oral storytelling

Rufus Leeking

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anyone else doing storytelling such as theMoth? I am really loving it, and find it helps hone my editing or the writing.
 

Isabella Amaris

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I've never tried something like this, except maybe with family and friends, just for fun, nothing serious. Anyway, this sounds really cool! Would you mind just going a little into how it improves your editing and writing? Would really like to get an idea how that works out...
 

Rufus Leeking

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I've never tried something like this, except maybe with family and friends, just for fun, nothing serious. Anyway, this sounds really cool! Would you mind just going a little into how it improves your editing and writing? Would really like to get an idea how that works out...
www.themoth.org it's story slams under 6 minute stories with a directed theme- like Thursday I'm going to one with the theme "drive." it could be driving or having drive to achieve something. 6 minutes is very very short. As you practice your story you have to cut out the unnecessary and focus on what needs to be there to sell the story.
 

Isabella Amaris

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As you practice your story you have to cut out the unnecessary and focus on what needs to be there to sell the story.

I can see why this would be very helpful. It seems to highlight when storytelling is suffering at the expense of trying too hard to be a 'writer' (for lack of a better way of putting it:D). It's almost like reading your work aloud to 'hear' when something needs to be cut/edited out or if the rhythm ain't right in moving the story forward, except... this sounds even better! And, of course, far more fun:)
 

CChampeau

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When I was a kid, I'd tell my friends stories I made up on the spot all the time. In some summer camp I memorized Grimm's fairy tales and tell them to a small group at lunchtime and they really seemed to dig it.
Small children are especially easy to make up stories to tell to. Look at Watership Down - now considered a literary masterpiece, the author only wrote it at the prodding of his two young daughters, who loved the stories about wild rabbits he'd tell on their visits to the English countryside.

Of course, in ancient Greece bards would memorize thousands of lines before writing was invented. I think you'd have to work up to that, though. ;)