Introducing How to Story
Welcome to the How to Story podcast where David Sewell McCann, the storyteller behind Sparkle Stories audio stories and the How to Story school, looks at a particular storytelling or story listening skill or tool within the context of an audio story.
Each episode David teaches how to be more intentional with your storytelling and how to pay attention like a storyteller, by using one of his stories to unpack and demonstrate a particular skill. The format is the same every week. David introduces a storytelling skill that is useful for not only telling stories but communication in general. This is then followed by a produced audio story that demonstrates the results of using that skill. The stories and the storytelling tips focus not only on the content and telling of the content, but how to listen as well. This is something that is often discussed in How to Story: story-listening as a valuable communication skill.
It is a unique way of approaching storytelling, but we believe it is the most effective and enduring way to communicate. It’s How To Story!
[00:07] Introduction
[01:01] What we at How to Story like to focus on first
[01:13] What you can expect from this podcast
[02:48] And one more thought on telling stories
Introducing How to Story
Full transcript
Hey there, everyone. It's David and welcome to the How To Story podcast where we introduce storytelling or story listening skills or tools within the context of a produced audio story.
I am David Sewell McCann and some of you are familiar with me through Sparkle Stories where I've been writing and telling stories for over a decade now. And some of you are familiar with Story Steps Education or Restorative Storytelling, where I've been teaching kids and grownups like you how to tell stories and in particular how to pay attention like a storyteller.
That, that part, that last part is the key difference between what we do and what a lot of people offer for storytelling tips and training. We like to focus first on attention and then on the telling of the story and then on the content of the story itself last.
So each of these episodes of the How to Story podcast will have an introduction kind of like this where I'll share a skill or a technique or a practice and then you can see it in action with a produced story. And generally, this will be a story that we've produced on How to Story dot org our online school. And sometimes the stories will be for kids, but mostly they are actually fairy tales for adults. They'll have adult themes and content. They're totally fine for kids to listen to. There's no, no cussing or inappropriate imagery or any of that but it does focus on questions of meaning and purpose. There's conflict resolution and stuff about, you know, the hard work of being in a relationship and things about loss and grieving and even how to work with addictive behavior. So all the good stuff.
And we're gonna do this this way because we want you to not only learn techniques that we have used, but also see in yourself the benefit of telling stories this way, with intention and with a kind of healing or teaching impulse. And with the goal of being in service to yourself and others.
So that's what we're doing here at the How to Story podcast.
And I want to be clear that when I say telling stories and, and storytelling, I'm not meaning just the Once upon a time... stuff that you tell your kids at night. Or even necessarily the stories that you use in lessons or presentations or speeches, keynotes, whatever. I'm actually talking about whenever you are talking to create and deliver an image. So that's what I mean by the baseline of storytelling. So conversations, most conversations are exchanges and they overlap stories. So when you're trying to figure something out in deliberations or brainstorming sessions, we generally use storytelling to make our case. So in other words, we tell stories all day long and in this particularly story rich, narratively dense time in human history where we have so many platforms that can amplify our stories, well, doesn't it make sense to get more intentional and engaging with that particular communication skill?
So welcome to How to Story where we playfully invite you to practice with us.
Hope you enjoy it.