The Art of Storytelling

There is although no definite style of storytelling but it is an art which can be mastered by anybody who has command over a particular language. There are many different styles of writing and it is often said that you can recognize any famous writer by reading a few lines from any of his works as every writer has particular words that he often uses or a particular way of presenting ideas. The narrative by a writer is also one of the trademarks that can be used to identify a particular writer.

It has been said by British worldwide bestselling author Jeffery Archer that each person born may not have a story in them worth writing a novel but everyone surely has a short story in them.

Reading habits are fading away in current generations and it is a very alarming and dangerous trend as a good reading habit should be inculcated in everybody by the parents from a very early age. A small child though should not be handed a novel at first which can bore him or her and make him allergic to reading. They should be given illustrative books to begin with. A good reading habit can help you with better concentration levels, patience and help children read their academic textbooks in a more organized way.

But not diverging from the issue we come back to storytelling. For writing a good story one needs to have a lot of conviction in writing that story, one should believe in oneself and no matter the readers like it or not the storyteller should not care as he or she knows that the story is important to them and it is to be told to the people not caring whether anybody likes it or not.

If a writer feels that they cannot manage to write a whole novel then they may begin with short stories or poems if they want. Once they get comfortable with shorter forms then they can think about writing a novel.

One interesting point to mention here is that when one needs to give a speech on a particular topic for a whole hour then many people after a bit of researching and practicing but you need great oratory skill to speak on something for 5 minutes. Similarly, writing a short story is more difficult than writing a whole novel as one has to be careful of not getting too descriptive of everything and deviate from the main storyline while in a novel one can giving detailed descriptions of different things.

There can be interesting styles of writing stories such as many writers use a “prologue” as an introductory section to write a particular part of the story which is actually somewhere in the middle of the actual story to create a mysterious start to the novel and then begins the main story. After the main story ends there is an “epilogue” to the story where the conclusion of the story is written. One more style often used is flashback similar to movies where after some initializing of the story and introduction of the main characters of the story the writer goes into flashback mode and the story is narrated as something that had already happened. One more unique style of writing which is my personal favorite is when two entirely different stories are narrated concurrently and at some point of the story the characters of the different stories converge and the story unfolds to a beautiful climax. There is also another similar style when the same story is narrated with two different frames of time and this also turns out to be a treat for the readers.

One common aspect of storytelling is that the writer has to be written in a way that the reader is interested by keeping a certain degree of suspense and thrill and the reader is kept guessing about what is going to happen next?

Also the writers when describing smaller details and nuances of the characters and environment of the story should keep in mind not to go too deep or be too superficial. They need to take a balanced approach and maintain the storyline interesting.

– Samrat Banerjee