Hi there. Welcome back to engVid with me,
Benjamin. Today we are looking at the art of storytelling. Who is this useful to? Well,
you may find that in an interview situation, being able to tell a good story could help you,
as long as it's appropriate to the interview; also, IELTS speaking, being able to sort of go
beyond yourself and say more than you normally would is going to benefit you in terms of
sounding fluent; and also, conversational, social skills - it's good
to be able to tell a story. Now, what I'm going to be sharing with you
today has taken me a lot of time, a lot of experience to figure out the truth of this,
and I've basically worked out that this is right. Okay? So, two parts in today's lesson:
We've got basic storytelling; and then if you want to be clever clogs, you
can add in the extra elements. So, a basic story has what Aristotle, the
Greek philosopher, came up with 2,000 years ago. It has three consistent things: It talks
about place-okay?-it happens in a place; it happens at a time, a certain time; and there
are characters involved. And these should be smooth. He talked about how we should have
a clear story idea, it happens in time order. So this relates to us today telling a good
story. Okay? It should happen at a certain point. We need to know where, okay? Place,
setting, similar idea. Which characters do you have in the story? A plot - there's got to
be a reason for telling it: "Is it an unusual story? Is it funny? Is it interesting?" What's the
ending? You don't want to leave your audience, going: "Oh", at the end of the story. You've
got to think: "This story has got to have a good ending." Okay? Otherwise you leave
them with not a very good feeling. Okay. So, if I'm going to demonstrate this, I will
tell you a story. So, the time that this took place. So this was last summer, and the place:
I was trying to get to the airport. I was trying to get to Gatwick Airport, just outside
of London. To set the scene a bit, we've got a friend's wedding happening in Italy. Taking
my son and wife on a flight out to Italy. Very important that we get there, lots of
friends there, and traffic starts piling up and it starts getting quite tight - the time.
Are we going to get on the plane or not? Okay, so now we need to include some more
plot elements. So, what was unusual is that I told my wife: "Look, if we carry on like
this, we're not going to catch the plane." So we swapped over, and she started driving
down the hard shoulder. It's not about your shoulder; it means the side bit of the road
that you're not really meant to drive on. And kind of the funny bit is that we got through
this horrendous traffic on the most nasty... The nastiest road in the U.K., which is the
M25, which is more sort of sitting around than actually driving anywhere. We got through
this nasty traffic. It looked like we were going to catch the flight, and then we ran out of
petrol 10 miles from the airport. Fortunately, we did manage to get onto the flight eventually,
after a few more mishaps. Okay? So we've got a rough story there, which I can now make quite
a lot better by adding in these elements. First of all, if you're sat around with a group
of people, you don't just suddenly start telling a story, and you shouldn't really
plan what stories you're going to tell. A story could come out of what has been spoken,
what people are talking about, otherwise it's like: "Well, what are you talking about?"
Okay? So there's got to be a link. So, if I was telling this story, maybe I would be
talking to friends about holidays, about getting to planes, and I would say something like:
"This... Yeah, I've had a bad experience before of trying to get to the airport. I'll tell
you about this time last summer." Okay? So, linking it to the conversation. Beginning
well. "I'll tell you a little tale", okay? It's quite sort of soft and polite, but rather
than being: "[Makes motorboat noise]", it invites people to listen in. It kind of quietens
things down, and people start listening. There need to be things in the story that
grab people's attention. So... And this kind of links to this next point of embellishment and
exaggeration. "Embellishment" means adding... Adding a little bit of colour. Okay? So, if
we've got someone's face... I'm not an artist, but if we're going to embellish this, we're
going to improve it by putting in some more sort of details. We're going to give them
some hair, we're going to give them quite a thick neck. Embellishment: Putting more in.
"Exaggeration", okay? So we're not going to do an entirely accurate picture; we're
going to say that actually the man has a wart here, and we're going to find interesting
details. For example, his tongue hangs out of his mouth. Okay? The detail is going for
more and more... It's not just information; it's kind of layers to the story. So, let's
put this into practice with the story I'm telling about the airport. Okay, so it was half past 4:00 on a Friday.
We have to be at the airport at quarter past 5:00. The M25 is gridlock; it's standstill, and I
was tearing my hair out-not literally-thinking: "How on earth am I going to get to the airport?"
Luckily, my wife can be quite James-Bond-like and she... We swapped over, and she started
tearing down the hard shoulder. She was... Okay? So now I need to exaggerate a bit. She was
slamming on the accelerator, she was hitting 60 as all the other cars were going just 5 or
10 miles an hour, and we were just sailing past them, cruising past, thinking that nothing
was going to go wrong. We were invincible - we were on that plane. Okay?
So I'm adding in a few details. Now I need to add in some suspense. So, just
as everything looked like it was going to work out happily ever after, the car slowly
came to a halt. And I don't know if you've stood by the edge of the motorway before,
but it's not the best place to be standing; you've got tankers going past, your car starts
shaking, you're worrying whether you're safe. And at that point, we said: "Oh my goodness,
me, what do we do now? Do we just abandon the car, in which case we'll get a huge fine
and lose the car? Do we try and fill up the car with petrol? How do we do this?" Okay?
So what I'm doing with suspense is I want the people to want to know what
happened in the story. Okay? So, the next chapter. Along comes a taxi,
I'm holding out a jerry can. Okay? A "jerry can" means a tank for petrol, a jerry can.
He stops, I jump in the taxi. We go fast, fast, fast, fast, fast. We go to a petrol
station, and then we are going the wrong way up this motorway, and I can see the car over
there. And the man says to me: "Well, it would be quicker if you ran across the motorway,
rather than going all the way back to the M25 and back down again." What I'm doing here
is I'm using dialogue; I'm using words from a character to make us imagine
the story a bit more. Okay? And now what I want to be doing is putting it
into the present tense, it helps us imagine the story a little bit more. So I'm there,
I'm standing on the side of the road and I'm seeing these cars flying past at 70 miles
an hour. I'm thinking: "You want me to run across there? You must be joking." So I refused
his kind offer, and we carried on going. At that point I receive a phone call, a phone
call from my wife, saying: "Honey, I have left the car. You'll find a couple of things
in the car. I'm in a lorry. It's fine. We're going to the airport." I'm thinking: "What?
You've left the car, you're in a lorry? What on earth is going on here?" I get to the car, I jump into it. I forget:
"Oh yeah, I need to put the petrol back into the tank." I say: "Good bye, Mr. taxi driver,
thank you very much." And then I start tearing it down to Gatwick Airport. Okay? I need to
be aware that I can't go on, and on, and on. If I speak for too long, the people I'm telling
the story to are going to be like: "Benjamin, boring", okay? I get to the airport, I take...
Ripped off my jumper, I'm running through, I've parked the car, and I... Running, running,
running, running, running, running, running, running, running, sweating, flying through.
We all get on to the plane by the skin of our teeth, which means we only just got there.
I'll write that phrase out for you. "By the skin of our... By the skin of my teeth".
Okay? By the skin of my teeth we made it. Then we need to link back into the conversation,
okay? By the skin of my teeth. I need... It can't just be all about me. Yeah? There are other
people in this room that I've been sharing this story to. Okay? It's not a performance. I'm
not in the theatre, going: "Da-da-da-da-da". We're talking; conversation is two ways. So,
I need to say: "So, how about you, Jerry, do you like airports?" Ask them a question.
Put the focus back on the other person. And, really, this is the number one tip: You
need to go with the flow; especially if you're telling a story with someone else, if you're
both telling it. Okay? One of you might go more for detail, one of you might go more
for exaggeration. It's okay to exaggerate, as long as the story is recognizable.
Find a way to tell the story together. Hope you've enjoyed this video. Have the story,
but have fun with it, too. Go tell some great stories. Until next
time, good bye.
