Telling Truths through Telling Stories

The Art of Storytelling: Telling Truths through Telling Stories

By A. E. Spaulding

p. 4 “Much commercial advertising and certainly politics uses story, sometimes legitimately, to make something clear and sometimes to lead an audience to an “inescapable” conclusion. The issue is introduced here just to ensure that the story's power is recognized.”

p.4 “In contrast to formal education, storytelling allows a listener to allow an idea to grow naturally to fit the hearer.”

p. 8 “Storytelling is a form of giving. It can be used to impose ideas, but that is something else. You can preach with a story or sell with a story or teach with a story, but true storytelling should be a gift, with no demands that the story be interpreted in a particular way.”

p. 11 “A student once told my class in young adult literature that she read Animal Farm knowing that it was about racism–something that she was dealing with in her new parochial school. Orwell was writing about communism but she was reading it under different circumstances. One cannot help but view things through ones own experience.”

p. 11 “As a storyteller you are responsible for telling stories that have value of some kind, whether by putting forth questions, supplying answers, or providing wonder, comfort, or plain old entertainment.” ---- Similar to my thoughts on art and artists.

p. 13 “The joy comes not just from the story but also from connecting with others while sharing that story. It does not matter whether you are “sharing it out” by telling it or “sharing it in” by hearing the tellers words and creating it in your own mind.”

p.117 “This seems an appropriate place to say that there is a significant difference between learning and wisdom. One can be unlettered and very wise indeed, or one can have a great deal of learning and not be very wise. Before literacy was common, expertise was generally gained through experience, and it taught many generations very well. Now there are many people who have had had much education but have not allowed themselves to be “fertilized” by it, almost as if they attended an intellectual trade school, acquiring information rather than growing or changing.”

p.136 “The issue of choosing answers is supported in storytelling, sometimes just by reasuring the reader that consequences can't be known in advance, like the “bad luch/good luck” parable, so that self-blame can be avoided.”

p. 136 “Stories give one the chance to work in a laboratory of imagination to sort out values and issues relating to trust, integrity, self respect and so forth in a place where no physical danger is involved.”