Storytelling Stub

How did you start?
I turned to the voice. It was right in front of a theater where I had just finished performing. A young woman with glasses and curly hair was smiling at me.

Do you feel nervous before going onto the stage? Do you have any rituals to calm your nerves down? There are many suggestions for overcoming stage fright. To me, preparation is the best medicine. 
Familiarize yourself with your material. Practice as much as you can...

What is the fourth wall?The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imagined wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this wall, the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th century...

How do you train your creativity? Do you have any rituals to be creative? Researchers at Ohio State University have developed a new method for training people to be creative. According to the research, it works far more effectively than current methods. Do you want to...

The other day, I was booked for a storytelling show, which was great. The not-so-great part was I had to cut my story by one third. To be more specific, 550 words. I spent considerable time in denial, dreaming that the problem would go away magically. For a few days,...

I’ve been wanting to write about high concept comedies for a while. What is high concept? Typically, it’s a What if…? scenario. There are different styles, but one of the common patterns is that you make the protagonist of your story a fish out of water, bring a high...

What makes good stories? To me, good stories contains multiple layers. The first layer doesn’t challenge readers. It flows into readers' minds effortlessly and paints an imaginary world without putting them to much work. You can enjoy the surface as is, but the real...

Do you remember books you read when you were kids? Were they mostly happy stories? Or did they evoke different  emotions? A recent study highlights how cultural differences in socializing emotions begin before children even start attending school. Specifically, the...

Metaphor, simile, and analogy — all of them use comparisons, but have you thought about the differences? Analogy traces back by way of Latin to a Greek word meaning "proportionate." That word has a root in the Greek word logos, meaning "reason." It compares two things...