Three things I’ve learned about storytelling

I’ve loved stories since I was a tiny dot. As a toddler, I asked my parents to read ‘Where’s the Green Parrot?’ and ‘The Truck on the Track’ until their pages disintegrated. As a child, I wrote endless stories and set up a library in my bedroom. As a teen, I read late into the night, volunteered at the local theatre, studied Literature at A level, and later university. In more recent years, my storytelling has been with both words and images: online and on the pages of beautiful magazines.

Last year, I spent nine months writing my storytelling E-course, Little Stories of My Life. During this time, I read book after book, and gathered together both my own ideas, and words of wisdom from authors and storytelling experts. Here are three things that I’ve learned about storytelling:

‘Until the day we die we are living the stories of our lives.’

-Jonathan Gottschall (The Storytelling Animal)

We are all living the stories of our lives: stories that are constantly changing, developing, and evolving, just like us. Our life stories are who we are, where we have been, and where we are going. When you tell the story of your life, you shape it into your own unique identity, a ‘personal myth.’

‘Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them’

– Rebecca Solnit (The Faraway Nearby)

We humans are, as Graham Swift put it, ’the storytelling animal.’ and we use stories to make sense of the world around us. We empathise with other people by telling ourselves their stories, and we share our own stories in the hope that others will understand us. Without stories, we would feel lost in a vast empty universe: stories help us to find patterns, to make connections, to create order.

‘The very act of telling your story possesses power.’

– Bobette Buster (Do Story)

Through telling your story, you share your vision and experiences. In hearing others’ stories we can be inspired, become courageous, even begin to envisage a better life for ourselves and dare to dream of a story with a different ending.

If you’d like to learn more about storytelling, the Little Stories of My Life E-Course is now open for enrolment, with limited spaces available at the Early Bird rate.

Little Stories of My Life is a 5 week E-course that will nurture your creativity and confidence, teaching you my secrets of storytelling with words and pictures, showing you how to find your voice, to see the magic in the everyday and to harness the power of your own small stories. I’ve poured my heart into this course and distilled into five heartfelt weeks everything that I’ve learned from my years of creative work.

Click here to find out more and to grab your space.