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!

Crafting 101: There Are No Little Characters...

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 fifth 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!


In the last installment of the series, I focused on the animals that appear in the story.  This post is about the human secondary characters.  They appear in the margins, do a little something, and then disappear.  They are the background music of your story, and they have their part to play.

The biggest problem one can have with the support staff in a story is creating a character that is so intriguing he or she actually takes over part of the tale.  This is not an uncommon problem, but with a little crafting, you can avoid it as much as possible.

What am I talking about?  Ask yourself some questions:

Have you ever gotten to the end of a story and found yourself wondering what happened to one of the characters who was not a main part of the story?

Have you ever gotten to the end of a tale and found yourself far more interested in some almost throw away side plot instead of the main thrust of the tale?

Have you ever finished a telling and had a large part of the audience ask about some character who should have been an afterthought?

If you encounter any of these things, then chances are one of the support staff has moved out of its proper place and into the limelight.

This happens all of the time in story lines.  Sometimes characters who are supposed to be support are just too darn interesting.  In film, written media and television, when characters become too fascinating, it is possible to just spin them off on their own.


Here are some support staff who went on to star in their own stories:

The Mary Tyler Moore Show saw a number of its support staff turn into main characters.  Rhoda and Lou are just two of them.

A show about a guy who owns a bar                                                   One of the guys in the bar

George ended up in a deluxe apartment in the sky

I never got into this one, but it does count

Jack Sparrow ended up in his own movie.

Your job as the crafter is to make sure that your support staff doesn't take over your story.  They shouldn't be nagging at the audience.  Their part in your story should be clear, and wrapped up in some way that is satisfying, otherwise, they will haunt the story and the audience.

So, let us consider the support staff in The Pot Maker and The Tiger.

The old woman in the leaky house.

She's been alone for ten or fifteen years.  She hates the dripping.  She hates it with the heat of one thousand white hot suns.  She either can't or won't move, and perhaps this annual fight with the Monsoon gives her a perverse  sense of purpose.  Either way, when she starts talking about the coming of the dripping she is crazed.  Fun, and over the top, but not something anyone is going to ask about later.

The background neighbors.

The neighbors who gather at the front porch, at the factory or in the pub.  A nameless, faceless mob who can be spoken of as one without bothering to delineate any of them.  

'They don't believe his stories, but find them entertaining'.  

'They are beginning to believe his tales'.  

'They stood there gawking at the tiger'. 

The Wife.

His wife, well, we've spent lots of time working with her, and she can be either a support staff, or one of the main characters depending on how you decide to work it.

The Rajah

I haven't really spoken much about this character.  He's a ruler.  I plan to give him a commanding sort of voice.  That is not my only option, of course.  I can choose between having him be a caring sort of person, a thoughtless sort, or a coward.  Any of them would work, and it wouldn't matter one way or the other aside from the business the Rajah has to engage in during his two brief scenes.  You could make him silly or serious, the choice, I think, must be the teller's.

The Warlike Rajah.

He's amassing a giant army.  Check.  I will have him kill the royal families and take the young men for his army when he invades.    I don't think he's actually going to say anything.  In fact, the only time he really enters the tale as an interacting character is when he sends the polite note explaining that he has no interest in bothering with the kingdom.

Generals and soldiers

The Generals of the Pot Maker's Rajah are generals.  Concerned for their homeland and their ruler.

The soldiers in the warlike Rajah's army are mostly conscripts, and they break and run when they begin to imagine what sort of terrible army must be coming at them if the scout is mounted on a rearing horse with a tree over his head.

I think that covers everyone.  

These characters will have flashes of either big humorous actions, or they represent large groups who act and behave as one.  

It will not be hard to keep these folks in the background unless I do something foolish like giving the Rajah a character and backstory that he does not need to further the plot.

So, I will not be developing these guys very much.  

I will admit, however, that at one point during the stage where I was considering how to introduce and present these characters in the tale, I got sort of side tracked with the pot maker's Rajah.  I took him to pretty far lengths, and then decided that his story was neither compelling nor needful.

All right.   Now I've finally gotten all of the pieces of the tale thought through.  It is time to start putting it all back together.

The next part of this process is the pacing and the beats in the tale.  Time to put it together and see how long it is, whether it is ponderous, what accents I need to add or get rid of or expand.  I also need to add the transition language, figure out how the story flows from event to event, and make the story smooth in the telling.  That requires telling it from one end to the other as I get ready to roll it out for its very first audience.

We are down to our last two posts in the series!

The next post is going to be about assembling the pieces.

Happy Crafting!

Crafting 101: Donkeys and Tigers and War Horses, Oh My!

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 fourth 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 Pot Maker and The Tiger has a great cast of supporting characters.  Putting all of them in one post would make it unnecessarily long.  So, I'm dividing the support staff into two posts.  This one will deal with the animals.

I love it when I get a chance to work with animals in stories.  They make all sorts of great sounds.  The roar, screech, tweet, bellow, mew, and any number of interesting vocalizations.  They provide richness to a tale, and they make the characters real.  So, I have three animals to work with in this story.

Let us begin with the donkey.  He is the first animal we meet, and the one who starts the whole story in motion.  We are told the donkey is smart, and that it has the power to untie itself when needed.  In fact, it chooses to untie itself, and go home in the evenings.  The night the Pot Maker rides the tiger home, he is walking around in the rain with a rope...wait, there is something I seem to have forgotten from the remembered telling I got from Milbre.

On the night the Pot Maker rides the tiger home, he has tied the knot on the donkey's rope so elaborately that the donkey can't untie it, and chooses to simply back up and get out of its bridle, leaving the bridle, rope and all, tied to the post outside of the inn.  That's where the Pot Maker gets the rope to subdue the tiger.  All right.

So, the donkey chooses to leave the bridle rather than untie the impossible knot.  Does he try to untie the knot?  No.  He could, but I'm going to allow the donkey to have enough sense to forgo that part of the process.  He is smart, right?  Well, then does he struggle to get the bridle off, or does he do so calmly and logically.  Calmly, of course.  That would be funny, I think.  That means we could have a little personification that goes on with this donkey.

Okay, so, the Pot Maker ties the donkey to the post in an elaborate knot and says something like, "Get out of that, if you can." Flash from my childhood.  This is exactly what Prince John says to Sir Hiss in one of my favorite Disney movies when he ties him around a pole.  Keeping it because it evokes such a strong image in me!

 After the Pot Maker leaves, the donkey 'considers' the knot, and simply decides to leave the whole thing there.  This then is a wise donkey, not just smart, but shrewd.  Alas, having him make the donkey sound is probably not a good idea.  That sound is associated with stubbornness and foolishness and it is silly.  This dignified animal should not make such a sound...unless I can figure out how to make a dignified donkey sound.  Perhaps I could simply announce that he always was dignified, and so makes a much more subdued hee-haw sound.  Well, maybe, but probably not, though that would be funny to have a subdued, dignified hee-haw coming out of the donkey's mouth.


Now, let us move on to the Tiger.

Majestic, hungry for people, and the most personified of the animals in the story.  This tiger understands human speech.  He's used to being around people, and he has no problem coming near their homes.  When the woman starts freaking out about the insidious dripping, the tiger does not start  roaring on the porch.  He's too scared.  As his terror increases, he becomes much more needful of hiding than anything else.  When he gets so frightened he runs out into the rain, he is assailed by the Pot Maker, and he is far too terrified to make any noise at all.  That's what thinking like a human gets you.

So, the tiger isn't likely to roar either.  In fact, he's not even going to get an animal type body.  Other than becoming increasingly frightened, he doesn't need a tiger voice...well.  What about when he is thinking about the insidious dripping?  Could he have a tiger voice as he spoke out loud?  Well, that would make him sound kind of tough, and maybe dangerous, but the point is that he is almost in 'kitten' mode by the time he gets caught by the Pot Maker, so even if he begins with a gruff voice, he has to end with a squeaky, terrified one.  So, no roaring.

He will be funny, but not in any traditional way I usually make tigers funny.  This will require good timing with the old lady inside the house, and some major facial expression work more so than vocalization as a tiger.  Pauses are probably going to be huge here as well, while the audience watches the tiger's descent into blind terror.

This brings us to the war horse.

This character didn't get really developed until after I'd told the tale for the first time.  There was some things about him that I just really couldn't get behind.

Why does he run for the front?

Why doesn't he freak out when the Pot Maker is screaming on his back?

Why does he accept this poor rider?

Why does he run the scouting route instead of doing something else?  I mean, the horse has got to choose to scout the front, because the Pot Maker doesn't know how to do it, right?

The more I thought about the details of this animal, the more I got an idea about what to do with him.  Again, it took a couple of preliminary tellings before it came to me, and then, only in the midst of one of those tellings when I was feeling all of the characters, and all of these questions were still rolling around in my head.

Obviously the horse knew the route to scout, but what does the scout usually do?  The scout usually sneaks to the front, and tries not to be seen.  What if this horse is tired of that?  What if this horse wants to be a battle horse?  What if he feels like he should be a battle horse?

That's when it all came together.  This horse is descended from war horses.  His daddy was a war horse.  His granddaddy was a war horse.  His great-granddaddy was a war horse.  He, on the other hand, was only a scout horse.  Oh, how he longed to be in a battle with the horns blaring and the fight surging around him.  So, when the Pot Maker's wife slaps his rump, he rears, and the Pot Maker starts screaming, the horse thinks he is finally going to go to battle.

All right.  That means this horse is definitely making horse noises!  He's going to paw the air, shake his mane, and run for all he is worth.  Galloping noises!  Well, this is going to be dramatic, and it is the climax of the action in the story, so that's even better.  The Pot Maker can scream, and I can physicalize him holding onto the horse, and then holding the tree over his head, and the horse running for all its worth with its mane and tail flying, shouting its own war cry with the Pot Maker.  Now, there's a fun image!

So, despite wanting to ride into battle, the horse runs the scouting route, because that's all it has been trained to do.

Done.

Wow, that's a great deal to be practicing, incorporating and working with in three characters.  I didn't come to all of these conclusions in my first telling of this story.  I had some trial and error, and all of the characters are still evolving, but these are conclusions I came to after fleshing them out bit by bit, and trying to figure out what they need to fill in the background but not overpower the rest of the tale.

In the next installment, we'll deal with the people who have supporting roles.  There are no small parts...

Happy Crafting!

Crafting 101: Flesh on the Bones

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 third 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. Flesh On The Bones

4. Crafting 101:  Donkeys 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


Now that I have some structures on which to flesh out my story, I begin to compose the possibilities.  This means I have to flesh out each of the different relationships that interest me, play with the characters, and see what I come up with in the end.



My first cut and dry possibilities, generated by the structures I identified are as follows:


1.  The pot maker is somewhat of a hapless fellow.  He accidentally rides the tiger home.  His wife realizes the potential for fame or gain, and sends word to the Raja about the tiger.  The pot maker is rewarded for his bravery and made an honorary general.  When the army comes to attack, and he is recruited to become an actual general and scout the front, his wife convinces him he can do it.  He falls in line with the story, and scouts the front with the tree, becomes a hero in spite of his shortcomings.  At the end, the wife takes a victory lap, the husband is also happy, and goes back to the factory where everyone appreciates him even more.


2.  The pot maker is a good natured fellow who accidentally rides the tiger home.  He lies about how he captured it.  His wife warns him that such lies will only get him into trouble.  He dismisses her concerns, 'What trouble can come from this?'  The story he tells gets bigger during the telling until the Raja himself hears of it, rewards the Pot Maker, and promotes him to honorary general.  His wife points out that this is just the sort of trouble she feared.  The Pot Maker dismisses her concern, 'What trouble can come from this?'.  When the army comes, he is in despair. His wife once again points out that this is the type of trouble she feared, but now he agrees.  Between them, they concoct a plan so that he will not have to scout the front.  Unfortunately, when his wife slaps the back of the horse, instead of just moving, it takes off for the front, and he accidentally scouts the front despite his best efforts.  After the war is over, the two of them are happy to be alive and the Pot Maker goes back to the factory, a little wiser but full of many more stories.

3.  The pot maker is a braggart who accidentally rides the tiger home.  Full of himself, he begins to believe the stories he tells about how he captured the tiger.  He sends a message to the Raja, telling some wild tale about how he caught the tiger.  The Raja sends for him, makes him an honorary general.  His wife goes along with it, but warns him it could be dangerous to put himself forward like this.  When he is made a general, and made to scout the front, she does an I told you so, which makes the pot maker more determined than ever to scout the front.  Despite his bravado, he is terrified, and can't ride the horse without her help.  She does help him and he scouts the front with the tree, accidentally stops the war, and comes home a hero.  His wife doesn't get on his case as much, but he, realizing that he dodged the proverbial bullet, becomes a more humble person who has a mostly real story to tell.

4.  The pot maker is a storyteller who tells amusing tales.  He rides the tiger home by accident; tells a good story about the how and why of his capture.  His wife is exasperated, but she sees no harm in it, and lets it stand. Story gets to the Raja.  Raja makes him an honorary general.  When the scout horse comes, his wife is exasperated again, but the pot maker comes up with a plan to not scout the front.  Unfortunately, his plan goes awry, he ends up scouting the front anyway, stops the war and becomes a hero.  He goes back to the factory, a hero who now has a rapt audience, and what storyteller doesn't want that?

5.  The pot maker's wife believes he is capable of anything, and worships the ground on which he walks.  The day after he rides the tiger home, she makes him out to be a hero to their neighbors.  The story spreads until the Raja comes to hear of it.  He calls the pot maker to the palace and makes him an honorary general.  The pot maker can hardly believe the tale that is told of him, but since he likes a good story, he doesn't quibble with the details.  When the Raja sends the scout horse, the wife lets everyone know her husband is more than up to the task.  Trying to live up to the impossible image she has, he agrees to scout the front, but he needs her to tie him to the horse.  She does, and sends him off at top speed.  He scouts the front, becomes a hero, and she is the only one who isn't surprised, because she has always believed in him.  He goes back to making pots, telling tales, laughing at strangeness of life, and everyone is happy.

There are, obviously, other variants you could wrest from the story, but these are the ones I explored
Putting the flesh on these bones takes much longer than any other part of the process; for me anyway.

I don't worry about how long the tale is during the fleshing out phase.  I'm not even trying to tell the story as a whole.  I may spend several days telling just a piece of it to myself, and trying to visualize the images and get the characters and place set in my mind.

I will practice dialogue runs that I know aren't going to make it into the story, but listening to the characters interact can help me figure out what bits of business, types of language, and physical characteristics to give the characters.

 This is the phase of story crafting that convinces the outside world that my elevator doesn't go all the way to the top floor.  I tell to myself in the car, mopping the floor, doing dishes, putting away the laundry, and anyplace else I happen to be.  My family doesn't even ask anymore; they understand I'm crafting out loud.

There are some people who write out their stories word for word, but I do not do that at this phase, or sometimes at all.  I need the characters to remain fluid so I can explore, change, and experience them.  If I want them to be real on stage and in my body, then I have to make them real for me, and get my body to shape itself into theirs.

Here are the steps.


Step 1: Explore the characters: what makes sense?

This is about how these characters interact.  I may very well spend an hour while I'm mopping the floor imagining arguments, outings, or what sort of life the pot maker and his wife have with each other.  This is when I'll decide how old they are, what sort of relationship they have, what their home looks like, what sorts of things the do, how their neighbors regard them, and lots of other things that will come into play on what choices the characters make later.  I'll create arguments, how they met, whether they were happy about their arranged match...which is what it most likely was, or if they chose each other, and what sort of dreams they may or may not have had.  I am a writer, and I like to play with characters.  It is what makes them very real for me.

Step 2: Explore the scenarios: What flows from all of the info I have about the two of them?

While considering the various scenarios, I think about the fact that when I first heard this story it was funny.  I liked the fact that it was funny.  Some of the scenarios lend themselves to be funny, some do not.  I could certainly make this story more serious, which I discovered when I started running down the scenarios with different types of personality traits and marital choices between the pot maker and his wife.  I also discovered that the pot maker and his wife could turn into conniving, scheming, really unlikable characters.  You never know where a scenario can take you until you go far down the path, and take it to pretty bizarre lengths.  Staying out of the dark was an important thing for me with this tale.  I do have some really dark material, but that is not what I am going for in this tale.

Step 3:  Begin shaping the story incorporating the various choices that seemed to work best

Start putting the actual scenario in the story together using the tone I want, the characteristics of the main characters that feel right, and incorporate the relationship between husband and wife that I think move the story along while remembering that this story is funny, and I want it to remain so.


It is not uncommon for me to change my mind pretty frequently about what the main characters are doing or saying while in this stage.  Their conversations are much longer than what will make it into the actual story, and I linger here to make sure that when I start cutting things down to two or three line exchanges you still get what kind of relationship you are seeing.

Sometimes this is a very cut and dry experience, done in a few hours, and sometimes this process can take me years.  I sat on the Pot Maker and the Tiger for almost three years before I started telling it.

The longer I work with the characters of a given range of story possibilities, they begin to blend and change until I've got some characteristics of each scenario blended into the relationship that seems to work best to me.

So, at this point I have answered a number of my primary questions, I've built some structure, I've set the main character and his primary relationship pretty firmly in my head, and I'm pretty sure I know how the Pot Maker got into this situation, and why he did what he did.  Excellent!

What's next?

Time to bring in the secondary characters, and figure out just how much characterization of each of them I need or want in this tale.  Voices, sound effects, characterizations and more.

Happy Crafting!