Reading To An Audience

Stories Written To Be Told

When we were kids, we always wanted Mammy to read us the stories.   Daddy read too, he was clear and distinct but, she did the voices, the creak of the door, the whine of the wind and the galloping hooves.    That was my first lesson in the art of telling a story, do the sound effects.  

I was fortunate; I grew up surrounded aunts and uncles who could all tell a good story.   Without realising it, I learned that, with a little re-arrangement here, a little embroidery there and always keeping the punch-line till last, you could turn an everyday event into an amusing story.  It was one of reasons I wanted to write.  

Writing stories, novels, and TV drama taught me that you have to wriggle down into the skin of a character, that stories need an arc, that loose ends need to be tied up and endings need to be satisfying.   And while I love the process of writing I’ve always hankered after the idea of the seanachaí.   But, I thought, that time has gone.   Television is our seanachaí now.    Then I stumbled across Narrative Arts, Coilín,The Oh-Aissieux, and his Story-telling workshops.

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