Here's a miracle that happens everywhere in the world, year after year:
Large numbers of human children learn one of the most complex skills known: how to speak a human language!
We take this miracle for granted. But how do we "teach" language to small children?
And why, given the appalling percentage of failure in later schooling, does nearly every child (of every cultural and economic background!) learn to speak their native language fluently?
Fortunately, We Don't Try to Explain How to Speak!
When a child first speaks a recognizable word (perhaps "Mama!") nearly every adult responds helpfully.
That is, do you criticize your child for not saying "mother," and try to help by giving her instructions about where to place her tongue to produce a "th" sound?
No! Instead, you respond with delight: "You said, 'Mama'! Wonderful! Say it again!"
And that delight, of course, encourages the child to try again and again—resulting, eventually, in mastering the ability to say "mother"—and thousands of other words and sentences!
The Secret of Learning?
The secret of effective teaching is implicit in that familiar "mama!" scenario: allow the learner to try, and then praise both their effort and whatever part of that effort was successful! And, above all, keep speaking to your child and listen to what they say!
What Can We Learn from this— about teaching storytelling?
First, stories are part of every known human culture! So they aren't reserved just for "people with a special talent"!
At the same time, creating stories, by their nature, is not simple or mindless, because it requires coordinating the details of the story with the big picture.
So, effective storytelling instruction requires two things:
Dropping all the incomplete (or even harmful) formulaic approaches that are so commonly advocated.
Clarifying the simple but powerful principles behind storytelling success!
The Fly That's In Most Ointments
Unfortunately, too much storytelling instruction uses the "put your tongue at the back of your upper teeth" approach to teaching storytelling. That is, we try to reduce storytelling to a simple recipe. We tell them the parts of a story and expect them to create stories from the parts.
To be sure, this kind of storytelling instruction is well-intentioned and widely parroted. (So it must be right?)
But you'll not have much success if you try to teach a child to walk by instructing her:
"Shift your weight from one leg to the other, then lean forward slightly, in a controlled fall—then break that fall by extending your other leg in front of you, and then...."
Yes, that description of walking is accurate. But it is NOT helpful instruction!
Applying this bad approach to storytelling?
Sadly, too much storytelling instruction shares that sad ineffectiveness! And that starts a ripple of misinformation and discouragement, that leaves too many people feeling, "I just can't tell a story."
Equally harmfully, even those of us who experience initial storytelling successes are likely to lose momentum, the first time we encounter an obstacle. Having no idea that we learned (and were not born with) storytelling skills, when we hit a snag in our storytelling development, two things are likely to happen:
If we ask for help, we are unlikely to get useful information;
If we fail, we assume we "just don't have the inborn talent for storytelling";
If we succeed, we come to believe that we, too, must have a rare, mysterious "talent" for storytelling.
As a result, even though we experienced a learning process, we remain unaware of it—and, inadvertently, end up reinforcing the misinformation we were given.