#1 Writing Tip from the Storyteller

Dialogue: Getting It Right

Shift from the role of writer to that of actor. Become your character. Say out loud what that character would say as s/he would say it. It might help to use a DVR and record your role-playing. Now, play back. Listen to you taking on the characters and saying the lines. Do they sound right? Natural? Are they appropriate to the character and the scene? Is the emotion right?

As we've gotten away from so many he-said-she-said tags, action beats are almost a part of the dialogue. To get them right, you might have to get up and act out the scene. Be aware of your facial expressions, your body language, your body positioning, how your character moves through the scene and relates to the other characters. Capture that on the page, leaving out the unimportant details your reader can intuit.

 

Celebrate with Me!

I've been a professional storyteller for a quarter of a century. To celebrate, I'm offering some special deals to clients who qualify for my "Great Rate" pricing. Click on the tab above for more details.

Mama's Got Rhythm

This past Saturday, "Jack's Mama" told her far-flung, homespun highland tales at the Ohio River Valley Folk Festival in Madison, Indiana. (Jack's Mama is my pioneer mountain woman character through whom I tell stories from southern Appalachian oral tradition.)

At the conclusion of one set, two young men, probably in their early 20s, told me how much they enjoyed the show. "I love to listen to you tell," one said. "There is a rhythm, a cadence, to your speech. I love your pacing."

No one has ever said that before, but I really like it. The rhythm comes naturally to me, I suppose, but I do consciously pace the story. As a raconteur, I am very interactive with my audiences, working to draw each one into the tale. Pacing, working in tandem with the rhythm, is an important tool toward that end.

After the men left, I sat enjoying the balmy breeze coming off the river, and I thought about how storytelling compares with writing.  Rhythm and pacing are essential to our writing, as well. If a sentence is grammatically and mechanically flawless but is choppy or awkward, it may give the reader pause. Of course, there may be times when we want to slow the reader down.

The storyteller knows when to speak slowly and deliberately for dramatic effect. The writer can accomplish the same thing by making each sentence a separate paragraph, for example. Or she may incorporate alliteration, a well-placed dash, or longer, more complex sentences.

At the high point of the action or scene, the storyteller's sentences may become very short, little more than a series of phrases or clauses. The writer does the same thing. Whether spoken or written, such techniques achieve the same results.

Many have told me that I use dramatic pause well. I can tolerate silence. And nothing grabs an audience's attention more quickly. Whether I speak softly or crescendo just before the pause, I have the full attention of each one when I fall silent and just look around at them, eyeball to eyeball.

Compare that effect to the writer's hook lines, particularly at chapters' ends. (Did those last two words slow you down a bit?) Christian writer Ramona K. Cecil presented a wonderful workshop in which she said we should not try to write a good hook at the end of a chapter, but, rather, we should end the chapter at a good hook. That statement helped me tremendously as a writer. Those hooks are the dramatic pauses of writing. Why dramatic? Because the listener/reader can hardly wait for the pause to end so that the story can move on. In the case of the reader, she wants to get that page turned as quickly as possible.

What a compliment that young man gave. Mama's got rhythm. Do you? Dear fellow writers, I hope you'll leave a comment telling about how you consciously incorporate rhythm and pacing in your writing. Examples are welcome.

Write on!

Christmas Reflections: The Christ of Christmas

The Christ of Christmas
The house is quiet in this predawn hour. Soon my grandsons will come bounding down the stairs and into my room. "It's Christmas, Gran'ma! Merry Christmas," they'll shout. The day will get busier from that moment, so I am snatching this brief time to write the final entry in the "Christmas Reflections" series.

This posting should have been finished by now, but I couldn't find direction. As a writer and storyteller, I had no trouble putting myself in Mary's place. I could imagine her, propped up against the rough boards of a stall, still perspiring from the labor of giving birth, cradling her newborn son in her arms while she examined every wrinkle and pore of His face--the face of God. I could see her bending to drink in His sweet scent and kiss the hollow at the bridge of His nose. I envisioned her slipping aside her robe just enough to put Him to her breast, giving sustenance to the One Who had created her. No doubt she pondered the words of the angel Gabriel, who told her, "He shall be great."

But this was no ordinary baby. With the conception of Jesus, Almighty God condescended from His position to take on human flesh and enter the world of man. The details of His coming were foretold by God Himself, as He escorted Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and through His prophets throughout the Old Testament. I love Luke 4:16-22, which says:

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. and as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

The Christ did not come to be a cute, giggling, wriggling baby for everyone to coo over. The manger stood in the shadow of the cross. The captives? The blind? The oppressed? That's mankind. Me. You. We are held captive by sin. We are willfully blind to His truth. We are oppressed by our own wickedness. Jesus was born to die on the cross to take away the sin of all who repent and believe in Him. He then conquered Death and Hell by resurrecting from the tomb.

Two millennia ago, a baby was born under humble circumstances to a peasant girl, a virgin until after His birth. That baby is the King of kings, and his prophesied return is imminent. Indeed, the King is coming!

Never Let Good Research Languish

I have been a professional storyteller for nearly a quarter of a century. My most popular programs are historical, and each one was funded in part through a grant or a commission. In order to develop a reputation for historical accuracy and an authentic persona, I do all I can to thoroughly research the time periods, just as I do for my writing, poring over original documents and books, interviewing others who have expertise on the subject, visiting some sites where the events happened, studying the clothing and other everyday details of the period, sewing the attire from authentic fabrics, and purchasing any necessary accoutrements.

I say all of that, not to impress the reader with my dedication and research skills, but to emphasize that much goes into developing a new historical program. What a shame it would be to allow all of that effort to languish, once the performance script is written. By the time the show premieres, I have gained a certain expertise on my subject and have acquired a small library, to boot.

The logical extension for this writer is to write a middle-grade fiction book that uses the body of research already gathered. (Of course, questions arise that send me off on new trails, so the research never really ends until the manuscript is finished.) For example, my first storytelling persona was "Jack's Mama," still a favorite among clients. As JM, I portray a pioneer mountain woman and tell stories from the oral tradition of the southern Appalachians. Through a Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship, I was able to spend a month wandering through the mountains, gathering stories, studying the dialect, and talking with the people about their lives. I used that knowledge and experience in the writing of Up the Rutted Road, my first book manuscript, currently undergoing a revision.

Four years ago, Storytelling Arts of Indiana awarded me the Frank Basile Emerging Stories Fellowship to develop Abigail Gray: Living under the Drinking Gourd, a program about the Underground Railroad. My second novel manuscript, The Second Cellar, this one for upper middle graders, is a historical fantasy that involves the Underground Railroad. I have written just over 100 pages on it. Here I go, recycling research again!

Recognizing that every perfect gift comes from the Lord, I thank Him for these opportunities. He allowed me to receive an Individual Artist's Project fellowship from the Indiana Arts Commission/National Endowment for the Arts to begin this second manuscript. They liked the idea, as did an editor who critiqued the proposal at a writers' conference.

Even as I revise one manuscript and write a second, I am thinking about how I can recycle the research I did for a storytelling performance about the U.S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War and another about the Great Depression because one should never, ever let good research languish.

The Old-Timey House

In an earlier post, I wrote about my search for Elsie Blue, the blue-tick coon hound in my manuscript Up the Rutted Road (working title). As I sought a dog I could describe, I also needed to find a picture of Uncle Glen's weathered, old-timey house. The house pictured above was the home of master storyteller Ray Hicks, who has "passed on over." It was hiding in plain sight, because I have the picture among my collected research about Appalachian oral tradition.

Each October, Ray, a tall string bean of a man, would come down off Beech Mountain--along with his family and a load of sassafras root to sell--to hold court at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. He was an icon of that event. Wherever he stopped to roost, a crowd would gather to hear him tell a Jack Tale in his unique, mesmerizing mountain drawl. He took his time with each word, rolling it around in his mouth, breaking it into as many syllables as possible.

It saddens me that I never got to hear him in person, though I do have a VHS tape of him which I procured at AppalShop in Whitesburg, Kentucky, during a research trip. I hope he won't mind if I borrow his house for my book. I promise not to do it harm. I love it too much.