Crafting 101: Introductions!

There is a difference between crafting a story and just getting up and telling one.  Pretty much anyone who isn't afraid of speaking in public can get up and tell a story of some kind.  We share stories at weddings and funerals.  We share them during worship services, and amongst friends.  We share them on the radio and television. 

In this series of Blogs, I will look at a single story, and show the process I use to get from my first exposure to a tale all the way to the finished structure.

This is the seventh and last entry in the series.

The Pot Maker and The Tiger - The Story

1. Crafting 101: The Questions I Ask

2. Crafting 101:  Building The Structure

3. Crafting 101:  Flesh On The Bones

4  Crafting 101:  Donkey's and tigers and War Horses, Oh My!

5. Crafting 101: There Are No Little Characters...

6. Crafting 101:  Putting It Together

7.  Crafting 101:  Introductions!

The finish line is in sight!  I'm almost ready to tell this story!  The last piece of this puzzle for me is the introduction.  

An introduction does several things:

1)  Set the tone for this story.

Is this tale going to funny?  Serious?  Scary? Full of twists and turns?  What is the mood I want to put my audience in before I start this story?  A good introduction helps us settle in for whatever the teller has on tap.

How does this story feel?

The Pot Maker and the Tiger is funny, a little soulful, slapsticky, and outrageous.  I think it would be fun to capture a bit of that in the introduction.

2)  Give the audience some idea about the path you plan to take.  The introduction should haunt the listener a bit when the story is over, and perhaps they won't even realize or remember the introduction until after they start telling someone else the tale.

Don't start without giving them some sense of direction

The Pot Maker and the Tiger is about discovering you already had everything you wanted or needed. It is an expanded 'No Place Like Home' kind of story.

3)  The introduction can create common space with the audience.  This story takes place in India with a fellow who has a job that is not common to an American audience.  The introduction can help the audience begin in a place that makes them feel kinship for him.

So, how did I go about creating the introduction for this story using the criteria I set?  I used personal narrative, call and response, and audience participation, which is my favorite mode of introducing a story.

First, I establish common ground with my audience by asking a question.

3 - 5th grade - I ask what they want to do when they grow up.  We spend three to five minutes talking about their future dreams.  Vets, Doctors, Professional Athletes, Actors, Singers, Artists, Educators, Police Officers, Construction Workers, Architects - whatever they like.  Sometimes I make comments, sometimes I just name off jobs they might like, and then I go back and ask if anyone wants a job I didn't already name.  In the south, NASCAR comes up pretty often.

6 - 8th grade -  I follow a similar tack.

High School, I do the same.

There are still kids who want to be president.

With family audiences, I ask the adults what they thought they wanted to be, and the kids what they want to be.

I'll have you know I started with an image of shirtless firefighters, but it got too distracting.

After that, I tell two short pieces of personal narrative.

1) I tell the story of how my four year old son discovered that he was most likely not going to grow up to be a velociraptor and how devastated he was when this realization hit him.

2)  I tell the story of how my four year old daughter wanted to be a magician, and the way she discovered that there was no such thing as actual magic, and magicians used illusions.

At the end of that story, I explain that my son is a sculptor who wants to go into 3Dimensional Graphic Design and Animation, and design video games.  He still loves dinosaurs, sculpts them frequently, and if he does design video games, you can be sure there will be dinosaurs involved.

At some point, I told my daughter the story of her four year old self, and she laughed and replied,  "Mom, I am magic.  I just didn't know it yet."

She wants to go into theoretical physics and focus on quantum mechanics...that's as close to magic as one can get!

I throw in the idea that if you enjoy your work and it is fulfilling in your life, then it doesn't matter whether or not you ever get to be rich and famous, especially since most people in the world are not rich and famous, and many are more than happy enough.  I finish up this segment by telling the audience that lots of people have dreams about their lives like the main character in this tale from India, The Pot Maker and The Tiger.

Whew!  

Now, after all of that, it is finally time to take this story out for a test drive.  

I started telling this story to audiences about three years ago.

Some things have changed, others have resettled and reshaped.  The introduction has gone through some permutations, and depending on the age of the audience I focus on different things.  Overall, I am pleased with this tale, and I look for more and more places to tell it.

As you might have noticed, I began this process absolutely certain I would not tell this tale to 3 - 5th grade.  Once I started working with it, however, one of the permutations worked really well for this age group, and I must say, they love it.

So, as is often the case, I was totally, irrevocably, and in all other ways wrong about what I thought was going to happen with this story.  I'm wrong about lots of other things too, so, I'm used to it!  Keeping my mind open as I play with a story is crucial to being able to see it in different ways.  Since I know I'm prone to being wrong, I try to let the story tell me to try something new. 

If you see me out there on the road in the next couple of years, you will most probably hear me tell this story.

In Conclusion:

This is the process I use to break stories apart and then reconstruct them.  Sometimes it is a quick process, but other times, like in the case of the Pot Maker and The Tiger, I spend years wrestling with a tale to make sure I am getting the most out of it. 

I strongly recommend that you find a process that works well for you when crafting tales.  Hone it, work with it, and use it when you get new material.  

Over time, you will get so good at your own system, you will be able to shortcut it most of the time.  When you encounter a tale you find difficult that you wish to master, taking it through the steps of your process can help.

Ultimately, what I hope you would get out of this long series of blogs is that the most important thing you can do when crafting a tale is to make choices.  

Choose what you are going to say.  

Choose what your characters do.  

Choose what kinds of sounds or movement you want.  

Choose your endings, beginnings, introductions.  

Choose.  Don't let the story sweep you away.  Ride it like a Boss, and make it go where you will...or perhaps I should say, ride it like a tiger.

Apparently, this is a graphic of Lebron James riding a tiger, holding up a cherub.  The internet is strange.

Happy Crafting!

Crafting 101: Putting It Together!

   

There is a difference between crafting a story and just getting up and telling one.  Pretty much anyone who isn't afraid of speaking in public can get up and tell a story of some kind.  We share stories at weddings and funerals.  We share them during worship services, and amongst friends.  We share them on the radio and television. 

In this series of Blogs, I will look at a single story, and show the process I use to get from my first exposure to a tale all the way to the finished structure.

This is the sixth entry in the series.

The Pot Maker and The Tiger - The Story

1. Crafting 101: The Questions I Ask

2. Crafting 101:  Building The Structure

3. Crafting 101:  Flesh On The Bones

4  Crafting 101:  Donkey's and tigers and War Horses, Oh My!

5. Crafting 101: There Are No Little Characters...

6. Crafting 101:  Putting It Together

7. Crafting 101:  Introductions!

For the first five posts in this series, we have been prying the story apart, trying to figure out what is in it, and what to do with it.  

We've stripped out the main characters, investigated the themes in the tale, played with the supporting staff, and tried out a number of sounds and characters.    

We've torn up the pieces and thrown them into the hat.  Now, we must reach into the mess, and magically pull out a whole story.

This next bit of work is the point in any recipe where the instructions are, 'season to taste'.

1.  The first step is to actually tell the story from the beginning to the end.  Make sure you time it.  How long has this story become?

2.  Next, begin to edit out things that bog the story down.  After you've played with a story for a long time, you will end up with things that don't actually belong in the story.  Decide, based on how the story feels, what could be eliminated without taking away from the tale.  Editing is key! 

3.  Keep telling the story as a whole, and begin to shape it.  In the case of the Pot Maker and The Tiger, I decided that I wanted to think of each scene in the story as a different beat.

So, I begin with, 'Once there was a pot maker....

I introduce the tiger like this,  'Now, at this particular time during the Monsoon, there is a man eating tiger roaming around the village....

I introduce the Raja, 'So many people told the tale of the pot maker catching the tiger that the Raja came to hear of it.

I introduce the warlike Raja, 'Now, not long after that, a warlike Raja from a neighboring kingdom

Now the horse, "And that's how it came to be that the pot maker woke in the morning to find a soldier with a giant black horse standing in front of his house.

Winding down, "When the warlike Raja woke in the morning, he discovered that his entire army deserted in the night.

Because of all of the zaniness in this tale, it feels to me as if it needs to be told in short episodes.  I end each beat, give the audience a break, and then go into the next bit of foolishness.  It gives the audience a rest.

4.  Having worked out the beats and how those beats transition into each other, I can decide how long each beat needs to be.  Again, you must edit each beat so that it is tight, and tells the story with the kind of whimsy or seriousness you mean to bring to the tale.  Shorten the conversations, tighten the language.

5.  Finally, I need to figure out a way to button the story.  This means that the end of the tale acknowledges the changed situation in the story.  As a storyteller, I like to make a comment on the tale as well.  This requires choosing the theme in the story that most speaks to the story you've crafted.  Different tellers will find different things that shaped their tales.  I end the story sort of like this: 

And so, after all of his big dreams, he'd finally gotten what he thought he'd always wanted:  he was rich and famous.  He was also extremely bored.  He stayed at home being rich and famous for two days, then, he got up, got on his donkey, and returned to the factory.  He spent his days making pots and telling stories with his friends.  He spent the evening in the tavern.  He walked home because his donkey freed himself and went home.  What he realized is that he was already doing what made him happy.  Being rich and famous has nothing whatsoever to do with being happy with yourself.

6.  With my button in place, the frame stabilizes, and the introduction begins to take shape in my mind.  The tale itself, and my take on what it means gives me a clear cut way to begin creating an introduction that will meld with this tale.  

7.  Continue telling the tale, letting the theme of the tale shape the story so that it begins to melt into the beats of the story.

The pot maker is not the only character who has big dreams.  The pot maker is not the only character who learns to be glad for what he already has.  The pot maker is not the only character who is relieved to get back to his normal life. 

There is nothing more frustrating to me than hearing a tale where the teller misses the obvious connections between the various things going on in the tale.  You don't have to make them overtly, but make sure you at least know what they are.  You might be surprised how this knowledge changes the tale.

8.  Make sure that you have included explanation for some of the words, phrases or terms that your audience might not understand.  Decide how you would handle such things in performance.

9.  The longer I practice the tale, the tighter the verbiage becomes, the more solid the characters become, and the time it takes to tell the tale settles to within about a minute every time I tell it.  This story runs about twenty five minutes.

Almost Ready For The First Trial Run!  I just need some finishing touches.

Next week will be the last post in this sequence.   

Adding The Introduction!

Syd Lieberman: A Father, Grandfather, Teller, Teacher and Friend

In Loving Memory

I met Syd one of the first few years I was a professional storyteller.  He has always been generous with his time and advice.

His stories always made me smile, and I loved sharing the stage with him, or just sitting back and watching him work.

He left us to continue his journey beyond on Tuesday, May 12th, 2015.  Wherever he is now, you can bet his eyes are sparkling, he is smiling that mischievous smile of his, and everybody around him is laughing and thinking.

If you have a moment, head over Syd's site and listen to one of his stories.  It is a fitting tribute to a man who loved tales!

G-d speed, Syd!