Tell, Never Teach a Story 

I recently read this article in a book I’ve had at home for years!!! It is a brief essay on the art of storytelling by Swami Chinmayananda, a renowned spiritual teacher from India.

The two main things that left a distinct impression on me were:

1.       His fantastic command of the English language

2.       His description and vivid portrayal of children and their imagination as they listen to stories

Here is the essay. I had to type it out as I couldn’t find the same article online.

The Art

Story-telling is an art that should be cultivated by all conscientious parents. It is an unavoidable must. A girl, who does not know how to tell stories, does not really deserve to be a complete mother. In face, it should become one of the qualifications for taking up true marital responsibilities.

Effective storytelling is an art that can be cultivated by careful practice and attentive self-application. There is a treasure of joy for the story-teller, and a heritage of Good that the innocent, tiny listeners can gain from a story that is well told to them.

Its Benefits

By spending half an hour each day with the children, reading out to them something interesting, their vocabulary improves and they learn to talk in coherent and meaningful sentences - no more any baby-talk will issue forth from them. Also this practice teaches them the art of listening, which will stand them in good stead when they grow up, not only in their early education, but also in their later life in the outer world of strife and strain.

Even when a parent has the occasion to tell stories, often the children may not listen to them. There is a reason for it. Ordinarily, fathers and mothers do not know how to tell a story, or how to attract and enchant the tiny tots with it. There are certain rules we must scrupulously follow in order to make a striking effect on the children with our stories.

1.       First of all, select carefully the best stories. Any story will not do; children must be exposed to the right type of stories which have a clear significance to them, and which must ring true and interesting to the children’s minds.

2.       While telling the story, let the narration build up the story slowly, but very steadily. The story-teller should not run away from the story, and even if he does, he must dutifully come back straight to the story from pertinent and cheerful digression. The explanatory side-lights must vividly throw a more brilliant beam upon the main theme- the central story.

3.       Often the elders are self-conscious that they are talking to tiny tots, so they often repeat what has been already fully described. Children are sensitive to elder’s condescension and quickly feel a hurt vanity. Unconsciously, they “close up” and thereafter, the story runs on, but the child is left totally unaffected by the theme or its details.

Avoid the Pitfalls

Equally to be avoided at all costs are some other pitfalls commonly encountered by story-tellers. The entire effect of a well chosen and beautiful story can be totally destroyed by some unwitting mishandling of this tender art. That is why we find very often that when our neighbor tells our children the same story which we have told them many times, they sit up, thrilled, their faces shining with a fresh surprise and joy !!

1.       Children in their innocent years, do not expect nor do they look forward to unnecessarily long descriptions, or any winding streams of wordy narrations. They need but some varied details, carefully given and painted with the barest minimum strokes, to bring out the full picture from their imaginative minds. They are, by their very nature, fancifully creative and our words should only stimulate – not clog – their minds with information, data and details.

An exhaustive treatment becomes too heavy and serious stuff for the children, especially for the junior tots. Even the older ones should not be gorged with over-detailed, unending descriptions and crazy and deliberately drawn out narrations. Let us be simple and straight, and let us use a humble, plain but able vocabulary. All stories too rich with a wealth of detail do not run smoothly, nor can their main theme easily flow. Children can be readily held in attention only by the mesmeric enchantment of the rhythm in the movements of the theme of the story.

2.       While etching the movements of the story on the wonder-mind of the innocent children, be careful of the words employed and their possible suggestions in the minds of the children. Totally avoid situations describing indiscipline, vandalism, cruelty, disobedience, un-heroic escapism etc, in the heroes of the stories. In fact, quickly glide over these even if they be in the villain; let not the negative values even unintentionally take root in the children’s hearts.

3.       Please do not employ science in the stories. No doubt, children must be introduced to the mysteries of the Universe and the glories of science. But let not the story be loaded with these. While listening to a story, a child is in a different mood, as children alone can be. They are thrilled by their love for fantasia. Their imagination lights up. Their wide-eyed joys are kindled. Their divine enchantment of pleasure during the story listening hour is too sacred to be molested by roughly marshaled facts and data, crude details, and cute laws of nature. Children are, at such moments, in the very lap of nature – gliding on incredible patterns surging in their own hearts – winged angels of the goddess of knowledge. Let them remain in their native glory; let us not shock them in the hope that they may become scientist or politicians of this muddy world.

4.       Similarly, let us not try to analyze the characters, or rationalize the situations. True, these are the days of psychological analysis, and scientific enquiries everywhere, and I have listened to good-intentioned parents spreading thickly such exhaustive treatment of stories, and we can watch how the children’s faces instinctively become cloudy as their enthusiasm dies away.

Let the children do the character reading for themselves. They demand no rationale for the story and its incidents. Take them on the wings of the story into their own ecstatic realm of innocent dreams and imaginary world of quaint, exaggerated and heroic men and women of noble actions. To the little ones it does not matter whether the hero is Sri Krishna on the banks of the river Yamuna, a wolf in the woods, or a frog in its hole near a wayside pond !

5.       Lastly, never preach through the stories. Fully narrate, Clearly describe, Vividly portray, Eloquently tell. Never, never should we, in our over-anxiety, try to preach a moral. Just in passing we may mention the moral value, but then pass on quickly; please don’t tarry over it. The very story in the growing child will, by itself, instill the great truths and higher values of life as time passes on. We should never exploit our story-telling for preaching.

Selection of stories

The main considerations in selecting the right type of stories are the audience, the occasion and the purport.

1.       The audience may be boys and girls. Perhaps they are small children, or an older group, or a mixed group. The story must be so selected as to hold the attention and sustained enthusiasm of all the tiny listeners in front of you at any given time.

2.       Also, the story must be appropriate for the occasion: a birthday party, a picnic, a journey, a wedding celebration, a Sunday school. The same story may not suit all occasions.

3.       Lastly, the selection of the story must depend upon the purport in the mind of the story-teller; to correct the children, or to generate heroism; to inspire confidence, or to evoke generosity, or it may be to bring out the spirit of forgiveness in the hearts of its listeners. It may be just to soothe the child to rest and sleep, or to console him at his loss, or to encourage him to make a large-hearted sacrifice. The aim to be achieved should determine the choice of the story.

Apart from these considerations, the story selected must be subtly placed in a suitable atmosphere. In summer, let your story bring in rains; on rainy days, let the sun lash out; and in winter, let the cloudless sky, bright with the rising sun and the dancing spring, touching magic on the trees, bring warmth and fragrance into the nostrils of the listening tots. The innocent children will bask in the unconscious enchantment of the atmosphere of a rightly chosen story.

Children have boundless energy, and to keep physically quiet, even for a short interval is to them unnatural, insufferable. And yet, I have kept them with me for hours, quieter than sometimes the adults. The secret is to give the anxious listeners plenty of action in the story.

Let them dream of impossible distances, endless exertions, noble actions, heroic deeds, courageous undertakings, while listening to the stories. These mental activities, painted for them through the gushing, noisy flood of actions in the story, will make them quiet physically as they are following mentally the hero of the action-packed story. The story-teller should, by his/her vivid words, clearly communicate the heaving scenes of panting actions to the enchanted bosom of the attentive child.

Keep moving, never lag. Don’t jaywalk through the story, hesitatingly building it up as it is told. The story must be in a steady trot, move – move towards a definite conclusion – galloping up to the crisis and down into the valley of denouement. Again with a fresh hope, let the story pick up energy and courage to “get up” and fight the problems and thus let it move on and on, to the refreshing end of success and joy, rewarding the good, and ultimately punishing the evil.

Let there be no blocks en route. And don’t leave the child in doubt at the end. The story must conclude on a positive note of reward at the end of all trials in life.

Fundamentals of Storytelling

1.       It is true, as parents, we are not born story-tellers, a very blessed few of us alone have this faculty naturally with us. But no loving adult should find it impossible to develop this art; actually every one of us has this faculty dormant in us. Only each of us needs different amounts of practice to bring this story-telling. Take it seriously and practice it diligently. No one can fail in this.

2.       Having selected the appropriate story, tell it to yourself many times. Each time you tell the story, be yourself amongst the children, and listen !! Identify mentally with the children and hear your own narration, as they would hear it. You will instinctively correct your vocabulary style, arrangement of details, and the tone of delivery. All these are important.

The best time to repeat the stories to yourself is at night when you are in bed, with the light off. In that darkened room, let the image of the children crown around you, their eager faces lit up with joyous expectation. Now you tell the story. Let a few loving and affectionate antennae from your heart try to contact and receive the reactions playing in the children’s bosom. You will discover how easily you will polish and effectively re-arrange the narration, which is certain to suit the children’s heart.

3.       It is also important that the story teller should not be an inert radio set blistering the ears of its listeners with monotonous recitation of the story. Let the story be rendered “living” and vivid by appropriate gesture. Purposeless gestures will distract the attention of the children – they will shift their attention from the flow of the story to the mad rhythm of the wild gestures.

4.       Know the story well: Its a psychological tragedy for the child to hear a part of the story and then to live in wonder and confusion, because the story-teller forgot the rest of it. The poor child is awakened to recognize a situation and a personality in the story. To leave the child there, as a neglected orphan, is to bring a mental problem to the carefree child, to solve for himself, in his endless imaginations. This is criminal, crude, cruel to say the least.

5.       You as the story teller, must feel the story. Unless you are yourself in it, as its very flesh and blood, the story will be a dead, decayed, dried up skeleton – horrible, dreadful and offensive. Give it life, enliven it by your sincerity and enthusiasm, your cheer and pleasure in narrating it to the children. These are contagious emotions. Children will get them from you, and thereafter, you will find you are drawing from them these very same feeling, in a larger measure.

6.       Be natural, and don’t pose. Renounce all the artificial dignity and vanity of being an adult. Be yourself a child. Identify with them totally; think as they would; fell as they alone can. Be innocent and carefree as they always are. They, very instinctively, will come to recognize the child in you. The walls that separate the adult from the child crumble down and an ecstatic harmony is established. This adjustment between you and your listeners is an unavoidable prerequisite in all successful storytelling.

7.       Also, be graphic. You don’t tell the story; let your words give it birth. Your words should paint for them the scenes, the situations, the feelings and the personas. Make them all fabulously colorful, vivid and breathing with exciting life and the joy of living.

This doesn’t mean that you must give elaborate descriptions of nature, or an exhaustive analysis of characters while telling the story. In fact, these you should never employ; a single flower will become a garden to the child; a few trees will make a forest for him; a bird on the branch of a mango tree is springtime for the child listening to the story. Just a hint – all the rest, the child, in his love of the fantastic, with his imagination and stored up pictures of his past experiences, will create for himself.

8.       Lastly, I have watched many storytellers telling the right kind of story, with the right words, gestures, graphically enough and with full feeling. Yet, the children do not “take”. Why? There is a reason. When each eager face turns up to you, with his heart geared to listening to the story, he expects you, not only to tell the story, but to tell the story to him. Each child wants the story to be told to him personally. If the story teller looks only into the faces of the children sitting in the front row, or nearest to him/her, then the others who are behind feel neglected. This feeling is very poignant to them. During your narrations, shift your eyes, and look at every row, every child. Smile with your eyes at every child; let him feel that he alone is the One to whom the story is being told.

Tell, never teach a story. Children learn more by a story, well told, than what we teach them through a story.