New tips from Doug Lipman
I found this very helpful! I hope you will too.
Banish Your Fear of Forgetting a Story (by Doug Lipman, http://storydynamics.com/)
It’s common to worry about forgetting your story. But that worry can lead you to memorize your stories, in the hopes of having the exact words to hold onto.
But memorizing the words of a story turns out to be the most risky way to learn a story.
Why? If you’ve memorized each word and then forget one while telling, it’s as though you’re guiding your listeners through a narrow tunnel and suddenly come upon a boulder.
Everything has to stop, and your attention—not to mention the attention of your listeners—focuses on the boulder in front of you. That can be a terrifying experience, so I don’t blame you for being afraid!
Fortunately, there’s another way, with four easy steps:
- Focus on the images of what happens in the story: the sights, sounds, gut feelings, smells, tastes, pangs of hunger, etc., in your story.
- Practice by telling to an individual, willing listener. Tell the story just as you’d tell a friend what happened to you last weekend.
- As you tell, focus on the reactions of your listener and respond to them along the way. If your listener looks puzzled, for example, add some information to help her understand.
- Repeat this process several times with a series of individual, willing listeners. If you need to be sure that your story will succeed at a particular event, I suggest telling it in advance 15 times.
Be Free of Worry!
Using the above method (the “Natural Method” for developing stories) you don’t have to worry about boulders in the tunnel.
Why not? First, your tunnel isn’t so narrow, so you can always detour around any large rock in the way. That is, you can find another way to describe what you’re imagining.
Second, the “boulders” in the natural method are smaller, more likely to be pebbles that you and your listener can step over easily, scarcely noticing them as you proceed along the path of your story. That is, when you’re engaged in imagining what you tell, it’s natural to pause as you imagine the next moment of your story. Your listeners, watching your face and eyes as you imagine, will likely be more interested in what you say next.
Will you still be nervous? Probably, at least sometimes. But you’ll be facing this nervousness with the confidence that comes from having told the story several times successfully, from feeling the successful moments when you and your listeners were fully engaged with each other.
In other words, you’ll become a seasoned teller of even your first story. Before you ever tell it in public, or to a group of restless children, or in a job interview, you’ll have experienced a series of listeners connecting to you and to this story. With such confidence to buoy you, your perceived anxiety will turn into simple excitement.
What is there to worry about? After all, you’ve felt success with this story before, and you’ll feel it again now.