Bible Teaching 99- How to Tell a Story

How to Tell a Story

COMMUNICATION SKILLS:

Introduction

BIBLETEACHING

I. Criteria of a Good Story

A. A well-chosen ____________

PR O C E S S O F T E A C H I N G

Message

1. Personal knowledge

2. Not ____________ personal

Teacher

Audience

Communication

B. An interesting _______________

C. _______________ characters 1. Unusual

PERSO N AL

TIP

Try to strike an appropriate balance between “heavy” and “light” stories in your message.

2. _______________ 3. Recognizable

D. A plot that __________

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E. Dynamic _______________

“[A story] can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next.”

E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), 35.

II. Tips for Crafting a Good Story A. __________ , don’t tell.

“If you’ve been to a writer’s conference or a creative writing class, or if you’ve read any books on fiction writing, you’ve already heard the major principle that older writers are always telling younger writers: SHOW, DON’T TELL . . .

Showing, in fiction, means creating scenes . . . It’s built on talk and action. It’s dramatized, shown, rather than being summarized or talked about . . . Creating scenes means finding ways for your story to show itself, rather than ways for you to tell it.”

Ansen Dibell, Plot (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1988) 7-9.

C REATIVE

u

u

B. Don’t _________ ______________ .

PRAC TI C E

Listen to good storytellers, and notice their choice of words and delivery style.

“Writers blinded by the delights of concocting elaborate background material can forget that their primary job is to tell a story, not merely to invent . . . Inventing is easy — it’s storytelling that’s hard. And it’s storytelling the reader has a right to expect.”

Your voice is a valuable tool in telling a story. Effective use of pauses, and varying your volume and rate can greatly enhance the power of a story.

Dibell, Plot, 47.

C. Choose a __________________ .

1. Omniscient narrator

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HOW TO TELL A STORY

2. ____________ viewpoint a. 1st person

b. 2nd person c. 3rd person

D. Use a ________________ opening.

1. The “mini-intro”

2. in media res

E. Keep the story ____________ .

1. Beware of “side issues”

PERSO N AL

TIP

Practice telling the stories you plan to use in a message to individuals before delivering them to an audience. It can help you anticipate responses to the stories, as well as identify changes to make to improve the delivery of them.

_______________ of the story the danger of side issues unfamiliar __________ over illustration

obscuring the point with too many details

over _________________

Marie Shedlock, The Art of the Storyteller (New York: Dover, 1951)

2. Know what to __________ _______ .

“A sculptor was asked how he carved a statue of a lion when he didn’t have a model. He explained, ‘I simply carved away anything that didn’t look like a lion.’”

Haddon Robinson, Biblical Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 152-53.

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F. Use an appropriate _______________ .

1. Keep descriptions ______________ as you close. a. Do not introduce new characters or plots.

b. Emphasize ____________ .

2. Let it match the story in _______________ .

3. Know when to ________ .

“As readers, we generally don’t notice parts of a story as separate things. We consider the apple we’re eating as a unit without stopping to analyze the texture and taste of each individual bite. We either like the storyapple, or we don’t. The more we liked the first few bites, the opening and the middle, the more disappointed and angry we’ll be if the ending falls flat. If the last bite of the apply makes us notice that half a worm remains, we’re not going to say to ourselves, ‘Well, the first three bites were nice.’ We’re going to toss away the apple in disgust and remember the worm.”

Dibell, Plot, 130.

G. _______________ the story well.

LEC TURE

1. Storytelling is not ____________ .

FO C US

Stories have an inherent power to communicate, especially to today’s college student.

To become effective teachers, we must develop the skill of crafting a good story.

COMMUNICATION CENTER

2. Beware of “mimicry.”

Conclusion

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HOW TO TELL A STORY