Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Improving Your Storytelling


Improving Your Storytelling by Doug Lipman is a book I picked up to help me sharpen my storytelling techniques. I'm not exactly the most exiting individual to listen to when telling stories but occasionally I have a good one to tell.

Every morning over the PA system I welcome the student body as well as the staff to school. There are days I find myself imitating the radio personality I heard on the way to work or simply mimicking Robin Williams in "Good Morning Vietnam". In staff meetings, I tend to be winded and bore the socks off my staff with my limited presentation and oral communication skills. Thus, I picked up the book Improving Your Storytelling in hopes of building the necessary skills to effectively delivery information through the technique of storytelling.

For those of you who have the gift of telling stories and want to learn some of the tested and true storytelling techniques (i.e. body language, tone, pacing, images, etc...), this is the book for you. However, if you are a beginning storyteller and know little about it, this book is ahead of you.

I must confess that I put the book down after it sat on my bed stand for two months. I picked the book up several times to give it a chance to hook my brain and spirit of learning but it did not happen. Therefore, I took the book off my bed stand and walked downstairs to the dreaded bookshelf. Typically, once a book has been placed on the "bookshelf" it remains there for a very long time. Out of sight, out of mind. Once it is there, the only time I see the sides or insides of those books again will be when I have another uninteresting book or if I have completed a book.

I wonder if there is a book entitled, "Storytelling for Dummies". I need something that will be easy to read, easy to implement, and makes me sound good to my audience (i.e. my staff, the students, the parents, and my family).

No comments: