Storybuilding (Resource Books for Teachers)

Similarly, there seem to be certain universals about what makes a story work well. Soap operas, stereotype jokes, cult heroes, and the lives o f media personalities, all become part o f the shared language of modem life, just as nursery tales are shared language between parent and child. We are great consumers o f ‘story’, and storytelling is a sub-skill o f social life. The ‘storytelling circles’ o f ancient tradition exist now as groups o f friends in a cafe sharing jokes, colleagues telling stories about the boss during the coffee break, or a family sitting round the television watching a soap opera.Yet the scope o f story is even broader than this. What is the connection, for example, between the friends sharing confidences about their lives on a mobile phone, and the written stories that we see in bookshop windows, which may win literary prizes and make their authors millionaires? The first kind o f ‘story’ is informal, spontaneous, and oral; it is developed by two or more people in conversation; and it relates closely to their everyday lives and to shared understandings within it. The second kind o f stoiy, in contrast, is probably structured with great care and formality, has taken months or years to refine, and is the voice o f one specific author made public and accessible to as many readers as possible. Yet both have the same quality. They make us feel: I am interested in this story; I want to know what happens next. Stories make us read or listen on, because through them we experience suspense or surprise, excitement, fear and its resolution, empathy with main characters, insights into our own lives and beliefs, the fantastic or the
impossible. Stories, both oral and literary, have combinations of some or all o f these elements.