The Telling of Stories

So very quietly, this little blog saw its 100th viewer (or page refresh, for all you purists). There's nothing much that'll hold one's attention like a simple story well told (and nothing quite enlightening like a complex story simply told, but that's another story for another time). This has been (and I suspect, will continue to be) true for a very long time. Works of art, musical compositions, poetry, stories, fairytales, even the simple newspaper or magazine article, they all have a story to tell somewhere if you look hard enough.

If you look deep enough.

Stories with heart, stories with morals, stories which instruct. There are stories that are but switches which evoke thoughts and emotions that, for most parts, constitute the bigger part of consensual reality. The reason why some stories have a better mass appeal than some others is probably because they are usually the ones which are somewhat more accessible to the masses - just look at the deluge of cheap romance novels in the bookshops. Cheap tricks, cheap thrills, but effective marketing nonetheless. Why else would they have made so much of them, if they weren't profitable ?

The story is what lies beneath the words, what you make of them. And the better the storyteller knows his reader, the more intimate the stories he writes. As such, the secret to the art of storytelling lies as much in the listening as it does in the telling. Knowing exactly what to say, how to say it, and who to say it to, puts tremendous power in the tongue of speaker indeed.

Is there a story that you want told ? I will be taking requests for stories for a future website. Leave your concepts, seeds, titles, or anything else you'd want to see me write something about in the tagboard.