by Bart King
Although anytime is a good time to tell a story, the best times are late at night, especially when you’re out camping. This way the storyteller knows that he won’t be interrupted. Also, all the hot air that the storyteller gives off can help keep people warm on a cold night.
If you are getting ready to tell your story, be confident. If you are not naturally confident, pretend you’re confident. It works just as well. In other words, just fake it!
Relax, breathe, and speak loudly. Tell the story in your own words. Feel free to let the story come out a little differently each time you tell it. Sometimes by experimenting and letting your imagination work, you can come up with a better version of a story. The important thing is not that the story is true. The important thing is that the story is interesting.
If you forget part of the story, pause and stay silent while still looking into the audience’s eyes. They’ll think it’s a dramatic pause, which it might be, but you also might just be trying to remember your spot in the story. Your secret weapon is this: Nobody but you knows what you are going to say, so there are no mistakes in a story unless you say something like, “Oops, I messed up, I’m sorry.” In storytelling, admitting to a mistake is a mistake.
Use facial expressions and pauses (also known as “timing”). Often a pause and a lifted eyebrow can accomplish more than any number of words.
Try to relax and enjoy yourself—people aren’t judging you if they are enjoying your story. If you have fun with it, so will they!
What kind of stories should you tell? There are so many to choose from—it’s hard to say! You could tell a story about yourself. Stories about accidents, getting sick at school, fireworks, practical jokes that backfired, and so forth, are always interesting. Or you could tell a story that happened to someone in your family! Finally, there are many myths, legends, folktales, scary stories, and urban legends to choose from. You can take any story that already exists and change it, adapting and personalizing it. Make it seem real. Make your story INTERESTING.
Here are some stories you can use; some are true and some are false, but they are ALL good!
Flying Blubber
In 1970, a 45-foot dead whale washed up onto a popular Oregon beach. The whale had been dead for a while. It stank! The smell was so awful, state officials decided to take care of the 8 tons of rotting meat by blowing it up with dynamite. Seagulls would then eat the small pieces of meat that the whale was blown into.
Dynamite is a pretty strong explosive. Workers put 1,000 pounds of dynamite next to the rotting whale. Then they detonated it. Boom! A huge chunk of the whale did blow up. Big pieces of the whale soared far into the sky!
A local news crew captured the blast on video. A man named Tom Mahoney describes this video as “the most wonderful event in the history of the universe.” First, you see the explosion. Then you can hear spectators saying, “Wow” and “Yippee!” But the pieces of whale do not go toward the ocean. They went toward the spectators up on the dunes! The pieces of rotten whale blubber started falling down on them. “Aaaah!” “Run away!”
A big piece of blubber flew a quarter-mile over the spectators and crushed the top of someone’s car. “My insurance company is never going to believe this,” said the car’s owner.
What about the seagulls who were supposed to eat the whale chunks? They were so frightened by the blast, they all flew away, and didn’t come back for some time.
Okay. So what about the whale? Well, they just buried it with a bulldozer, like they should have in the first place.
(This story is true; it happened just south of Florence, Oregon, on November 12, 1970.)
Go to Heck
A husband and wife living in Seattle, Washington, were going on a vacation to Mexico. Unexpectedly, the man’s wife was called away on business at the last second, so he had to travel alone. His wife was going to meet him down in Mexico in a couple of days.
When the man reached the hotel in Mexico, he sent his wife an e-mail message to tell her that he had arrived. But he got the e-mail address wrong, and accidentally sent it to an old woman living in Indiana whose husband had just passed away.
When the old woman opened her e-mail, she read this message, screamed, and fainted.
Here is the message:
Dear honey,
I just got in. Everything here is prepared for your arrival tomorrow.
Your loving husband.
P.S. It sure is HOT down here!
(This story is false.)
Three Idiots and a Gopher
In 1995, a boy at Carroll Fowler Elementary School in California caught a gopher on the playground. Not sure what to do with it, he brought it to the school’s three janitors. They decided to kill it. (Jerks!) They sprayed the gopher with three cans of the freezing cleaner that they used to remove dried gum with. The gopher was still fine.
While the men decided what to do next, one of them lit a cigarette. Bad move. The freezing solvent they had been spraying was flammable! The explosion that occurred next sent all three men to the hospital, and hurt over a dozen kids. (Most of them were just running away from the explosion and tripped.)
The gopher was later found unharmed. He was set free.
(This story is true.)
Fido! It’s for You
My older sister, Gretchen, and her husband, Dan, are dog lovers. They owned two boxers and a hyperactive German shepherd. These dogs were very active; if the phone rang, they ran around the house barking like crazy, and if someone came to the door, they went berserk. Gretchen was usually in charge of walking these three nutcakes two to three times a day.
However, she once had to leave town for business, so she told Dan over dinner that he was in charge of exercising the dogs.
“How am I going to do that?” he asked. “I’m at work all day!”
“You have to figure out a strategy,” Gretchen responded.
Just then, the phone rang, and the dogs began running around the house and barking just like they always did. They continued barking and leaping until Dan answered the phone.
Dan got an idea.
After Gretchen left for her interview in the Bay Area, Dan unplugged the answering machine in the morning. He then left for work. At noon, he called his house and let the phone ring. He let the phone ring SIXTY TIMES. Then he hung up, knowing that the dogs had gotten plenty of exercise.
At 2 p.m., he did the same thing again. Then, that night, he went home and walked the dogs for real.
Dan was proud of his plan, and then he told me about it. What Dan did not know was that I had a spare key to his house. (Gretchen had given it to me.)
The next day, I let myself into the house at 11:30 a.m. The phone began to ring half an hour later. The dogs went nuts, barking and running around. I let the phone ring once and then I picked it up and held it to one of the boxer’s faces. He barked loudly! After letting him bark for a while, I hung the phone up and got out of there.
Knowing that Gretchen was still gone, I swung by Dan’s house again that day after his work. He seemed very distracted. I asked how the dogs were.
“Fine, fine,” he answered.
“Are they getting their exercise?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dan responded.
“That was a smart plan you came up with. But your dogs are smart too. Have you ever taught them to ‘speak’?” I asked.
Dan looked at me, looked away, and then looked at me again. “Why, yes . . .” he said.
(This story is not true; feel free to change it around and put yourself in the story.)
Dr Pepper Loses Punctuation
Have you ever wondered what that flavor is in Dr Pepper? It’s prune juice! Here’s the story of this soft drink.
Supposedly, in the late 1800s, a man named Wade Morrison fell in love with a doctor’s daughter. The doctor’s name was Charles Pepper, and he disapproved of his daughter marrying Wade Morrison. Now, Wade owned a soda fountain, and one of his workers had come up with a new flavor that his cu
stomers seemed to like. At first he called the drink a “Waco,” but his customers knew about his failed romance with Dr. Pepper’s daughter. They persuaded Morrison to name the drink “Dr Pepper” to butter up the man who could let Morrison marry the girl of his dreams! Sadly, it didn’t work.
Another interesting thing about Dr Pepper is that there is no period after the “Dr” like there should be. Some advertising genius thought the drink would sell better without it, so they took out the period. The idea didn’t work. Period.
(This story is true.)
Pee Green at the Urinal
One day in a kindergarten class, a teacher named Ms. Seth was teaching the children about colors. Ms. Seth asked the class if anyone knew what happened when blue and yellow were mixed together.
A kid named Roscoe yelled out, “Green!”
Ms. Seth was surprised. Roscoe rarely spoke, but here he had shouted out the correct answer. “That’s right, Roscoe. How did you know?”
Roscoe answered, “My mommy puts this blue stuff into the potty. When I pee into it, it turns green.”
(This story could be true!)
The Strangest Marathon Ever
Felix Carvajal was a postman from Cuba who wanted to run the marathon in the 1904 Olympics. (Keep in mind that the marathon is over 26 miles long!) To pay for his trip to St. Louis (where the Olympics would be held), Felix quit his job and gathered donations. Once Felix got to New Orleans, he lost all his money to a street gambler, and had to walk and hitchhike 700 miles north to get to the games.
The day of his event, Felix showed up with the other 39 runners in pants and a long-sleeved shirt. (Summer temperatures in St. Louis are over 90 degrees!) There was only one water station, located near the halfway point of the race. The race wasn’t well organized; one runner was chased through a cornfield by a mean dog and ended up running a mile out of his way!
Felix enjoyed himself. He ran along (sometimes backwards), talking with bystanders. For lunch, he detoured into an apple orchard. Big mistake. If you have ever eaten too many apples, you know what I mean.
Meanwhile, two Americans were doing strange things. The first runner, Fred Lorz, ran for 9 miles, then jumped in a car for the next 12 miles. When the car broke down, Lorz jumped out and ran the rest of the marathon. He entered the Olympic stadium with his arms up and the crowd went crazy! Lorz had his picture taken, and then race officials realized what happened—he was a cheater! Lorz was then banned from running in marathons for one whole year. Wow!
Out of the rest of the field, a man named Thomas J. Hicks was in first place. He started getting tired as he got closer to the finish line, so his trainers had him stop and drink brandy and egg white mixed with strychnine. Mildly poisoned, very tired, and drunk, he staggered into the stadium and was practically carried across the finish line. He won the gold medal.
What about Felix? I think he had what it took to beat Hicks, but between the stomach cramps and diarrhea, he came in fourth. The moral of the story: Beware the green apple trots because they don’t help you run any faster.
(This story is true.)
Special Feature: Fairy Tales You Thought You Knew
Most people don’t know that in the original version of Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf eats the grandmother and then eats Little Red Riding Hood. The End. It was written by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), who also wrote the original stories of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. He also invented Mother Goose!
Many fairy tales were once pretty gruesome before weak-minded adults changed them around. In the original version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the intruder to the bears’ home is an angry old woman, not a cute little girl. She is so mean, the bears end up impaling her on a church steeple. That’s got to hurt!
Here’s another one: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was written in 1812 by two brothers named Grimm. At the end of their version of the story, the evil queen has to put on iron slippers that are heated red-hot. She goes crazy from the pain and dances herself to death. Shake it, mama!
The Wizard of Ag! A famous storyteller once made up a tale about a magical land for his young sons and their friends. Right in the middle of the story, a little girl named Tweety Robbins interrupted him.
“What is this land called?” Tweety asked.
The famous storyteller was stuck. He couldn’t think of a name! Later, he tried to write down the story, and still couldn’t come up with a name for his magic land. The storyteller stared at the filing cabinet drawers that were by his desk. They were arranged alphabetically, with one drawer holding files “A–G.” The next drawer was “H–N.” The last one was “O–Z.”
That’s it! “OZ!” The Land of Oz! And that’s how author L. Frank Baum came up with the name for his first Oz book, The Wizard of Oz.
The Theater of the Mind
Nothing can top the creative powers of your own imagination! Back in the day, people didn’t have anything for entertainment but themselves. One thing they did was tell stories. Then came the age of radio in the twentieth century, where people could listen to a radio drama and re-create the action in their own minds.
You Need:
a script
at least one friend
a cassette tape player, or a computer/microphone combo that can record
Using things that we call “words,” you can create a story that will rely on dialogue and sound effects. You may also want to have a narrator who can explain the initial action and setting, and then the actors can start the drama.
It’s easy to write the dialogue; don’t worry about the quotation marks, just put the person’s name and any stage directions in parentheses after it. Put the person’s name in bold. If there are any directions for the actor, put them in parentheses. Then simply write what the character says.
Example
Narrator: The crowd advanced upon Charlie with wet noodles in their hands.
Charlie (screaming, afraid): Wait! I know who it is! I know who the monster is! It’s...it’s one of you!
For the story of your play, there needs to be a CONFLICT of some kind. Maybe you would like to think of an interesting character first, and then put him or her into a situation. Here are some character ideas: lovesick alien, magical cowboy, careless princess, really stupid fairy, a lost ghost, etc.
Keep in mind that if you don’t describe it, the audience can’t see it. That means that your characters need to describe what they see.
Sound effects are a great part of any radio drama; there are many ways to make cool sounds. For example, if you need a gunshot, it is a bit unsafe to actually shoot a gun in front of a microphone. Just drop a heavy book on the floor. Bang! For a fire, wrinkle some plastic wrap. For thunder, wiggle a cookie sheet. For breaking glass, throw a chair through a window. (Just checking!) Actually, silverware shaken in a drawer can sound pretty good. Be creative and have fun!
If you don’t feel like writing your own script, there are plenty of scripts out there to pick from. One fun thing to do is to take a MAD magazine and use the movie parody feature as your script. That’ll work!
Whatever script you use, practice your scene once before recording it. When recording, hit your pause button if you run into trouble. Experiment with different voices and accents. It’s a blast! You’ll laugh so hard on the playback, your face will hurt.
Don’t have more than about six characters in your play, or it will be pretty confusing for your listeners.
Tongue Twisters Rule!
Even though everyone knows what a “word” is, NOT everyone can say words correctly. If you put certain words that sound similar together, you get a tongue twister: Words that can twist your tongue into a knot.
For example, here are 4 words. Say all of the words quickly several times in a row.
Willy’s real rear wheel
It’s not as easy as it looks, is it? A lot of the following tongue twisters don’t make much sense, but they sound pretty neat. Challenge your tongue with them! Then challenge your friends’ t
ongues with them! (On the other hand, never mind that; it sounds kind of gross.)
Buy a box of biscuits, a box of mixed biscuits, and a big biscuit mixer.
I wish to wash my wicked wristwatch.
Rubber baby buggy bumpers.
To begin to toboggan first, buy a toboggan.
But do not buy too big a toboggan!
Too big a toboggan is too big a toboggan to buy to begin to toboggan.
Silly sheep weep and sleep.
A Tudor who tooted the flute
tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
Said the two to the tutor,
“Is it harder to toot or
to tutor two tooters to toot?”
Larry Hurley, a burly squirrel
hurler, hurled a furry squirrel through a curly grill.
She had shoulder surgery.
Give me the gift of a grip top sock: a drip-drape, ship-shape tip-top sock.
The crow flew over the river with a lump of raw liver.
An elephant was asphyxiated in the asphalt.
There was a minimum of cinnamon in the aluminum pan.
Preshrunk silk shirts.
A lump of red leather.
Good blood, bad blood, good blood, bad blood, good blood, bad blood.
Mr. See owned a saw and Mr. Soar owned a seesaw. Mr. See’s saw sawed Soar’s seesaw before Soar saw See!
Blake’s black bike’s back-brake bracket broke.
Sam Smith’s fish-sauce shop seldom sells shellfish.
Richard’s wretched ratchet wrench.
Buckets of bug blood, buckets of bug blood, buckets of bug blood.
Follow-Up Activity
Research the life of language scientist Sven Norderodestromfahrer. Learn the ultimate tongue twister that he spent his life discovering. (This twister was so effective, people who used it had to go to the emergency room for severe mouth cramps.) Now use this phrase on your enemies. What the heck, use it on your friends too!
