Storytelling As A Rewriting Tool
By Brian “Fox” Ellis
Most teachers will agree and most writers will confirm that rewriting is one of the most difficult things to teach and one of the hardest parts of the writing process, but it is also the most important part of the writing process. Rewriting is the difference between a good idea and a great story. When students say, “It is done. There is nothing I want to change.” I challenge them to go over it again and again, telling them that rewriting means re-thinking, re-working, and re-creating, not simply copying it over.
Every time a storyteller stands up and performs a story they are carefully re-crafting the work. Storytelling is one of the most potent ways to teach students the art of rewriting.
Storytelling is already acknowledged as an effective tool in teaching pre-writing, (See pages 00-00). It is also be a powerful tool when it comes to rewriting. I often tell and retell a story a dozen times before I write it down. I then retell the story to a dozen more audiences to get feedback before I rewrite the story. The act of telling and retelling allows me to rewrite and edit the story midstream in response to the audience's appreciation or consternation.
After students have written a rough draft of their story invite them to tell their story aloud several times, each time asking them to focus on different aspects of the story. By doing this piece meal, and taking the story apart, one part at a time, they learn the rewriting skills that real writers and publishers use. Storytelling is the tool that allows them to see each part clearly. They can focus in turn on dialogue, verbs, imaginative detail, and audience response.
I often speak of rewriting as being similar to math. It is simple addition, subtraction, and regrouping. Add details, images, sentences, verbs, adverbs, dialogue, a plot twist, or irony. Subtract the distractions, tangents, unnecessary detail and cloudy elements. Sometimes you can regroup an idea and move it to another place in the story where it makes more sense. Instead of a straight chronological timeline, discuss foreshadowing or a flashback. Remind students that before word processors were invented that the phrase "clip and paste" meant literally to cut out a sentence or paragraph and glue it down someplace else. Just as we teach computational skills in the classroom before we give them calculators, it might be helpful for them to at least once have the physical experience with scissors and glue, so when they click and drag on screen they know what this means.
By asking students to retell their story several times they can clean up and embellish their stories. Each time they tell it ask them to ask themselves "How can I make this a better story? How can I make this a better story? How can I make this a better story?" I even ask students to chant this sentence with me at the beginning of the lesson and then sing it out a few times in the middle to remind them of the task at hand!
THE TOOLS OF STORYTELLING BECOME THE TOOLS OF REWRITING
Begin by briefly reviewing the tools of the storyteller: VOICE, BODY, IMAGINATION, and the AUDIENCE. (See below; for more information please see the chart on page 00.) VOICE - The voice is the most important tool of the storyteller. You must be loud and clear, articulate, enunciate, express clear feelings, change voices and make sounds. BODY - Stand up and act the story out. Use facial expression and gesture, pantomime and body language to tell your story. IMAGINATION - Tell the story silently in your imagination. Close your eyes and be inside the story. I believe that the better I can imagine it the easier it is for the audience to be in the story with me. Use all of your senses. Describe smells, sounds, feelings, and tastes as well as what you see. Relive the story as you tell it. AUDIENCE - Tell your story to a partner and watch your audience watch the story. Involve the audience with rhetorical questions, similes, and metaphors. Compare your ideas and experiences to things they can relate to, and ask them to join in with sing-a-long songs!
FINDING YOUR VOICE Talk about the ways we use our voice in telling stories. It is important that students are loud and clear. Ask them to listen and repeat: ENUNCIATION. I want to hear every sound syllable, listen and repeat: ARTICULATION. I love these words. By saying them we are doing it. ELOQUITION. These words are an exercise for your teeth and tongue, an exercise in speaking clearly. Listen and repeat: ENUNCIATION, ARTICULATION, ELOQUITION. Singing is also a good way to warm up your voice. Listen and repeat: MA-MAY-ME-MO-MOO. Loud and clear: MA-MAY-ME-MO-MOO.
Challenge students to tell, not read, their story out loud. As you tell it, what question are you asking yourself? "How can I make this a better story? How can I make this a better story? How can I make this a better story?"
The first time through they should focus on the vocal elements. Ask students to ignore everyone else and tell their story to themselves. The room will get noisy and that is OK.
As they tell it out loud ask them to experiment with dialogue, add feeling, and add sound effects. If they do not like the way it sounds hit rewind and replay and try something else. Rewrite these changes in the margins. At some point brainstorm a list of synonyms for said that have more emotional impact. Keep this list on the chalkboard or on chart paper for future reference. Use the insert mark, ^, to add a sound effect, an onomatopoeia. Use an asterisk, *, to mark the place where you want to add dialogue. Rewrite conversations to add detail, add feelings and to make it sound more natural, like something real people really say.
After telling it to themselves, give the students several minutes to rewrite the vocal elements of their story.
Lights, Camera, ACTION! Another way to convey your story is through body language; your body language can add to the written version of your story.
As they tell it ask them to act out the action words. Celebrate the verbs. Instead of a boring sentence like, "He walked across the meadow" how can they expand this sentence so they have more to act out? Ask several students to help you. Change the verb. Add some adverbs. Add some explanatory clauses or sentences. Better yet insert a whole new paragraph that gives them more to act out.
I often discuss a few examples with Socratic Questioning. How can we act out and expand this verb? Instead of, "He walked across the meadow"; they could rewrite the sentence to say, "The fox silently slipped along the edge of the meadow. He looked left and right, above and behind to be sure no one had seen him. When the coast was clear he dashed across the meadow, leaping over rocks, ducking under the branches of bushes and swerving around the clumps of tall grasses." Instead of "We played baseball." It could be "I was on deck, hoping my best friend would get on base so I would get a turn this inning. As I was stretching out and taking a few swings, Bernie hit a foul ball that bounced in the dirt between my feet scaring the bejeebers out of me" I often ask: which is better this one verb or these five sentences?
Ask the students to take just one minute and underline as many verbs as they can. Ask one student to share a verb. Ask them to recite the sentence. Ask them to stand up and act it out. What does that look like? As a class, discuss ways of making that one verb a whole new paragraph. It is always helpful to model this process with a few examples from their writing to help them expand the details in their stories.
Invite the whole class to stand up and simultaneously tell their story to themselves, focusing on the action. Ask students to stand up and stretch, reach for the ceiling, touch their toes, twist and yawn, shake your left arm, shake your right arm, shake your left leg, shake your right leg, do the hokey-pokey and turn yourself about. That is what it's all about! Storytelling is a dance. Ask them to act out their story. Use their voice and rehearse the vocal elements that they just rewrote, but this time they should focus on facial expression, gesture, and body language. What question are you asking yourself? "How can I make this a better story? How can I make this a better story? How can I make this a better story?" After they are finished telling the story with body language they can sit down. This lets you know they are done.
Give them time to rewrite their verbs and add action.
IMAGINATIVE DETAILS The third time through the story, ask them to tell the story silently in their imagination. Close their eyes and be inside the story. I usually walk them through a guided day dream where they close their eyes, breathe deep and re-imagine their story, beginning, middle, end. I ask them to use all of your senses. Describe smells, sounds, feelings, and tastes as well as what they see. If it is a personal experience story this imaginative journey, revisiting the scene, will allow them to remember more detail and then add that detail to the story. I believe that the better I can imagine it the easier it is for the audience to be in the story with me. Again, what question are we asking ourselves? "How can I make this a better story? How can I make this a better story? How can I make this a better story?"
Give students several minutes to rewrite the imaginative details of their story.
KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCE Finally, allow them to tell the story to an audience of one. Ask them to tell their story to a partner and watch their partner watch the story. If you are not reading aloud, but telling the story you get immediate feedback from your partner about what works and doesn't work. Where you are clear or cloudy is visible in their eyes. If they laugh out loud or smile, keep that part because it is truly funny. If they look confused or bored, change that part because it isn't clear or interesting. Watch the audience watch the story and they will help you to be a better writer.
This is also a chance for the partner to practice listening. The better job they do listening, the better job their partner will do telling the story. They can honor each other with the quality of their listening. They can also learn peer editing. As they listen, ask them to focus on what they like about the story. What can they learn about writing from their partner's story? When their partner is done they should offer one or two compliments, NO CRITICISM, at this point.
Only later when they learn the difficult art of constructive questioning can they comment on the weaknesses. To help focus their comments you may write a few sentences like these on the board: My favorite part was _____________ because ____________________. I want to know more about _____________________. I knew the character had changed when _________________ because _________________. I could really see the setting _____________ when you described _________________. I knew this was coming ___________ when you gave me the clue __________________. As you can see, each of these sentences focuses on a different aspect of the story. Ask students to comment using two of these sentences. Better yet, write some of your own sentences on the board to focus on the elements of writing that you are trying to teach.
READY FOR A FINAL DRAFT Now students are ready to rewrite their final draft of their story. Ask them to go over it one last time with a fine toothed comb and focus on each of the elements that we have discussed. They should double-check the dialogue and sound effects they added the first time. They can underline all of their verbs and adverbs and rethink the action of the story. They can recreate the scene through their imagination using all of their senses. They can use the feedback from their partners to tighten up the stronger parts of their story. As a storyteller in residence I often walk students through all four steps. A classroom teacher who has more time may want to focus on one element with one story, another element with another story, and so on. But by breaking it down into its component parts students can be more objective and therefore more constructive in working with their own writing.
If in this process you have not yet typed the stories onto a word processor, now would be a good time to use technology to teach editing. Spell check. Click and drag paste-ups. Playing with fonts, adding headlines and graphics can enhance the writing by giving students increased opportunity to publish their stories as a classroom collection.
This leads to one final note: There is no doubt that technology has changed writing and rewriting. With desktop publishing, web page applications, e-mail, chat rooms and bulletin boards it is more important than ever that students learn to write well. Rewriting, the ability to critically self-analyze is the cornerstone of good writing. Good writing is also one of the most complex skills in education. It requires higher level thinking as well as an ability to fully integrate, digest and comprehend the content. But writing is still basically a human endeavor. In this increasingly technological world it is important that students learn storytelling and writing by working with other writers and storytellers one on one, in small groups and with flesh and blood teachers. Oral language development is the most important step towards better reading and writing. Meaning is so much more than black squiggly lines on a computer screen. Without these steps of telling and hearing good stories students as writers are less able to add or anticipate a lot of the subtle elements of good literature that are required for clear understanding.
To quote an Information Technology consultant I met recently, companies are hungry for people who understand computers but speak and write in plain English, not "geek speak".
Writing is a human endeavor, but technology also opens worlds to which writers of the past had no access. Students can explore story ideas on the web. Rewriting can include Internet research. Students' stories can easily be collected into manuscripts for desktop publishing. Students can build web pages and share their writing with Internet pen pals. These high tech extensions not only add meaning and purpose to their writing, increasing motivation, but they also allow students to learn the technology skills so necessary to future employment.
As I write these lesson plans on my laptop in an airport on my way home from another artist-in-residence program, there is no doubt that technology has changed my writing and rewriting. Click and drag is so much easier than clip and paste. Before spell check I used to hire a proofreader to double-check my speeling. I often e-mail a rough draft to a friend for feedback before I attempt to publish. Actually, these inventions help with the mechanics of editing; rewriting will always require rethinking and recreating, reworking and the feedback from human beings on the other side of the page or stage.
Storytelling, the act of sharing our ideas with participatory listeners, is one of the most important tools in teaching rewriting.
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PAGE 1 Brian "Fox" Ellis * Fox Tales International * P.O. Box 10800 * Peoria, IL 61612 * Phone 309-689-8000 www.foxtalesint.com