Storytelling Starters ~ Reflections on Telling and Writing 3
Reflecting on sound:
After attending two wonderful concerts over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reflecting on the power of sound. (Reflections again!) One of the concerts was Claudia Aurora, a Portuguese fado singer. The other was Tord Gustavsen, the Norwegian jazz pianist, with his amazing ensemble of saxophonist, drummer and double-bass player. Both concerts had great intensity of feeling and a powerful and associated sense of the musicians listening deeply to the sounds they were making.
Music has led me to thinking this week about the power – or should I say powers – of language.
Reflecting on language:
The varying powers of language come very much to the fore when you’re thinking about telling and writing. In last week’s blog I suggested that telling is often much more informal. It’s perfectly possible to recount a story to audiences of adults or children just in the same way you’d tell it to friends over supper.
Yet at its best, telling a story also means paying attention to the kind of language you’re choosing. So you want it to be informal? That’s fine. Formal or casual, using the present tense or the past tense, there are always choices to be made.
What to avoid:
Some aspects of language are best cleaned out. Sometimes we’re unaware of them – habits of speech that have become like unconscious grimaces or silly grins, facial ticks that we don’t even know we are making. It’s the same with some commonplace words or phrases. They’ve become so habitual we don’t realise we’re saying them or how dull they can sound.
And …and …and / But …but…but
Oral storytelling is far more tolerant of ‘ands’ and ‘buts’ than can be true in written literature. On those occasions when my work has involved editing collections of stories – for instance, Time For Telling or Tales From Africa – I’ve noticed how some writers who were primarily oral storytellers simply couldn’t have realised how many ‘ands’ and ‘buts’ they were using and how this really didn’t look good when their stories were written down.
The trouble is that, even in oral storytelling, too many ‘ands’ and ‘buts’ can be a terrible problem. (Teachers often have to contend with this problem: until they’re helped to do otherwise, children can be inclined to go on and on, anding and butting all over the place.) For a start, this is monotonous; it kills the attention of the listener. For another thing, it destroys the shape of a story.
Sentences that start and stop allow a story to breathe. They give meaning and shape to what you are saying. Because they give space for pauses, they allow time for the listener to visualise what’s going on and perhaps predict what might be about to come next.
Rubbish words
There are lots of words that are used just to fill in gaps. ‘Thingummy’, ‘whatchermacallit’, ‘blah blah blah’: they’re like lifebuoys for language when we can’t think of the appropriate words or can’t be bothered to use them or don’t want to sound more educated than the people we’re addressing.
‘Loads’ is a frequently used example. ‘She went into the forest and there were loads of trees.’ Well, trees don’t ever come in loads unless they’ve been cut down and prepared for transportation. ‘Loads’ may be fine in a conversational context (though even then, not too often) but it detracts rather than adds to a storytelling and would stick out like a proverbial sore thumb in a piece of written literature.
‘Like’ is another example very often used by children. ‘There was this wolf that was, like, coming towards her and she, like, wanted to run away.’ Phrasings like this have to be excluded and it can make a very interesting exercise with children in class to get them to listen to each other telling stories, then comment on appropriate language.
What to try:
Less common words
Cleaning up language is a natural precursor to adding to it to make it more attractive. Beautifying the language, elaborating it, using less common or decidedly unusual words: all these are tactics which can contribute hugely to the pleasures of telling and listening to stories. Sometimes a particular worry is expressed by people working with children, and particularly if they’re children for whom English is a second language. How will the audience understand if you use ‘big’ or unusual words? My response is twofold.
1. You don’t have to understand the exact meaning of every word in order to understand the story. Besides, how can you learn new words unless they are used?
2. It’s perfectly possible for a storyteller to use a strange word, then immediately afterwards use another similar word or phrase which conveys an equivalent meaning. By this method, the listeners hear an enjoyable abundance of language without feeling challenged.
So, for instance, there could be a listener who did not understand the word ‘jaw’. But I bet that same listener would get the general idea if you said that as the wolf opened its jaws, you could see the sharpness of the teeth in its mouth. In the same sort of way, wouldn’t you succeed in conveying the meaning, for example of the word ‘undulating’, if you described a road that undulated, up and down like waves into the distance?
The past tense:
In conversational talk, you often hear stories being related in the present continuous tense. ‘So there I am, going into the forest, and what do I see, lurking around behind these trees, but this wolf. Well, I’m horrified, aren’t I? But then this idea comes into my head. So I’m thinking hard and then I’m ready. And do you know what I went and did?’
Yes, it’s at this sort of stage that the tenses of a story can get very muddled. Certainly when you’re telling any kind of traditional tale, it’s usually best to choose and keep to the past tense. After all, that’s the appropriate mode for ‘Once upon a time…’ It’s clear, it’s simple and your listeners can immediately recognise that you’re telling a story that happened and ended.
That’s all for this week!
Next week? I’m still thinking about it. Come back and visit on Saturday – and meantime why not subscribe to the RSS Feed?
Links:
You can also read occasional blogs by me on the Early Learning HQ website. Early Learning HQ offers hundreds of free downloadable foundation stage and key stage one teaching resources. It also has an extensive blog section with contributions from a wide range of early years professionals, consultants and storytellers. For details of the Society for Storytelling, click here.
Tags: reflecting on language, reflecting on sound, rubbish words to avoid, using tenses