Storyteller Quote

Long ago before anyone learned to read and write, there was the art form of storytelling. A tradition of stories passed down from one generation to the next, always in danger of extermination, which is why the stories seemed all the more valuable. N. Scott Momaday, a Native American writer, tells a story of the dance between the spoken word and listening. His grandmother understood this dance and was a master storyteller. Listening to language, using the right word, makes all the difference in our writing. There is much to be learned from a storyteller's art.

N. Scott Momaday wrote about his grandmother's storytelling abilities so eloquently in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, House Made of Dawn. "My grandmother was a storyteller; she knew her way around words. She never learned to read and write, but somehow she knew the good of reading and writing; she had learned how to listen and delight. She had learned that in words and in language, and there only, she could have whole and consummate being. She told me stories, and she taught me how to listen. I was a child and I listened. She could neither read nor write, you see, but she taught me how to live among her words, how to listen and delight. 'Storytelling; to utter and to hear. . . ' And the simple act of listening is crucial to the concept of language in turn is crucial to human society. There is proof of that, I think, in all the histories and prehistories of human experience. When that old Kiowa woman told me stories, I listened with only one ear. I was a child, and I took the words for granted. I did not know what all of them meant, but somehow I held on to them; I remembered them, and I remember them now. The stories were old and dear; they meant a great deal to my grandmother. It was not until she died that I knew how much they meant to her. I began to think about it, and then I knew. When she told me those old stories, something strange and good and powerful was going on. I was a child, and that old woman was asking me to come directly into the presence of her mind and spirit; she was taking hold of my imagination, giving me to share in the great fortune of her wonder and delight. She was asking me to go with her to the confrontation of something that was sacred and eternal. It was a timeless, timeless thing; nothing of her old age or of my childhood came between us.

Even though writer's know how to use words, and we now possess the skill of reading and writing to help us, writers must not forget to listen and incorporate the sound of language into their stories. Incredible power is invoked when we tell a good story that engrosses our reader. Time and age are transcended. When our reader is reading our story they are also listening. The writer must capture the cadence and rhythm of language as it is written and thought for our readers become a part of the story we tell. 'Invoke their imagination' by weaving recognizable words of the soul into a tapestry of great storytelling.