5 Reasons Why You Should Use a Storyteller to Help You Write Your Book

Are you planning on writing your book and then slide it into a drawer where it can collect dust? Of course not! Researching, outlining, writing and editing a book is an enormous task with a huge investment of time, energy, brain-power and emotion attached. A writer can help write your book and make it into a perfect presentation, but a storyteller can take it to another level.

1. Storytellers Tell Your Story

If the world could only see what you can see and know what you know, they would snatch it up in a minute, right? Of course they would! You just have to find a way to make them see what you see and know what you know.

When you sit down to research, outline and write a book, you do it because you have a story to tell. Regardless of which field you’re in or what subject your book covers, there is a story behind it and a motivation behind why you want to take on such a monumental task. A storyteller will dig into that story in order to reach your readers on that deeper level and tell your story.

2. Storytellers Stir Up An Emotional Response.

Hunter S. Thompson said, “Anything that gets your blood racing is probably worth doing?” It is even truer with writing. If you want someone to react a certain way to what you are sharing with the world in your book, you have to get their blood racing.

Connected to the motivation and the story behind the story is the ability of a storyteller to stir up an emotional response to your story. It’s obvious that you want to draw an emotional response from a reader when writing fiction, but why should that type of response be limited to novels? Storytellers are familiar with and expert at utilizing various literary devices to elicit an emotional response.

3. Storytellers Know How To Keep Your Audience Interested

Have you ever read a novel that keeps you up all night turning from one page to the next simply because you have to know what happens next? Have you had the same experience with a book on planning for your retirement? Probably not.

By stirring up an emotional response, storytellers hook your audience (readers) interested in your topic. Within the storyteller’s toolbox are a number of ways to avoid the dullness that your readers typically experience when reading non-fiction books. Keeping your readers engaged from beginning to end is something that you definitely want to accomplish.

4. Storytellers Write With A Deeper Purpose In Mind

We’ve all read or heard of the stories of Aesop, Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm. They were consummate storytellers that have survived down through the centuries. Why? Because the stories they told had a deeper purpose behind them.

A storyteller can help draw out the deeper purpose in your story so that it leaves a lasting impression. Besides stirring up your readers’ passion and keeping them engaged in your story, a storyteller works at drawing your readers to a specific goal or purpose.

5. All Storytellers Are Writers, but Not All Writers Are Storytellers

When you watch fireworks on Independence Day, New Years Eve or during some other celebration where they are used, which ones leave the lasting impression? They’re all fireworks, right? Yet, not all of them leave a lasting impression when you walk away.

Just so, writers do an adequate job of communicating the content of a book or article to their readers. There command of the written word and its use is what sets them apart from those who are not quite as adept at writing. Storytellers are artists who paint with words and create mental pictures in the minds of your readers. By crafting your story in a unique way that envelops all of your passion, you will leave a lasting impression upon those who have read it.

Conclusion

If you are considering writing a book to promote your brand, to communicate some new discovery you’ve made, to record your biography for posterity or have an idea for the next great bestselling thriller, but don’t have the expertise, time or patience to get done, why not hire a storyteller. By doing so, you can insure that your book will be read rather than be stuffed in a file drawer or placed on a bookshelf to gather dust. Put the passion and purpose of your story into a colorfully crafted work of art that will leave a lasting impression by hiring a storyteller to help tell your story.

Capturing the Elusive Story Idea

“How can you possibly come up with another idea?” my mother in law asked.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged.

“What will you do if you ever run out of ideas? What will you do when your mind runs out of stories?” she pressed.

“I hope I never do.” The idea of not being able to come up with a new idea or a new story jarred me. What would I do? I’d been counting on my ability to come up with ideas and tell stories to make my living. Surely the day would never come when I would run out of ideas.

There was no way that I could tell her that running out of ideas scared me, but I couldn’t tell her that the man who her daughter was depending upon to pay the rent, the bills, put clothes on her back and put food on the table might, someday, run out of stories. So, I answered her the best way I could. “I don’t think I ever will.”

“How do you know that one day they won’t just stop?” She wasn’t nagging. It was more of a fascination with the fact that I’ve written so many stories and hadn’t ran out.

“I’m kind of crazy up here,” I laughed, tapping my temple with my index finger.

My mother in law stopped grilling me, because another subject scurried by and snatched it up, but she’d already rattled me so much that I couldn’t let go of the original question. “How can you possibly come up with another idea?”

“When ‘dead head’ strikes, panic quickly follows and a downward spiral begins.”

If you’re a veteran writer, you are already well acquainted with “dead head.” You get up in the morning, put the coffee on, shuffle over to your computer to turn it on, go back to the coffee pot and pour a cup, and then sit down in front of your computer with absolutely nothing in your brain. You have a deadline to meet and you have to come up with an idea. When “dead head” strikes, panic quickly follows and a downward spiral begins. You have to get off of that spiral, because it will lead you straight into the hell of writer’s block. As a storyteller, you can’t afford to be there.

“In essence, writer’s block is a form of depression.”

I don’t want to get into a detailed discussion of writers block, but I will throw in a pointer before moving on, just in case you picked up this book in the hope of fighting your way free of its hell. In essence, writer’s block is a form of depression. The only way to “really” defeat depression, without medication, is to get your ass up and go do something. The truth is harsh sometimes. Don’t fight it and don’t procrastinate, but do something. Being without an idea is like sitting in a canoe in your back yard. Follow that analogy all of the way through. You have to take your canoe to a place where there is water and you have to get into it and paddle. How? Keep reading.

“Really, I think it is our desire to be storytellers that draws stories to us.”

In some cases, we storytellers are a little crazy up there. (You can tap your temple with your index finger along with me.) I don’t know if we hear muses or if we hear voices of another kind. Or what collections of psychoses are at play, which make us do what we do. Really, I think it is our desire to be storytellers that draws stories to us. I don’t want to get into a discussion about cosmic energy and that sort of thing. I don’t believe that there is some great storytelling energy out there in the great ethereal beyond which feeds stories to storytellers by some sort of magic. I think it is our keen awareness of the world around us which supplies us with stories.

“The trick to drawing stories to us is to constantly feed our artistic side.”

Things that we do on a daily basis put ideas into our head. We capture those ideas in moments when we are particularly open to them, and from them, we begin to form a story. The trick to drawing stories to us is to constantly feed our artistic side. We storytellers are a crazy amalgamation of artist and engineer. We use both sides of our brains to perform our art. Storytellers must constantly feed the artistic side. How you feed your inner artiste will determine how easily stories are drawn to you.

Note: This is an excerpt from Planning a Tale to Tell, the first volume in The Storyteller’s Craft instructional series. Coming Soon!