Oral Traditions & Modern Writing Craft

To belabor the obvious, perhaps, radio is and will always be more oral than TV or the movies. And there's a lot of storytelling, fictional and creative nonfictional, on radio these days, maybe more than ever if you start including the interaction with the Internet radio component. Garrison Keillor is a good example of a writer using modern media for oral-based story telling. He's had best-sellers in printed form, but everything he writes is clearly designed to be a "told" story. Monologists, such as the late Spalding Grey, work in similar modes.

I like this storyteller tradition, and right now am trying to fence a story blatantly intended to be read aloud.

I don't know if this exactly addresses your questions or not, but they're good questions.

caw

I'll just quietly ditto blacbird - I love Keillor, huge fan. And I once heard a replaying War of the Worlds on radio broadcast, and it spoiled any movie version for me. I would champion a return to story telling that way any day.


Gave me shivers. I was glued to my radio.

Birol said:

Way back in the mists of time, the art of storytelling was an oral craft. How do you think those traditions effect or have influenced today's craft? Do you see the oral influences in your own work?

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I'm strongly influenced by them. I grew up fascinated by mythology and folklore - and writers like Alan Garner, who dedicated himself to writing down the oral traditions of his local folklore before it was lost.

I often write with a strong narrative voice - I can almost hear the words in my head and I want to tell the story as though I am speaking it. And I want the reader to hear it in their head too.

This does mean playing with the grammar and structure because when you're telling a story out loud you use sentence fragments and repetition and words that sound a certain way to build up the atmosphere.

Birol said:

(Bear with me, because I'm going to butcher how I ask this next part) Is there any modern form of storytelling (media) that is more heavily influenced by the oral component, or verbal storytelling element, than another?

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Storytelling-wise, the obvious answer is spoken-word stuff. The radio plays (Hitchikers is the perfect example) are definately geared this way.

I also think there's a strong oral narrative in very young children's fiction - again, it's meant to be read aloud.

Check out one of Fester's tales in the Western forum. You can almost hear the voice of the narrator. There are some styles of writing the lean heavily on oral tradition. Today they mostly evoke the past but in Canterbury Tales it was used to help people used to listening to read instead of hear the story.

I'm so envious of storytellers, especially good ones.

I think that telling jokes is one of the most pervasive storytellings in U.S. culture. Next, I think storytelling is a big part of song development, particularly country-western.

I lived down in the Branson, Missouri area and there are some professional storytellers that find work in that environment. The ones I saw were fabulous.

I wrote a lost poem and posted here at AW titled Ode to the Lost Landscape. That poem is written from the storyteller's POV that I introduce at the beginning of the poem.

If it wasn't for the art of storytelling, society universal wouldn't have the culture base that it does as "back then" storytelling was the primary, if not only, media that was in existence.

I believe that most, if not all, communication medias/mediums are based on the foundation that storytelling lay.

My dad was, long before I was born, an oral storyteller. Whether they were religious stories he made up to make a point with classes he was teaching (I can, some fifteen years since I last heard it, still recite his story "Mable the Angel" from memory) or just stories he made up to amuse me or my sister, he always told stories. He did them better out loud. He'd write them down, but they were mostly in hodge-podge note format, just to jog his memory if he had to retell the story, a year later. I always marveled that he mostly did the telling with his eyes shut.

I adore oral storytelling. When it's done well, it's magic, and it adds layers to a story that you can't get from the page. Without fail, every time, I've read a Neil Gaiman or a Terry Pratchett story in the last year and then turned around and heard the audio version, I've gotten something new out of it. Whether it's realizing "Oh. That's why the story is written like that. It's a fairy tale," or just realizing that someone has a crustier tone of voice than I thought, it fills a story out for me.

The great sagas, the Icelandic tales and the Illiads and Odysseys of the world, Beowulf, these were all oral stories.

In Africa, there are stories which a father takes a son out into the desert to tell, and in telling, it is part of what makes him a man. These stories are never written down. They are told to each generation, who keeps it and eventually tells the next generation.

We owe it to each other to tell stories, whether verbally or in writing. We may be able to look up at the stars any night we please, but it's stories which make us look up and wonder what they are, and why they are there, and what they have to do with us.

When I do my own writing, one of the things I do before editing is read it out loud, emotively and expressively, with accents and inflections and everything I think it needs. If I find something that I am, spur-of-the-moment tempted to skip over and not read out loud, it is deleted that instant without any hesitation. If a sentence does not work for me out loud, then it does not work. Period.

It all went to hell when we started writing it down, didn't it?

caw

Probably. Those bastard ancestors and their runes.


Anyway, I'm not totally against the written word. I must not be, I have shelves and boxes and more shelves and more boxes full of books.

While it may seem counterintuitive, picture books rely heavily on oral tradition. They are designed to be read aloud and you must pay careful attention to sound and rhythm when writing them. It's really more like writing poetry than prose (even the non-rhyming books).

Soccer Mom said:

While it may seem counterintuitive, picture books rely heavily on oral tradition. They are designed to be read aloud and you must pay careful attention to sound and rhythm when writing them. It's really more like writing poetry than prose (even the non-rhyming books).

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It only seems counterintuitive on first thought. From there, it makes perfect sense. I think that children's books, like good poetry, doesn't truly come to life until you're reading it out loud.

I enjoyed Neil Gaiman's Coraline, but I didn't fall in love with it until I read it out loud.

I think that modern scriptwriting is all about the image. I'll have to think on playwriting. For some reason, it just doesn't jump to mind as following the traditions oral storytelling.

Off the top of my head, radio (A Prairie Home Companion, for example) and news. They rely on the spoken words to tell stories, whether real or fiction.

I think Podcast is going to the killer app for spoken/written words.

I enjoy writing from an oral perspective, like the narrator is standing in front of you, performing his piece. It gives point of view a great spin, because a lot of my characters see the world in very skewed and odd ways, so the way they describe actions and other characters.

Also the work I'm trying to get published is something like a fairy tale, so that's something.

A lot of the oral productions of books disappoint me. They're very dramatic or enthusastic. I don't want to hear you dramatize a one man show about a book, I want a story.

Playwriting is completely an oral medium. Throughthe power of the dialog, a good play transports you completely into the story, despite the fact that the characters can't move more than twenty feet in any direction, despite the fact that the set, however lavish, is probably crude and definitel a set, and despite the fact that you can see all the mechanics happening just behind the scenes.

If it's a good story, you don't notice it. You notice the characters, the dialog, and the story as it unfolds. Playwriting is absolutely an oral medium.

Oral

I don't think we ever left the oral tradition, and I firmly believe most good writing is nothing more than good, oral storytelling put on paper.

The difference between a good oral story and a good written story isn't in the words, but in the ability of a given person to be able to tell that story orally.

Jamesaritchie said:

I don't think we ever left the oral tradition, and I firmly believe most good writing is nothing more than good, oral storytelling put on paper.

The difference between a good oral story and a good written story isn't in the words, but in the ability of a given person to be able to tell that story orally.

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I think that you can have good written stories which are completely incompatible with being told out loud. H.P. Lovecraft, for example. Enjoyable to read, hellish to read aloud.

But yes, for the most part, I agree. For me, good writing should be as comfortably able to be read aloud as it is to be read on paper.

I think as readers, we've lost interest and ability to enjoy oral storytelling, though the levels vary between people (I can listen to lots, some can listen to little, some can't listen at all)

Jamesaritchie said:

I don't think we ever left the oral tradition, and I firmly believe most good writing is nothing more than good, oral storytelling put on paper.

The difference between a good oral story and a good written story isn't in the words, but in the ability of a given person to be able to tell that story orally.

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Absolutely!

I came to writing from a storytelling background. I was the "story lady" at the local elementary school.

The biggest difference is that when I told my own stories, I could emphasize words and phrases, change my voice, jump around, dance, pull kids and teachers from the audience, and of course I had props and puppets.

Now that I'm trying to write I find that my stories had sloppy language that I made up for with my acting ability. It's quite a challenge.

PeeDee said:

I think that you can have good written stories which are completely incompatible with being told out loud. H.P. Lovecraft, for example. Enjoyable to read, hellish to read aloud.

But yes, for the most part, I agree. For me, good writing should be as comfortably able to be read aloud as it is to be read on paper.

I think as readers, we've lost interest and ability to enjoy oral storytelling, though the levels vary between people (I can listen to lots, some can listen to little, some can't listen at all)

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Maybe, but I don't think there's anything at all pleasant about Lovecraft's writing. For me, it simply is not very good. His skill was in a superb imagination that keeps me enthralled.

I think a lot of good stories out there read poorly aloud, but this is, I believe, always a fault, a weakness in the writer, rather than something inherent in the form.

It can be a weakness of the writer, it can be a weakness of the reader too. I mean, not everyone gets Jim Dale or Stephen Briggs or George Guidall reading their books.

I remember the first time I heard of this "audiobook" business I checked out the audio version of a Star Wars novel from the library. It was awful, listening to the sound effects inserted, and the one guy trying to sound like Harrison Ford and actually roar like Chewbacca. It was a long time before I tried another audiobook.

Birol said:

How do you think those traditions effect or have influenced today's craft? Do you see the oral influences in your own work?

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I am a horrible (horrible, horrible) storyteller--but, I am a very good reader-alouder. I grew up being read to, listening to audiobooks, and reading stories to numerous small cousins. As a result, when I write, I try to be very conscious of how it will sound out loud.

One of the things that was surprising to me when I started school (at 15), was that no one knew how to read aloud. We were often subjected to miserable episodes in which someone--never a volunteer--would stumble through a few pages of Hemingway or a scene from Hamlet like there was no punctuation whatsoever. I started to wonder if that was because no one read to them when they were little, so they didn't have any idea how it should sound. Now, I think it's a broad combination of things, but not hearing stories aloud has got to be part of it.

I'm a very auditory person. I remember songs and lines from movies and things people say, because I can often hear the inflection in my head. For me, how something sounds is a big part of what it means. Because of this, I love audiobooks. Although I can't tell stories off the top of my head, I want everything I write to be speakable. My ambition is to one day write something that will be recorded, so a big priority is to make sure that all my fiction reads well.

PeeDee said:

It can be a weakness of the writer, it can be a weakness of the reader too. I mean, not everyone gets Jim Dale or Stephen Briggs or George Guidall reading their books.

I remember the first time I heard of this "audiobook" business I checked out the audio version of a Star Wars novel from the library. It was awful, listening to the sound effects inserted, and the one guy trying to sound like Harrison Ford and actually roar like Chewbacca. It was a long time before I tried another audiobook.

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True. That's why I said the difference between a good oral story and a good written story usually isn't in the words, but in the ability of a given person to be able to tell that story orally. I think a good written story is almost always one that can be read aloud to good effect, but with any story, even the traditional oral stories, you still need the talent and voice to read well aloud, whether you're telling the story yourself, or having an actor do it with an audiobook.

Jamesaritchie said:

Maybe, but I don't think there's anything at all pleasant about Lovecraft's writing. For me, it simply is not very good. His skill was in a superb imagination that keeps me enthralled.

I think a lot of good stories out there read poorly aloud, but this is, I believe, always a fault, a weakness in the writer, rather than something inherent in the form.

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I entirely agree, especially about Lovecraft. Few writers I can think of, in fact, display such a dichotomy between power of ideas and weakness in prose execution. Of interest is that another writer who suffers from the same dichotomy is W. H. Hodgson, whom Lovecraft revered as a genius.

caw