Storytelling Starters ~ In my beginning is my end
A young woman asked me the other day: ‘How do you end a story?’ It’s a very good question! The first point I made in reply was the one I feel to be the most important.
Facing up to the silence
In storytelling, you have to recognise from the very beginning that there’s going to have to be an end to whatever tale you are telling. It may come after ten minutes, an hour, several hours or even days. But an end will have to arrive and after the end, there will be a silence. Unavoidable? Yes. Uncomfortable? Only if you’re not ready for it. Long or short, that ensuing silence should be part of the magic. Be ready for it. It’s one of the interstices between the world of story and the world of here and now. There’s a lot of power in it. Sometimes you have to be brave to face it.
Preparing the last sentence
Thinking of the very last sentence of your story must also be part of the preparation for it. As T.S. Eliot’s poem says, ‘In my beginning is my end.’ The opposite also has to be true: ‘In my end is my beginning.’ (My piano teacher often used to make me play the end of a piece before starting it again: it gives you the feeling of the piece). Fables usually come to a conclusion with the moral of the story – and often it feels a bit trite. ‘And the moral of that story is …’ Most stories cannot and shouldn’t end like that. However, most do benefit from some succinctly expressed thought that brings the threads of the story together. ‘And no ring ever fitted better than that one.’
Coming gently in to land
An easy landing-point for a story is the sort of ending, especially useful in stories for children, that simply connects the way that particular story ends by representing the teller as if he or she had been a participant in it. ‘And the food at that feast was really delicious. And how do I know? Because I was there – and (yum yum) I had plenty.’
Announcing the fact that you’ve landed
Hundreds of formal story-endings exist which have been created by storytellers in cultures across the world. One I often use is this: ‘So now my story is ended and if you don’t like it, go to Wales to mend it.’ Or how about this one – and again it’s one I frequently use with children? ‘Snip, snap, snout, my story’s told out. And that’s the end of it.’ Naturally, those last few words – ‘And that’s the end of it’ – are best delivered with a very definite hand-gesture that expresses finality:
And now to end:
And now, to end, can I tell you about a man in my bit of Wales who is an excellent storyteller of the joke-telling kind? He’s small and slight with a perpetual look of boyish delight, especially when telling his tales. I don’t think he’s one of a literary bent. Locally, the story about him is that, years ago, when he was at school and finally learned to read, the headmistress was so delighted that, to mark his achievement, she closed the school for the rest of the day.
Anyway, this man makes an excellent MC at village events because of his endless resource of stories (you feel you want to hear them all) and because of the pleasure he gives through telling them. He adapts them so cleverly to local circumstances and, like all good comedians, he knows how to end them, ie by delivering the punch-line and then giving time for it to sink in. I hope you’ll like this story we heard him tell only the other day at a Golden Wedding Anniversary party:
“There was this fellow. One day he happened to bump into an old friend of his and his friend enquired how things were going. The man said in reply, ‘Everything’s fine – and by the way, I’ve got my 50th Wedding Anniversary coming up.’
“‘Well, well,’ said his friend. ‘That’s marvellous. And what are you going to do to celebrate?’
“‘Oh,’ said the man, ‘I think I’ve got it sorted. When we were coming up to the 25th, I took my wife to Australia. And now it’s coming up to the 50th, I’m thinking of going out there again to see how she’s getting on.’”
P.S. The path in my two photos this week could equally well represent an end or a beginning. I remember being struck by the sense of the dual possibility when I took the photos in my local park at the end of last year.
Tags: endings, Golden Wedding, I was there, silence, Wales