The Giant’s Heart – What a Three-Week Course Taught Me About Storytelling, Art, and Life

It’s All in How You Tell It
Another thing our teacher would do in class would be to give us stories—typically fables or folktales—and have us tell them. In particular, there was an exercise he gave us towards the end of the course, which has stuck with me.

He wanted to meet with each of us individually, in a breakout room, to discuss the stories we would be presenting for our final projects. When he called me in, the person ahead of me was still there, and he told a story—not his final project story, but a brief fairytale. Then he left, and I talked with the teacher about what my final project would be.

Before he dismissed me, he said, “OK, now I’m going to tell you a story. And when I bring the next person in, I want you to tell it to them before you leave.”

He then told me a fable about a group of jungle creatures who make a deal with a gadfly to help them get rid of a lion. Our teacher was, of course, a fantastic storyteller, but in this particular case, he deliberately kept it to just the basic events of the story, without adding a lot of his own flavor. The point was for me to add the flavor in the retelling. And I did. I gave all the animals voices. I talked about what a jerk the lion was, and how much everyone hated him. The student I told the story to suggested I add buzzing sound effects for the gadfly, so I did that too. I took this basic story, and I made it my own.

After the meetings were done, there were still a few minutes left in class. So the teacher paired me up in a breakout room with another student and said, “Tell him the story of the lion and the gadfly, and then have him tell it back to you.”

So I did. I did the voices. I added the buzzing. I talked about what a jerk the lion was. I gave it my all. And then I asked him to tell the story back to me.

The other student’s storytelling style was very different from mine. He was more mellow, more conversational. He didn’t do the voices, and he certainly didn’t do the buzzing. But his story was in no way lacking for that fact. In fact, in some ways, it was better. He changed the ending a bit and made it a good deal funnier. If you didn’t hear the two back to back, you might not even realize they were the same story.

“Everyone has their own storytelling style” seems like kind of an obvious point to make, but there’s a big difference between knowing that academically and seeing two vastly different versions of the same basic story taking form within a few minutes of one another.

And the overall point I want to make is something that we all could use a reminder of. It’s easy to worry or to get discouraged when someone else’s work seems similar to ours. They released theirs first, so now you can’t release yours, or it will seem derivative. A lot of people also worry about idea thieves. They guard their projects like Fort Knox, lest someone else get a whiff of one of their ideas and take it for their own. 

Me, I’ve never really concerned myself with idea thieves. Because I know, even if someone does take one of my ideas, what they do with it will be vastly different from what I do. And that’s the lesson I learned from this exercise. Even using the same story as a base, the finished products can look very different. Which ties in with the point I made in the previous section: What makes the story your own is what you bring to it that no one else can. It’s all in how you tell it.

Feel Your Feet
Most of the class was about learning stories, developing stories, and honing them, and it was a very personal and unique experience for each of us. Very little was about teaching us specific techniques to use in the performing of a story. After all, as we’ve seen, the technique that works for one person’s style doesn’t necessarily work for someone else’s.

But there was one technique our teacher gave to us. “Whenever you’re telling a story,” he told us, “Think about your feet. Where are your feet with regard to the story?” For example, if your story takes place on a beach, then your feet would be in the sand. If it takes place in a meadow, then they’d be in grass. What does that feel like? How does it inform the rest of the story?

Not that you necessarily need to include descriptions of the ground in your story, or talk about how it feels. But being aware of those types of details helps to ground you in the world of your story, which in turn gives you better focus as you tell it.

Of course, this technique is very specific to performance-based storytelling, but I think with a few tweaks, it can be applied to other types of art as well. At its core, it’s not about feet, specifically. It’s about being a part of the story that you’re telling—not just understanding it, but really letting yourself feel it.

It can definitely work for writing. What does the ground feel like to your main character in the scene they’re in right now? Are they standing on a hardwood floor? Plush carpet? Asphalt? Gravel? Understanding that can put you in better touch with their surroundings. If it’s hardwood, then they’re in a very different room from if it were plush carpet. If they’re walking down an asphalt road, then it’s a very different journey than if they’re going down a gravel path. Start there and use it to build a sense of where they are and how that affects the rest of the scene.

I think it could even work for more abstract types of art, like music. What’s the ground like for this particular piece? Is it firm and solid? Soft and comfortable? Unsteady and uneven? Jagged and broken? And what emotions does that lead to? Confidence? Safety? Nervousness? Discomfort? Now how does the music express those emotions?

You don’t necessarily have to use feet as your jumping-off point, but the basic point remains. By grounding yourself in the world of your story and allowing yourself to experience the surroundings and feel the emotions of it, it will lend both depth and focus to the way you tell it.

The More Stories, the Better
Giving us stories and having us tell them to someone else was a great way to help us hone our storytelling skills. But it also served another purpose. When my teacher gave me the story of the lion and the gadfly, he talked about the benefits of the exercise. He talked about how practice would help me develop my craft. And then he added, “Plus, it’s another story for your repertoire.” And in my opinion, that’s one of the most important aspects of storytelling there is.

The more stories you know, the better storyteller you are. The more stories you know, the better artist you are. Even if it’s a story you never tell, it’s still an experience you can draw on.

So if you want to become a better artist, you need to learn as many stories as possible. Fortunately, stories can come from anywhere. They come from reading, from watching TV, from talking to people, and of course, from life experience. Everything’s a story if you know how to tell it. And learning how to tell it is what will make you a great artist.