{"id":3654,"date":"2014-08-20T20:16:04","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T00:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3654"},"modified":"2015-01-03T06:13:59","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T11:13:59","slug":"writers-as-storytellers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3654","title":{"rendered":"Writers as Storytellers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"front<\/a>

(photo: Lars Ploughmann, flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

Eric Nelson\u2019s recent Ploughshares article<\/a> describes the \u201c10 times in life when writers have the upper hand.\u201d Writers who can tell stories out loud and off the page, that is. As Nelson says, \u201cWith the right kinds of stories, you can sell anything, including yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have a friend who writes monologs, and I\u2019ve come to appreciate the amount of work that goes into shaping this material, polishing it, honing it, and then, hardest of all, making it sound spontaneous, fresh, alive. The impact of his stories on the page versus what happens when he \u201ctells\u201d them is transformative.<\/p>\n

In the days before television, storytelling was a much-appreciated front porch gift that we\u2019ve mostly lost track of. Even writers, who should be superb oral story tellers, may limit their audience to the glowing rectangle. We keep our best stories, the personal, true ones, locked up inside.<\/p>\n

The organization The Moth<\/a> (\u201cTrue Stories Told Live\u201d) sets out to preserve and celebrate oral storytelling, and a book of 50 \u201cbrilliant and quietly addictive\u201d stories from its archive<\/a> has five stars on Amazon. Like my friend\u2019s work, the best stories display honesty, vulnerability\u2013and a little structure. This is not the same storytelling as effectively recounting \u201cGoldilocks and the Three Bears\u201d; these are true stories of the kind familiar to This American Life<\/a> addicts.<\/p>\n

Life situations when Nelson says a good story\u2014or the ability to put one together\u2014comes in handy include childcare (\u201cIt\u2019s easier to keep a car full of kids from hitting each other by entertaining them with stories than hoping their iPad batteries hold out\u201d), the classroom\u2014from first grade to adult education, parties, job interviews, dates, the doctor\u2019s office, therapy, on juries, in political campaigns, and at the DMV (where everyone is bored silly \u201cexcept the writers. They\u2019re too busy working on their stories in their head\u201d).<\/p>\n

Nelson refers to a recent article<\/a> by Neil Gaiman about being asked to appear at The Moth\u2014something out of his comfort zone, and so a good reason to do it, Gaiman says. Something he says about the importance of stories really resonates, given this week\u2019s news events: \u201cAnd the gulf that exists between us is that when we look at each other we might see faces, skin colour, gender, race or attitudes, but we don\u2019t see the stories. And once we hear them we realise that the things dividing us are often illusions, falsehoods: that the walls between us are no thicker than scenery.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Nelson\u2019s recent Ploughshares article describes the \u201c10 times in life when writers have the upper hand.\u201d Writers who can tell stories out loud and off the page, that is. As Nelson says, \u201cWith the right kinds of stories, you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Writers as Storytellers","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,60,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-storytelling","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-WW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3656,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions\/3656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}