarily with writing stories, its lessons on organization and delivery (how you tell the story) are relevant even to the casual conversationalist.
With storytelling being such a critical part of social interactions, you're bound to hear a lot of narratives, some better than others. In these sorts of casual conversation anecdotes, a narrative's deficiencies are usually not due to the weakness of the experience being retold; you can make anything sound stimulating if you tell it right.
No, when someone's attention begins to wander despite a friend's enthusiastic oration, the fault lies most often with the narrator's poor delivery. You'll see it sometimes - somebody explaining what had happened the previous night while laughing wildly at the memory, the audience chuckling politely and wondering how many jelly beans they could fit into an 11.5-oz. soda can.
There are a couple of ways to make one's past experiences sound gripping enough to hold people's attention. You could have an experience that is so fascinating in and of itself that screwing up the retelling would be darn near impossible. An example of this could include extraordinary adventures, like the time you found that crystal skull and fought Russians in Peru and … OK, bad example. But you get the idea.
Another way to make your stories more enthralling is to have a heck of a great speaking voice. People who use this route, like James Earl Jones or Christopher Lee, can make anything sound epic. Unfortunately, this is something you normally have to be born with, so unless you're up for some vocal chords surgery, let's move on.
Learn the art of storytelling from the pros. You could take classes like short fiction (Writing 224) and learn the proper way to structure the retelling of your narrative-worthy experience. Though Writing 224 deals primarily with writing stories, its lessons on organization and delivery (how you tell the story) are relevant even to the casual conversationalist.
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