The Art of Storytelling

Since embarking on this creative writing course, it is helping me rediscover my love of reading and the whole creative process. My son is still actively writing, and calls me regularly with his latest chapter or creative endeavor and I enjoy hearing from me, with one exception; his delivery. Brad is blessed with the ability to change his voice in several ways, he can deliver character voices, creature voices and various sound effects, so when he calls me and reads in a monotone way, I can lose interest. This brought up a very interesting conversation as I told him he reminds me of the Charlie Brown teacher “Blah Blah Blah” and then he went on to deliver it in a pitch perfect English accent.

It reminded both of us of how he became so enthralled with reading and storytelling, even as a young child I would read to him but not in the conventional way, I would voice each character and the narrator in a different voice. This is something I picked up from my mom and was the way I always chose to read. Brad called me later that night after my class finished and he had additional material to share. Without skipping a beat he read it in a riveting way with voices and reflected on my storytelling when he was younger. I knew he had a least one friend with him when he asked me to do some of the voices I read to him. My delivery of Voldemort from the Harry Potter series, the Snake and Moaning Mona were actually a little frightening when he was younger, that I had to dial it back a bit, but now that he’s older he asked me to do the voices again so his friends could hear it. Ah memories!

In our creative writing class we have a lot of group participation activities, and it really does help us get out of our comfort zone and share ideas. I discovered some kindred spirits that also enjoyed fantasy, romance, action adventure, drama to name a few and I also explored other genres that although I appreciate are not my favourites, but this class is challenging us to look for ideas and key points of all genres. There is so much joy to behold in the art of storytelling, whether it is a book you are reading, a piece you are writing or a recount of something you watched; adding a lively delivery just adds to the entertainment. Happy reading!