Tips for Storytellers

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Tips for Storytellers

• USM Lower School Library

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Choosing a story

• Folktales work best
• Choose one you love
• Choose one that makes you think, laugh, or shiver
• Choose one that you want to share

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Ways to remember a story

• Read it 5 times
• Create a remembering aide
• Outline, storyboard, story web, pictograph
• Make a tape recording
• Practice
• In your head, in front of a mirror, with a
  friend, videotape yourself

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Develop your characters

• How are the characters different?
• What are their personalities?
• When they speak-how do they look and sound?
• What age are they-how do they walk/run?

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Learn to tell word pictures

• Learn many way to say Jack went down the road
• running so fast
• tore down the road
• looked twice as he sped past
• hurried

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Eye Contact

• Gets audience involved
• Audience will look where you look
• Pretend to see from time to time to help the
  audience with their imaginations

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Use your voice as a tool

• Do not speak in a monotone
• Use expression, pitch, and character voices to
  spice up your telling.
• Pay attention to your volume and speed.

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Expression

• Let listeners hear how the characters feel
• Practice calling your name
• For dinner
• To come in and clean up a mess

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Pitch

• Vary the pitch of your voice to indicate
  characters
• As in The Three Bears
• Baby bear (high pitched)
• Mama bear (medium or normal pitch)
• Papa bear (deep pitch)

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Volume

• Loud enough to be heard
• Create a mood with soft/normal/or loud
• Watch listeners to know you are being heard

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Speed/tempo

• Take your time
• Slower indicates sadness, fear, suspense, doubt
• Faster indicates joy, nervousness, excitement
• Use pauses and silence
• Creates suspense

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Character Voices

• Use only when necessary
• Hard to maintain
• Use body language instead
• Gestures (movements of the body)
• Facial expressions (should reflect what you say)
• Can be used to emphasize meaning

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Gestures

• Purpose is to let audience see picture of the
  story in their heads
• Wrong gestures let the audience see you and not
  the story
• Let your vocal expressions suggest the right
  gesture
• Dont act everything out

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Gestures (cont.)

• Most movements should be above the waist
• Avoid nervous movements
• Scratching
• Tugging on shirt
• Watch a video of yourself or ask another to
  comment on your movements
• Try hands behind back, or at sides, pretend feet
  are in cement

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Beginning a story

• Be sure to have everyones attention before
  beginning
• Plant your feet
• Introduce yourself (both names)
• Tell the name of the story
• Tell what country it is from
• Include any necessary background information
• Pause, before beginning

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Ending a story

• Your job as the teller is to let the audience
  know the story is over
• Avoid saying, the end
• Slow down at the end (like a big finish to a
  song)-jump stories speed up
• Use a traditional ending or
• Thats the end of that
• Thats the story of
• living there still

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Ending a story (cont.)

• Bow to the audience during applause
• Thank the audience for listening
• Have an encore ready