The true story-teller, like the true poet, is born, and not made. Talent in this creative art is a gift of nature, like a beautiful voice or skill in painting. But study, cultivation, and practice are necessary to advance the story-teller in his art, as in the case of the singer or the painter. Some practical suggestions may prove of value to beginners in story-telling:
1. ENCOURAGEMENT
There is comfort in knowing that a story need not be perfectly told to interest and delight little children in the home, kindergarten, or the lower grades of the Sunday-school and public school. The imagination of the little child is so keen, so abundant, and flows so freely that it triumphs over external defects of presentation and reaches the heart of things. Though this is true of one child or of a small group of children of about the same age and interests, it is not true, as practice soon teaches, of a large group, especially of children of different interests. Such an audience needs the magnetism of personality to hold it, and some real art in the presentation of the movement and details of the story.
Such professional story-telling is a rare gift, and is as valuable as it is rare. Not every parent, teacher, minister, or educator of youth, who may wish to be a story-teller may have the skill, time, patience, or perseverance to become an artist. Such training would involve the study of the technique of the use of the voice and of gesture, a thorough knowledge of the sources for stories, skill in the selection and preparation of material, practice in actual story-telling, and the hearing of stories told by professionals, the character of whose work unconsciously becomes the ideal of the story-teller. Training for such professional story-telling is given in colleges, presented in a number of interesting books, and encouraged by story-tellers’ training classes and leagues in many places. The hints here offered have the more modest story-teller in mind, the busy parent in the home, and the Sunday-school or public-school teacher, who may not have access to the technical books on the art of story-telling.
2. TELL THE STORY
Tell, do not read, the story. The teller is free. The reader is fettered. The oral story is more spontaneous, the connection with the audience is closer, the effect is more magnetic. It is the story plus personality and appreciation. The story-teller can give his message with his eyes as well as his lips without book or memory of the printed page to burden. The world stories contained in this volume are all designed for telling. After reading them through carefully once or twice, the mind will have the facts ready for telling. Stories adapted for telling must be written with more dramatic action and movement than those adapted for reading. But stories that are in a form suitable for telling are well adapted for enjoyable reading. Hence these stories have a double value, for telling or reading. But let it be kept well in mind that telling a story is incomparably better than reading it to any listener. The charm of a book cannot equal the magnetism of personality.
3. SELECT THE STORY
Select your story with some definite purpose in mind—pure enjoyment or some definite ethical principle, and let the aim be clearly in mind in the preparation for telling it. Select your story also with the child’s story-interests in mind, as presented in Chapter II. Make sure also that it is suitable in length and in style. Children who are accustomed to hearing stories can listen a longer time than those whose ears and brains are quite untrained. With very young children five minutes gives room for a really stirring tale.