Speaking Tips : Oral Storytelling - Everyone Loves a Story

"Everyone loves a story, a tale orally told – tiny tots, adolescents, the young and the old, says Master Storyteller, Tom Ware.

Why?

Because both the teller and the listener are part of the creative process. It’s not just a passive activity. As the story unfolds you, the listener, in your mind’s eye, see the scenes, the characters in action. And that is the essence of it – you see these things and each of us sees them in accordance with our own interpretation of the world, our own values, our own truth.

The ‘story’ is the earliest form of telling ‘what happened.’ When cavemen hunted the wooly mammoth and language was very primitive indeed, yarns of the hunt were told over red meat and roaring camp fires. Through the millenia, the storyteller became an essential element in the relaying of tribal story. This was so much the case that in the Scottish Highlands, the official storyteller was third from the top in clan hierarchy. Only the chief and one other preceded him in importance.

Today the art of storytelling is rare. But there is a demand for it. Over the past sixteen years master storyteller, Tom Ware has presented stories on 687 occassions, speaking to over 38,000 people, and the bookings still roll in!

So, if you’re a speaker – yes, or a writer- and you add oral storytelling to your repetoire and are willing to ‘get out there,’ you’ll not only become a wonderful entertainer, you’ll have a great deal of fun as well.

I hope you enjoyed reading this short Speaking Tips piece on Oral storytelling - Everyone Loves a Story.

Keep smiling

Tusitala Tom.