Top 10 Most Important Aspects of Storytelling

by Odds Bodkin

The art of storytelling is an ancient craft, practiced by mystics, troubadours and bards for as long as people have gathered to listen. A question I hear all the time is, “Odds, how do you do that?”

The short answer is this: you build a world inside your imagination and then you walk through it, reporting what you see as you go.

If you would like to begin developing your own storytelling skills, let me pull back the curtain a bit and share how I work.

1. Discover Your Imagination

How to awaken your inner storyteller

Your imagination is the main tool of the storyteller. It is your memory, extended into a state I like to call “dreaming while awake.”

Try this simple exercise:

• Picture your bedroom in your mind.
• Focus on the bed.
• Now imagine a blue ball of light floating above it.
• Make the ball hum softly, or drift toward the window.

You just took a familiar memory and painted on it with imagination. That is the basic move. Think of your memories as bright paints on a palette. Imagination is what happens when you mix and spread those colors into new shapes: landscapes, events, characters and actions.

With practice, your imagination can produce anything. It becomes your most trusted and powerful storytelling tool.

You might protest, “I do not have a good imagination.” I would answer, “You have an undiscovered imagination.”

Have you ever had a long, intricate dream at night, full of strange detail and drama? Most people do. Many of those dreams are more vivid than movies or video games. If your sleeping mind can create such stories, that power is already inside you.

A storyteller’s job is to dream while awake and to use words to share those visions. That is not magic. It is a skill.

2. Use Your Five Imaginations

Engaging all five senses in your story world

To truly immerse yourself, learn to imagine through all five senses, not just sight.

• Visual imagination
  This is the main driver. Practice seeing settings, characters and action in three-dimensional space, unfolding in real time.
• Auditory imagination
  Hear the sounds of your world. Wind, voices, animal cries, the slam of a door. If you want to imitate a sound, it starts with hearing it clearly in your mind.
• Kinesthetic imagination
  This is movement and physical sensation. How does it feel to run, to fall, to climb, to hold a sword or a spoon? Storytelling comes alive when the world moves inside your mind.
• Olfactory imagination
  Smell is a powerful trigger for memory. Practice noticing and describing scents: wood smoke, rain on dust, a horse stable, bread in the oven. When you share those smells, your listeners’ memories light up.
• Gustatory imagination
  Taste is tied closely to emotion and memory. Let listeners taste what your characters taste: salty ocean spray, bitter herbs, sweet apples, cold metal.

Return to that blue ball over your bed:

• Give it a gentle hum: auditory.
• Let it smell like peppermint: olfactory.
• Reach out and feel that it is cool and smooth: kinesthetic.
• Taste it and find it is peppermint too: gustatory.

When you combine all five kinds of imagination, your inner world becomes richer and easier to remember. For listeners, it becomes almost like being there.

3. Internalize the Story

Turning written tales into your own inner narrative

Painters keep sketchbooks. Storytellers keep story books.

These days we have voice memos, texts, hard drives and clouds. All of that is useful, but when you are learning a new story, nothing beats a plain paper notebook or journal. That is where a story can grow.

I tell over a hundred stories, some of them long-form, an hour or longer – Beowulf. The Odyssey. David and Goliath. Hercules in Hell – what I call feature-length tales.

Here is the process I use when I adopt an old tale:

1. Read the whole story once.
   As I read, I build mental images, an inner movie.
2. Read it again and take notes.
   I jot down short phrases for key scenes, events and turning points. I make a cast list and imagine what each character looks and sounds like, always in my own words.
3. Put the book away.
   After that I work only from my notes. I want to keep the imagery, but not the previous author’s phrasing. This is how I escape what I call “Word Land” and begin to make the story mine.

The goal is to carry the story in your head and heart, not trapped on the page.

4. Build Your Wordless Outline

Creating an inner movie to guide your telling

Storytelling is not reading. It is creative remembering.

Unlike actors, we do not memorize lines. Still, stories must unfold in a clear sequence of scenes. If you place the witch’s gingerbread house before the father leads Hansel and Gretel into the forest, the tale collapses.

So I begin with a written outline:

• brief phrases
• one for each scene
• in the correct order

The Wordless Outline

Then I build something more important: a Wordless Outline. That is the story as a flowing inner movie in my mind, without words on a page.

This is hard work. It may be the most mentally demanding part of the craft.

Let me give you an example. Years ago a teacher asked around New England for a storyteller who could tell an episode from Homer’s Odyssey. I had not read it, yet I wrote back saying, “I can tell the entire tale. Hire me and I will do it.”

That was a bold promise. He hired me. I had three months to create a three-hour version.

Here is what I did:

• Read the text.
• Sketched the main episodes in my journal.
• Began slowly building a Wordless Outline, a continuous movie of the story in my imagination.

By the end I had 42 episodes arranged in order. I rehearsed constantly. My notes never left my side. Whenever I forgot what came next, I opened the journal, saw the next sketch and thought, “Right. That scene is next.”

When the three-day residency finally arrived, I was backstage before each performance, eyes fixed on my outline and notes until the last possible moment. Then I stepped out, left the journal behind and trusted the inner movie.

You truly learn a story the first time you tell it in front of people. After that first outing, each retelling becomes easier and deeper. I have now told The Odyssey many hundreds of times. The notebook stays at home.

5. Learn to Trust Your Muse

Letting inspiration shape each unique performance

Spoken stories are fleeting things. Unless you record them, they vanish as soon as you finish talking. The audience carries them away in memory, but the performance itself is gone.

That can feel fragile, yet it is also a gift. The temporary nature of storytelling gives your Muse room to move.

What is the Muse? It is that state of mind when some higher part of you seems to take over and everything feels clear and unhurried. Athletes call it being “in the zone.”

In storytelling it feels like this:

• Your characters say new lines you have never rehearsed.
• Sentences come out with unexpected grace.
• You surprise even yourself.

You think, “Am I really saying this? Is this actually me?” Some artists and mystics would answer, “Not entirely.”

The psychologist Carl Jung once described two kinds of writing. In one, the author carefully controls every detail. In the other, the work seems to arrive almost fully formed, as if it pushes itself through the writer, bringing its own images and structure. The author feels seized by ideas that could never have been planned in advance.

That second kind is what I mean by the Muse.

In Greek myth, the Muse of Eloquence is Calliope. Homer and Virgil both called upon her help. Other people give this presence different names: the Holy Spirit, the Presence of God, the life force, the collective unconscious. Whatever name you prefer, that current of inspiration is very useful when you are telling stories, even if you do not claim to believe in it.

6. Choose a Story You Love

Selecting tales that resonate with you and your audience

If you are not inventing your own tale but drawing from the vast public-domain sea of old stories, choose carefully.

Look for:

• a theme that moves you
• a character you cannot forget
• an image that stays with you for days

If you love the story, your audience will feel that. If you are indifferent, they will feel that too.

For a 12 to 15 minute performance piece, you need:

• a clear beginning
• a middle with tension and development
• a satisfying end

Stories exist to offer emotional rewards. They do not need to be new. In fact, most “new” stories are old patterns in fresh clothes. Superhero films are simply ancient myths armed with special effects. The payoffs are the same:

• love wins
• bullies are humbled
• children grow up
• heroes protect the helpless
• courage and perseverance matter
• free will wrestles with destiny

When you go looking for material, consider:

• Children’s stories
• Fairy tales
• Folktales from your own region
• Myths from different cultures
• Bible stories or sacred tales from your tradition
• Legends
• Supernatural or spooky stories
• Fables
• Personal stories from your own life

Pick one that will not let you go.

7. Develop Your Storytelling Voice

Finding a clear, elegant voice your listeners can follow

People sometimes ask, “What if I do not like my voice?”

Listeners today hear every kind of voice in media, and they are surprisingly flexible. My own voice has changed over the years. I once had a strong Southern drawl and a much higher pitch.

Here is my best advice:

• Do not use your casual “around the house” voice.
• Find your elegant voice, the one you would use if you stood up to speak to a room full of people you respect.
• Pay attention to diction. Let your sentences start and finish cleanly, whatever your accent.
• Keep your grammar solid. Make sure subjects and verbs agree.
• Avoid filler words like “uh,” “like” and “you know.” Silence is better.

You will need to pause and think while you tell a story. That is normal. Most audiences are perfectly willing to wait a beat for you to find the right words. Practicing this kind of mindful speaking will make your storytelling voice stronger and more trustworthy.

8. Choose Age Appropriate Stories

Matching story themes to the developmental stage

Young children are tender. The wrong story at the wrong time can frighten or confuse them more than you intend.

General guidelines I follow:

• Ages 3 to 7
  • Animal stories and gentle fables
  • Simple lessons about sharing, kindness, patience
  • No graphic violence, monsters, sex or death
• Ages 8 to 9
  • Simple creation myths
  • Bible stories or sacred tales
  • More complex folktales and fairy tales
  • Benign legends with mild suspense
• Ages 10 to 11
  • More intricate plots
  • Characters who face loss, danger or injury
  • Stories with gods, goddesses, heroes and villains
  • Supernatural tales that thrill without deeply traumatizing
• Ages 12 and up
  • Teens have usually seen plenty of screen violence and sexuality
  • They can handle darker material but are also more skeptical
  • Moral complexity matters; they still need stories where choices have real consequences

For the youngest children, what they need most is simply this:

• a trustworthy adult
• a safe story
• a chance to sit still and listen

Listening to stories lights up their brains in ways that picture books and television do not, because they must build the images themselves.

9. Practice Your Story

Rehearsing with real listeners to truly learn the tale

You do not really know a story until you have told it in front of listeners.

One practical tip:

• Memorize your first line.

Once the first sentence is out of your mouth, your Wordless Outline can carry you along. That first line is the key that unlocks the door.

To practice:

• Gather friends or family who are willing to listen.
• Join a storytelling circle in your area and test material there.
• Visit storytelling festivals and try open mic sessions.

When you tell a story, something alchemical happens between your memory, your Muse and the people in front of you. Each telling shapes the next. If you keep showing up and practicing, you will improve.

10. Use Comic Relief

Balancing intensity with moments of laughter

Some stories are rugged. My version of Beowulf is one of them.

At the beginning:

• The music is dark and tense.
• Grendel, a terrible demon, attacks.
• The Danes suffer for twelve years.

It is intense and grim. Then I bring in Beowulf.

His first boastful line, “When I was five, I killed my first bear,” lands lightly. The music brightens. His cousin Wyglaf teases him. Beowulf admits, jokingly, that he was actually eleven. The audience laughs and breathes again. Then we dive back into the serious parts.

That is comic relief:

• It eases tension.
• It humanizes characters.
• It gives the audience a breath of air before they swim on.

Use humor as a touchstone, not a crutch, unless you intend to be a full-time humorist. A well placed joke or moment of silliness makes the darker moments more bearable and often more powerful.

BONUS: Character Voices, Music and Vocal Effects

Optional tools to deepen immersion in your stories

All of the following are optional. You can be an excellent storyteller without them. The most important thing is to know your story and tell it clearly.

If you do feel drawn to use them:

Character voices and point of view

• Try different pitches or accents for different characters.
• To keep them straight, imagine flying into the character’s face and looking out through their eyes.
• See the scene from their point of view and let that shape how they speak.

If this feels confusing or forced, it is better not to do it than to muddle your tale.

Sound effects and atmosphere

If you have a knack for sound mimicry, you can add:

• hoofbeats
• wind in trees
• creaking doors
• dripping water
• animal calls

Use them sparingly and tastefully. They are like spices, not the whole meal.

Music as a second storyteller

I often compose and play music during my stories:

• on 12 string guitar in modal tunings
• on Celtic harp

I create themes for characters and situations, and let those themes return when needed. Music:

• sets mood
• anchors emotion
• gives listeners another way to feel the story

Very little of it is rigidly mapped. I allow myself to improvise. Sometimes the characters say something new. Sometimes the music does. In all my years I have never told the same tale in exactly the same way twice.

If you know your story from start to finish and carry a strong Wordless Outline in your mind, these tools can make your storytelling even more vivid. If you choose not to use them, you can still move people deeply with nothing more than your voice and your imagination.

And that is the heart of it.

Sources:

1.On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry”. Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 15, edited by R. F.C. Hull, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966, pp. 65-83. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850884.65