Our goal as storytellers is to capture our audience’s imagination, to appeal to their suspension of disbelief. This is the essence of enchantment. We invite listeners to let go of their minds and journey with us in the story. To captivate their imagination, the audience has to trust us.
If they could put their faith in us into words, our children might say, “Here storyteller, take my mind on a journey; give it wings and lift it into the winds of imagination. Be my guide to places I’ve never been, to see wonders my eyes have never seen.
I trust you. Here, take my mind.
What a precious part of themselves, to trust us with their minds.
In my book Heartfelt: Three Touchstones to Comfort Another, I talked about how much I loved spinning a tale before a group of school children assembled on an auditorium floor. Their minds would relax. They trusted me. They would travel with me to the land of make-believe, engaging in a concert of emotions, our breathing and heartbeats finding common rhythm.
I told one of my favorite stories, Everyone Knows what a Dragon Looks Like by Mercer Mayer, to a group of about 400 elementary school children. Because of the road sweeper's kindness in the story, a dragon saves the city of Wu from the Wild Horsemen of the north.
There is a suspenseful moment when the feeble old man changes into the great cloud dragon. As I tell the story, I depict the dramatic difference as the old man’s voice becomes fierce and his body transforms into a majestic dragon.
Just before he rises from the ground, the old man tells all assembled on the city walls in a deep voice, “NOW YOU WILL SEE WHAT THE DRAGON REALLY LOOKS LIKE!” Three times, the old man slams his wood staff to the ground. And then he begins to rise….
The children were silent. Perhaps some stopped breathing. As I looked across the group, I saw a break in the symmetry as the drama unfolded. Suddenly, a third or fourth grader in the middle of the assembly began sucking his thumb furiously. Was he self-conscious? No. Did anyone notice what he did? No. We were all travelers together in this land of make believe.
Such rapport is found more in the faces of children than in the faces of adults. Children have a brighter imagination than adults. They are more trusting and less burdened by decorum. They free their minds to become captivated by stories. Adults have learned to be guarded and disbelieving.
Stories cannot be enchanting when the imagination is shackled.
We have a great responsibility in our storytelling to honor the trust of our audience. In my next blog, I will talk about this storyteller’s contract.
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