Does March really come in like a lion and out like a lamb?
Why do we believe things that, if we were to think carefully about them, we’d realize are false?
What pressures does society put on us, to get us to oversimplify—and, therefore, to accept questionable ideas about how stories are formed—and how they affect us?
What do I mean by growing a story? I mean allowing a story to develop through the process of telling it. This is what conversational storytellers have done since we began telling stories back on the African savanna.
And yet we forget what we once knew: how to grow a story by telling it to listeners…
All this can be summed up in a simple but powerful analogy: creating a story is like creating a "living fence."
Most of us who need a fence in our lives (to give us privacy, prevent our pets from danger, etc.) build fences. We build them out of non-living materials, such as metal, wooden boards, or vinyl.
But there is another method, usually cheaper if much more gradual: the Living Fence. To create a living fence, you guide a living tree, bush, or vine to take the shape of a fence. You don’t assemble it. You don’t build it. But you guide its growth…
Such fences are magnificent when complete—but take a while to grow. In return for that patience, the fence-planter ends up with something magnificent and unique. It fences the area that the gardener decided to enclose, but in a way that the gardener could never entirely predict.
In short, a living fence is a partnership between the gardener and the organic world.
The 1918 influenza pandemic (sometimes misnamed “the Spanish Flu”) was especially deadly. Its fatality toll was greater than all the military deaths in World War I and World War II combined!
This form of influenza came to Chicago in the fall of 1918, when my dad was seven years old.
One day that winter, my Dad was stricken with the flu. His fever was so high that he could not get out of bed or even respond to his mother’s soft words.
My dad’s mother, Minnie, was a Jewish immigrant from Russia. This whole day, she stayed with my dad, letting her oldest children take care of their other younger siblings.
Late in the day my dad’s pa (father), Sam, came home from work.
Like many immigrant “old world fathers,” Sam left the children to his wife. He was interested in his work and his cigars—and in his “cronies,” other immigrant men he liked to smoke and drink with. He rarely spoke to any of his six children, except now and then to demand something of them.
My Dad, a few years before the flu pandemic…
As the fifth child of six, my dad (nicknamed “Payshe”) came pretty far down in his pa’s priorities. But the day my dad got so sick, Minnie wasn’t willing to accept Sam’s attitude.
Minnie said to Sam, “Your son Payshe is so sick, he might die. You have to go to him. He’ll do anything to please you. Help him know you want him to live!”
Somewhat disgruntled, perhaps, Sam came into the bedroom where my dad and his two brothers slept. Sam saw that my dad’s bed had been moved near the window. Minnie explained, “He’s so hot from the fever. He likes the cold air from the window.”
Sam stood next to the bed and said to my dad, “I hear you're real sick.”
My dad, nearly delirious, could scarcely respond. After a glance at Minnie, Sam went on to say, “Well, I've got something for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a shiny copper penny, saying, “I am going to give you this.”
In 1918, for a son of immigrants, a penny was a fortune! My dad had never owned a penny of his own. Somewhere in his delirium, my dad began to focus on his pa.
Sam smiled, then pressed the penny against the window pane next to the bed. The single-pane glass was frosted with the cold. With his index finger, Sam pressed the penny tightly against the frost on the window. In a short time, the warmth from Sam’s finger warmed the copper penny until the bit of ice under it melted just a little.
When Sam took his finger away, the ice froze again and the penny stayed attached to the window.
“Payshe,” his pa said, “every night that you're sick, I'm going to give you another penny!” As weak as he was, my dad smiled.
Days later, when there were eight pennies on the window, my dad’s fever broke. For the first time in all these days, Minnie smiled broadly at her husband.
This childhood experience of my father’s is my connection to the flu pandemic that he survived. But this episode also connects me to key parts of my life.
You see, the eight pennies were a gesture that was never repeated. Until my dad was grown, he never got that much attention from his Pa again. Yet those eight days made my dad miss that connection with his father—even more than when he’d never yet felt close to Sam.
In time, my dad made a promise to himself:
“When I grow up and become a dad myself,” he thought, “I will not be like my pa. I will know my children. I will be pleased with them. I will never have to be called to their deathbed to show them, at last, that I care about them. My children will know in their bones that I cherish them.”
My dad worked two jobs, so he wasn't home very much. But when he came home late at night he was always glad to see me. He always thought I was the smartest thing he’d ever seen.
He told me stories he loved. He also listened stories out of me; he was the most delighted listener I've ever known.
My dad wasn’t always there on Saturday mornings, but whenever he didn't work his weekend job, he would get up before anybody else—and, somehow, I knew to get up when he did.
At six or seven o’clock Saturday morning, just the two of us would sit at the dining room table while the rest of the family slept. He'd say, “Do you want to do a poem today?”
If I said yes, he’d have me go to the bookshelf. I’d pick one of our four books of poetry, maybe 101 Famous Poems, and bring it to the table. I’d choose a poem for us to read aloud to each other. Then, inspired by the poem we had read, we would each write our own poem.
Or, equally often, I’d say, “I have a question this morning, Dad.”
And he’d say, “Ok, what would you like to know?”
One time I said, “What's a fraction?” Even though I was supposedly “too young to learn fractions,” he explained fractions to me in a way that I understood.
Another time I said, “How do cars work?”
He said, “I don't know how to fix a car. But I know the principle of internal combustion engines. Let me draw it for you.”
Then he drew a cylinder, showed how gas came into it, how the spark plug ignited the gas, and how the cylinder was pushed out with great force—and how all this was repeated, one cylinder after another. That was the principle of the internal combustion engine!
I learned from my Dad that real learning wasn't learning the facts: “This is a carburetor. This is a distributor.” Instead, it was learning what a carburetor does and how it connects with the distributor and with what the distributor does—and how those things work together as processes. Yes, I learned that there's plenty to know about the details. But what I learned about learning is, the sooner you understand the principles, the faster all the rest goes.
In school, I was shocked to learn that we mostly got taught the details and rarely got the principles. If I had a question about a principle, though, I'd just ask my dad that Saturday and he'd explain it to me.
I remember being puzzled to see my classmates flounder with a subject that seemed so clear to me—until I finally realized they just didn't have a dad like mine.
So, when I grew up, I soon discovered that I love to teach. I also discovered that, for me, teaching is based on:
Expecting people to succeed;
Mirroring back to them their successes;
Helping them clarify their own goals; and
Helping them understand the principles of what they were doing.
Eventually, I also discovered that, during the delighted hours I had spent listening to my Dad’s stories and having him listen to mine, I had somehow become a storyteller myself.
All this has led me to become a teacher of storytelling!
First, you don't have to settle for being taught just the facts; instead, you can insist on learning the principles and on finding delight in fitting the facts into those principles.
Second, my dad’s example can give us all hope: we can each turn whatever we may have lacked into a gift for those who come after us.
In short, you can create delight and connection in your life. And, even in a terrible pandemic, you can encourage others to do the same!
Long ago, the public schools in the U.S. (and nearly everywhere else) made a decision that has affected the teaching of storytelling ever since:
Grades are to be objective!
That sounds harmless, doesn’t it? After all, we don’t want grades to be based on teacher bias or on random chance. But, in the case of storytelling, a focus on objective evaluation actually undermines key skills.
Grading can be very helpful: done appropriately, it can give students feedback on what they already know well, what they need to work on, and what progress they’ve made in the time since their previous grades.
A problem arises, though, when we try to grade things objectively that are NOT inherently objective!
The “problem” with grading storytelling is actually storytelling's greatest strength: storytelling is subjective. Like much of human cognition and communication, storytelling involves very complex processes that, in turn, have very complex results.
When people tell stories in friendly conversation, for example, they usually seek connection: the vivid sharing of experience that storytelling excels in. They also seek resonance between their experience and the experience of their friends, partly by trading stories back and forth.
As effective as such shared experience can be, though,…
By "Do you know the first thing about storytelling," I mean, "What's the primary—the most important—thing to know?"
You see, many people come to storytelling with an idea, often unconscious, of what storytelling consists of. When that idea is incorrect or unhelpful, it leads them to tell stories ineffectually.
A common idea is that stories are made of words. We've been taught that implicitly in school. We treat the words on a page as though they are the story we're reading.
But holding a paper with words written on it is no more holding the story...than holding a cake recipe is holding a slice of angel food, fresh out of the oven.
And when you focus on the words, your telling tends to get drier and less vivid. The flavor is in what you imagine, not in the recipe and the paper it is written on!
So it would be a great step forward to think of stories as made primarily of images rather than of words.
In fact, as soon as you understand and act on that idea, your stories will get better! They will have the spark of life that only fresh imagining can bring.
But that's not the full story, either. To be sure, imagining is part of your job. Standing alone and imagining, though, is not the same as telling.
It's easy to forget that storytelling has to do with communication. But there have to be at least two people there!
In other words, for both teller and listener, "a story telling" is an event to be experienced, not an object or even an image to be admired.
If you think of storytelling as about communicating images, though, your telling will improve even more. You will be more sensitive to the presence of your listeners, and that will help you succeed.
But that isn't all of it. You see, many of us think of communication as something that is done by the teller to the listener. That's a mechanical idea of communication: "I speak, and my message is conveyed to you."
When people listen to you telling a successful story, though, they have to actively construct images and meaning. They are not passive recipients. They are active makers.
To me, then, the essence of storytelling is "a communicative event in which you stimulate your listeners to imagine."
When you tell with that understanding, you will avoid many common problems that come from thinking that storytelling is about you, the teller—instead of about your listeners and their active listening.
Don't get me wrong. The teller is important. The teller stimulates. The teller is the gardener who plants the seed.
But the seed needs earth to grow in. Truly perceived, the earth is always more important than the gardener.
When you understand the listener's imagining to be the essence of storytelling, then, you will be solving the right problem. You will be seeking to entice your listeners to imagine.
For example, you will likely notice when they are imagining. You will give them the time to imagine, because you will take the time to notice when their eyes and bodies suggest they are still busy imagining what you just said.
In this and a thousand other small and large ways, your storytelling will blossom according to its full potential.
Start with the most useful concept of storytelling; that's the quickest way to success!
Have you ever found yourself with a group of good friends, sharing informal stories over dinner? Someone begins by telling about a humorous event that happened recently. Then another shares a similar experience that happened years before.
Before you know it, you and your friends (or family) have told numerous stories, and the entire group feels united, engaged, and satisfied.
But Formal Storytelling….
On the other hand, have you had an opposite experience with “formal” storytelling—in school, in your community, or at work?
Your entire experience was shaded by your anxiety. At the end, if your listeners applaud, you can hardly notice. You can’t wait to sit down or even leave the event, already playing over in your mind the moments when you hesitated, said the wrong thing, or even left out a whole section you had meant to include.
What is the difference?…
The skills of storytelling—much like the skills of walking—involve many unaware adaptations that we have learned only after years of speaking to people. We imagine. We use our unconscious abilities to communicate what we imagine—using complex oral language skills such as delicately shading our tone, posture, facial expression and more, to convey nuances of attitude and meaning.
With so many of the skills of storytelling based on intricate, unconscious learning, explanations of the skills are usually not useful until you’ve already developed them!
So there’s no obvious way to get students to experience success simply by giving instructions. What activities, then, do we set up? What behaviors do we encourage?
The Role of Surprise…
Carol Dweck discovered children who loved to fail - because, in their mindset, failure was a chance to get smarter. But our society seems to favor the fixed mindset, in which your smartness is innate and unchanging. Why is that? What role does it play, to keep people imprisoned in a fixed mindset? Is there something storytelling can do, to help others experience the exciting potential of a "growth mindset"?
