The art of telling a story…
Are you still that little kid who needs a story to fall asleep? Or is that kid somewhere lost between set deadlines and late night assignment submissions? If you can recall your grandparents or parents narrating a story every night before kissing you good night, then welcome to my league.
While writing this blog, I was reminded me of those endless tales my grandma used to narrate before I fell asleep in her lap. I had always been a talkative kid and grandma’s stories were my source of bluff. But as and when I grew up, I started wondering where from she got all those mind boggling tales which used to keep me amazed until I fell asleep in my imaginations. So, here we go…
While stories generally sprout from a personal experience or an imagination too bubbly to be confided in the mind, storytelling can also be based on an acknowledged purpose. A lot of conversations in our daily life happen through stories. Whenever something thrilling happens, don’t we feel the urge to share it with someone? I would instantly call up a friend or drop a text in my WhatsApp gossip group. What about you? Although the word gossip somehow gives off an unproductive vibe, but Yuval Noah Harari, author of the book SAPIENS, presents a somewhat different idea.
The art of storytelling is way older than we can probably think of. Harari says, “Our language evolved as a way of gossiping. According to this theory,
Homo Sapiens is primarily a social animal. It was never enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bison. It’s much more important for them to know who in their band hates whom, who is sleeping with whom, who is honest and who is a cheat. The gossip theory might sound like a joke but even today, the vast majority of human connection — whether in the form of emails, phone calls or newspaper columns — is gossip. Fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively.” We learned to co-operate and connect in numbers greater than animals could and that’s how we outran all other species on this planet, yes, by narrating stories.
Having said so, how do you create interest in the mind of the listener so that they stick around till the end? You begin with a crisis. Something that’d capture the attention real quick. I was watching this video of Chef Ranveer Brar, which begins with him saying how he went into depression after his newly opened restaurant shut down and his friend saved him when he was homeless on the streets sleeping in a sleeping bag. But, that’s not how he actually began his story of becoming a renowned chef. He began by narrating experiences from his childhood, only the editors snipped out the shock factor of his life in the beginning. Why? Pure attention seekers I tell you ;P
Later on in his video, he tells us about the city of Lucknow where if you order one plate of food, you get to listen to one big basket of stories with it. Beautiful how innumerable stories have inter-wined with us for generations. No one can escape the force of evolution, and neither did the stories. Folktales, sayings, chants,etc that are transmitted through ages orally…evolved as well, adjusting to their listener’s preferences. What if I say that the practice of worshiping trees and believing in the existence of Forest Gods in different mythologies around the world was just a story, the sole purpose of it being to avoid atrocities like Global Warming the world is facing today? Did we stop believing in them somewhere down the line? Would the world be a lot greener if more and more people worshiped trees? These questions don’t seem to end but my blog surely does.
Often, stories start with a fantasy, has a mid-way problem and then ends with a solution like a soup of knowledge garnished with a hint of wisdom, which pretty much sums up the basic elements of storytelling. But what goes into making that soup like people, events or ideas is what makes us relish the aftertaste. So, are you a storyteller? Or do you tag along the listening team? Or, do you prefer the silent corner table of a library? Be it a story with a heightened climax, crisis or coincidence…if it’s worth collecting and reminiscing, it’s worth sharing!
Sources:
Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
