Telling stories

Today my DH – better known to those who know us both as the Babe Magnet so the BM he will be from now on – so- Today, the BM is at a course. It’s a course on Story Telling. Emotional Story telling to be precise. And it’s run by professional Story Tellers. He and a work mate are attending this course partly out of personal interest and partly because it helps in the work they do trying to bring together prisoners and their families. They use books to do this. The Dads ‘inside’ read book and the kids ‘outside’ read the same books and it gives them something to do plus something to talk about.

Another aspect of this is that the Dads can tell/read stories to their children. These are recorded and the little person can have a story and a sort of contact with Dad even when he’s miles away. It doesn’t matter what you think about what those ‘inside’ have done – the children are the innocent ones and they’re the ones who need the stories. Stories – telling stories, reading stories and then talking about them brings people together.

Which helps me. Because sometimes, in the great scheme of things, writing stories – telling stories for a living – particularly light romance - doesn’t seem all that important or even worthwhile. But stories have been part of what it is to be human for – well, for ever really. There will have been stories told around campfires back at the beginning of history. Today we have films and plays and soap operas, all of which feed our need for stories. But still, as a skill, good story telling is not really rated.

I wrote about this last year in my old blog when I had a good rant about it –

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What is wrong with good old-fashioned story telling? The sort of story telling
that must have started around the fires in caves way, way back in history.
The sort of story telling that is there in the oldest texts – texts like
Beowulf, created in Anglo Saxon and beginning with the announcement
- Hwaet - which means something like – Listen. . . – or really
‘Listen up … ‘ Doesn’t that just tell you there’s a good story coming – one that
makes you want to curl up by the fireside and listen?

Listen, and be transported away into another world . A world of fantasy and excitement. Of heroes who are larger than life and the heroines who match them. Of love and hate, joy and despair . . .

A lot of my understanding about good, old-fashioned story-telling comes from the time I worked as a Children’s Librarian. Teachers, parents, academics, government studies all agonised about whether children were reading enough. How could we get them to read? What made them stop? What brought them back to books again and again? I saw what brought them back – good old-fashioned story telling. The sort that gripped them and held them from page to page right to the end – and then made them want more of the same.

And I remember how, in the summer, we used to run Storytime in the Parks. On a sunny day – if we could find one – I and another librarian would head out to one of the local parks with a bundle of rugs for children to sit on – and a bundle of books to tell stories from. On one occasion, we had a group little ones (all under 10 ) gathered round, when a gang of older boys (age 14/15 or so) spotted us and came over to see what was going on.. Laughing and jeering, it was pretty obvious they were looking for trouble but something in the storytelling caught them. They stopped laughing. They stood still. After a few minutes they sank down on to the ground and stayed there, listening in silence, for the rest of the hour. Even listening to old, often repeated stories – Cinderella – The Three Bears that I thought would be way too young for them and would bore them. They loved it and they were disappointed when the hour was up.

That’s the magic power of stories and story telling. And that’s why I love what I do so much. I love to hear from readers that I’ve caught their imaginations and held them, unable to move away from the pages until they reach the end of the story, even though, with a romance, they know only too well how it will end.

Telling stories – it’s an art that’s been with us from the beginnings of civilisation – and I hope it’s one that will be with us until the end of time as we know it. I’ve studied the theories, read huge, complicated tomes on the seven basic plots and why we tell stories but in the end it just comes down to the fact that I love telling stories – and I thrilled that so many people love to read them

I’m proud to be a story teller because it seems to me that telling stories is part of what makes us human – and it’s a part of us that links us to other humans, no matter where in the world they are.

And in these days when so much seems to divide us or come between us, that can only be a good thing.