Reader Stephanie Jones asked me a question I couldn’t answer but readers who are oral-performance storytellers perhaps can:

Do you know of any web tools that would enable a storyteller to keep a log of the stories they tell, along with notes about the stories, sources, places they’ve told, etc.? I know I could use a blog or a wiki, but I would like something more like LibraryThing or Shelfari? I am going to be teaching a storytelling class online this summer for my school library candidates and would like them to keep a record of stories they are learning.

If you have suggestions, please e-mail Stephanie.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Here’s the latest entry in my (unintentionally) ongoing series on how to learn and master a story so your oral delivery of it sounds natural.

Heather Summerhayes Cariou, author of the acclaimed memoir about her sister, Sixtyfive Roses, responded to the most recent entry in this series, writing:

As a former professional actor, I would suggest that storytellers find a local acting class and attend it. What they might learn there will help immensely in terms of oral storytelling — and even reading their work aloud.

Cariou noted that she’ll be teaching “Presenting and Promoting Your Work” this summer at the 33rd International Writing Guild Conference at Brown University, the first week of August and that the workshop will include instruction in how to read aloud.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I learned two new things from a Worldwide Story Work teleconference this week presented by Malcolm Jones, an expert in ideation and sketching. Well, probably a lot more than two, but these were the ones that really stood out.

1. An affinity for visual storytelling over text-based storytelling (or vice versa) probably reflects one’s learning style. Yes, that’s kind of a “duh” statement, and I’m sure I knew it on some level, but I hadn’t thought about it before Jones’s teleconference (even though Wednesday’s entry was about learning styles). I found it difficult to personally relate to Jones’s assertion that writing is very difficult for many people; yet, that observation is true to my experience. Writing comes incredibly easily to me, but I know from six-plus years of teaching business communication to college students that writing is agony for many. Some find linear storytelling to be a painful process, Jones says, and visual storytelling is less linear and more spatial than written storytelling. He also points out that the brain takes in visual stories differently than it takes in linear, written stories, yielding different insights. And an affinity for one over the other reflects differences in right- or left-brain dominance. Especially intriguing was Jones’s reminder that some 60 percent of people are visual learners. Given that stat, it’s almost surprising that visual storytelling isn’t more dominant over text-based storytelling.
2. Like other kinds of storytelling, visual storytelling is now being used in business — in business comics, games and other forms of play, and a field that was completely new to me, graphic facilitation. Jones cited Kevin Cheng as a major name in using comics for User Experience Design and later shared with me links by and about Cheng: The Power of Comics: An Interview with Kevin Cheng, Communicating Concepts Through Comics from Cheng’s own blog, and Examples of Comics in Designing Customer Experiences. In graphic facilitation, Jones says, a graphic artist works with a facilitator to create a visual story of what goes on in a group meeting. A site describing an upcoming workshop on Graphic Facilitation also provides a good description: “Using graphics to lead group process in a highly engaging, interactive way. … Participants learn to draw, create large-format displays, record, and practice facilitating and receiving feedback. They also design a meeting process and learn about methods of documenting visual meetings” and Graphic Facilitation is all about “applying visual language to group processes.” (A couple of resources on Graphic Facilitation: The Center for Graphic Facilitation, Graphic Facilitation Focuses A Group’s Thoughts — and apparently the definitive book on the discipline is David Sibbet’s Graphic Facilitation: Transforming Groups with the Power of Visual Listening). Jones also noted that storytelling literally comes into play in business in the form of games and role-plays. He reported that corporate groups are building things out of LEGOs to solve business problems, using a process called LEGO Serious Play. Jones cited a book on business play, which seems to cover more than just LEGOs, Serious Play.

Jones talked a bit about comics and storyboarding and recommended three tools:

• WittyComics, one of Jones’s favorites
• StripCreator
• DesignComics (Jones wasn’t very enthusiastic about this one).

To that list, I would add ComicLife, the comic software app for Mac. I’ve never used ComicLife for an actual comic, but I use it lots of other graphics functions since I don’t have and don’t know how to use Photoshop. As Jones notes, these tools can help one tell a story with comics — but necessarily a good story.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A few weeks ago, I presented the dilemma of blogger Jared (Moon Over Martinborough), who recently began podcasts and was concerned that his oral delivery didn’t sound sufficiently “campfire-story”-esque.

I tossed around a few thoughts on achieving a natural-sounding delivery, including suggesting Jared not even read from his written text (did I really say that?). Jared’s dilemma affects many of us who want to deliver spoken content in a way that sounds natural and conversational but don’t want our words to sound read or memorized. Some people can speak wonderfully off-the-cuff, but Lord knows, I’m not one of them. We often depend on written text to help us feel confident in our delivery and ensure we don’t forget what we want to say. Look at President Obama, whose legendary dependence on teleprompters is so extreme that he uses them in classrooms of schoolchildren.

Thankfully, a wiser voice than mine has suggested that there’s no one way to master a story or other content. Karen Dietz, in an article called The Trick To Learning A Story, relates mastering a story to learning style, noting that techniques that work for one person may not work for another. “[S]ome people need to write it down,” Dietz writes, “but there are plenty of others who can simply visualize the story and follow the chain of images to tell it. Some people just need to repeatedly listen to a story to learn it. So it really depends on your learning style as to which method will work for you.”

Here’s Dietz’s discussion of learning styles and the technique that aligns with her styles and works for her:

[W]hen building your storytelling skills, you also need to determine your best method for learning and remembering your stories so you can easily recall and tell them.

What learning style are you — Kinesthetic (I have to do it and get the physical feel of it) or Auditory (I have to listen to it) or Visual (I have to see it)?

Most people are a combination of the three with one or two that are dominant. For me my strongest learning styles are Kinesthetic and Visual. If I can see the images in my minds eye, and then feel the images physically, then I’m half-way home.

My best method for learning stories is to think about the story I want to tell and how I want to tell it. Then I get out my 3x5 index cards and create a BRIO (brief reminder of image order), a technique I learned from storyteller Doug Lipman [www.storydynamics.com]. On each card I write a keyword of the image, or draw a stick figure/diagram/picture of it. No artistic talent is required. These are just my own scribbles. This is my visual learning style.

Then I go on a walk and start telling the story out loud. This is where I get to see if the order I THINK the images should go actually work out that way; 99% of the time they DO NOT, and as I walk I reorder them.

What I love about this method is that by walking and practicing out loud, I kinesthetically build the story into my body. I find I can recall that story when I need to, and tell it in ways that I know will get results. Once I get to this point, I’m then ready to practice telling the story with a listening partner.

Terrific advice. Adapt your story mastery to your learning style. Mine are auditory and visual — decidedly not kinesthetic. For me, I believe auditory dominates, so I’d like to develop a mastery technique that suits that style.

And while I’m praising Karen Dietz, I should point out that she has revamped her Web site and is offering excellent, free story-related tools here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

If you were intrigued by my recent post about The StoryBox project, you can learn even more about it through this report aired on an NBC affiliate:

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve previously mentioned THE STORY BOX PROJECT, but you might not have a good feel for how it works just by reading its own site and THE STORY BOX PROJECT global publishing and sharing Ning group.

Limor Shiponi has chronicled her experience with THE STORY BOX PROJECT both on the Ning group, starting here and on her own blog, Limor’s Storytelling Agora, starting here (also the source of the photo shown here).

Here are a few brief excerpts:

Several years ago I asked Kevin Cordi for the StoryBox to arrive to Israel. Several years later, here it is. … I was overwhelmed by my own excitement when the box arrived. … I got to school early, some of the kids spotted me carrying the box, “but I thought it would be special” they said. “This is just the cover you are seeing, wait for the bell,” I replied.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Mike Speiser recently wrote on the GigaOM Network that “our short-term memory is widely believed to have a capacity of seven elements, plus or minus two,” which is the reason, Speiser notes, “that U.S. phone numbers have seven digits.”

If you connect items (or data points) together as a story, Speiser writes, you can remember more than the standard seven elements.

As an example, Speiser offers the BBC video below, which shows former memory champion Andi Bell recalling the details of 520 playing cards (10 decks) — every card in its exact position — after reviewing the cards for just 20 minutes.

Bell doesn’t even mention the word “story” in his explanation of his technique, though. He calls it his “location technique.”

But the clip’s narrator points out that “when we commit a fact to memory, we create a neural pathway to it.” Stories are a way to create (enhance? reinforce? I don’t know enough about neuroscience to know exactly the right verb) those neural pathways.

You might not be that interested in learning memory tricks. But let’s say you wanted your audience to remember a number of data points when you deliver a presentation to them. Or let’s say you want an employer to remember the accomplishments and results you’ve achieved when you’re interviewing for a new job.

Storytelling is the way to go.

A study of of 48 boys and girls aged 5-1/2, found that the 13 girls and 10 boys who currently or previously engaged in imaginary companion play had more advanced narrative skills than children who did not engage in this type of play, reports ScienceAlert:

Children’s interaction with imaginary friends appears to play a positive role in their language development, according to new research that adds to the growing body of evidence that having such companions can be developmentally beneficial.

Associate Professor Elaine Reese of the University of Otago, New Zealand and her former Clark University student Dr. Gabriel Trionfi conducted the research, which appears in the academic journal Child Development.

Well, phooey. I did not have an imaginary friend. My sister Robin did. Her friend’s name was Giffen. It evolved that Giffen lived on the route between our farm and the home of my childhood best friend, Claudia. When my mother would drive me to Claudia’s or pick me up, Robin would always point out Giffen’s house.

Neither of my children had imaginary friends, but my son John had an “old family” with whom he said he had lived before he came to be our child. His memories of his old family were quite vivid and detailed — to the point where I actually wondered if he was recalling a past life. Apparently his old family had been killed in a bomb explosion, and he could get himself into quite an emotional state recalling their demise.

Researcher Reese notes that “because children’s storytelling skills are a strong predictor of their later reading skill, these differences may even have positive spinoffs for children’s academic performance.” Interestingly, both my sister and my son are brilliant. Robin was an early reader, and John became a voracious reader.

Another interesting study — and one might exist — would look at why some children have imaginary friends and some don’t.

Did you have an imaginary friend? Did you become a good storyteller and/or learner as a result?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Clay Burrell says history isn’t learned, but story changes that problem.

He suggests scrambling “the major periods of history in a random cluster on the board or a handout:

“Medieval Period,” “Cold War,” “Roman Empire,” “Enlightenment,” “Age of Exploration,” “Classical Greece,” “Industrial Revolution,” “Greek Heroic Age/Trojan War,” “Renaissance,” “Sumer,” “Solomon Builds the Jewish Temple,” “Scientific Revolution,” “Alexander the Great,” “World War I and II,” “Mohammed and Islam,” “The Crusades,” “Egyptian Pharoahs,” “The Reformation,” “Buddha,” “The Romantic Era,” “The Catholic Church Begins,” “Confucius.”

The instruction, then, to students:

“Make a list in which you place these major historical events and periods in the correct chronological order. Then, write the approximate dates you think each one took place or began.”

Burrell says that in most cases, students (high-school seniors) fare poorly with this exercise. So then he says to them:

“You’re about to graduate and become adults. You won’t have many more chances to get your head around this story, which truly educated adults should know. If I promise that this 5,000 year old story is really pretty easy to learn and know — as a story — do you want to take this opportunity (possibly your last) to learn it?”

Burrell says that “telling the story of the last 5,000 years as a narrative, as the real Greatest Story Ever Told - full of gut laughter, wistful “what ifs,” amazing characters and events, philosophical wonder, and chains of cause and effect over centuries, over millennia, all liberally peppered with audience-participation requests for predictions, connections to earlier episodes, summaries of why Marx couldn’t have come earlier than the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment couldn’t have come before the Renaissance, on and on” is one of his strengths.

However:

… hearing the story, being mere audience, isn’t enough to learn it. Like the bards that kept the Iliad and Odyssey alive through several centuries of the Greek “Dark Age,” during which reading and writing disappeared, and the story lived through oral transmission from older to younger storytellers, the students need to rehearse what they’ve heard from teacher — and a simple, low-tech way for them to do that is simply to re-tell the story they’re hearing, episode by episode, as simple written narrative summaries.

Another twist on “history as story” is the History Engine project, which sounds like it gives students the opportunity to build narrative summaries similar to those Burrell talks about — using primary sources (but focusing on American history only):

The core of the [History Engine] project is student-written episodes — individual snippets of daily life throughout American history from the broadest national event to the simplest local occurrence. Students construct these episodes from one or more primary sources found in university and local archives, using historical context gleaned from secondary sources to round out their analysis. Students then post their entries in our cumulative database, giving their classmates and fellow participants around the country the opportunity to read and engage with their work.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I grew up about 9 miles from Philadelphia in South Jersey. I worked in Philly at various times in my life and even lived there, in Queen Village, briefly. Thus, I’ve always considered the City of Brotherly Love my city.

I’m happy, therefore, that my city’s Historic Philadelphia Web site — and the city itself — are so story oriented. That’s one thing I’m celebrating on this, our nation’s 233rd birthday. Here’s what the site says:

Give the story of American Independence a little more personality. Hear history from the lips of the founding fathers themselves. Sneak into Independence Hall after hours. Get the true stories from professional storytellers, right in the places where history happened. Historic Philadelphia. History that speaks to you.

One particularly cool aspect is the city’s 13 Storytelling Benches, described like this:

Hear riveting stories of American history even most adults have never heard at 13 charming Storytelling Benches scattered around the Historic Philadelphia area. Our Once Upon A Nation storytellers aren’t dressed in colonial garb, but they’ll effortlessly transport you back in time as you sit on spacious and comfortable teak benches, all an easy stroll from one another. Stories last just a few minutes each and are told continuously during operating hours. You can start at any of the benches, all clearly marked with a “Once Upon A Nation” sign. And it’s completely FREE!

Happy Independence Day, America!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.