When I was enrolled in STO292 during the Spring 2025 semester, my instructor, Liz Warren, asked me to share a story at the Miami Loco Arts festival. My first thought was, “Heck No! I am a beginning student.” I didn’t want to embarrass Liz or myself. With Liz’s encouragement, I agreed to share a story. She shared the topic was “Arizona Stories.” In class, we were working on fact-based stories, and I had the perfect Arizona story about a snake charmer.
Indeed, this event in Miami was a lot of fun, and it was here that I learned a few things about storytelling: 1) storytellers are nice folks, 2) watching other people tell stories helps you become a better storyteller, and 3) telling stories enhances your storytelling skills.
First, storytellers are nice people. This is important because this can give you the courage to tell stories. I have learned that storytellers are like that little kid who doesn’t want to go to sleep and keeps asking for just one more story. Your story might not be perfect. Your technique might be a little rough. If you LIKE the story, storytellers will like it too. In fact, most people will like the story.
Second, and I think storytellers know this already, watching stories helps you to be a better storyteller. Every time I watch someone tell a story in class or at an event, I learn something. I learn what I like. I learn about things I want to try. I learn things I will likely never do. What is important is that watching people tell stories helps you learn to become a better storyteller.
Third, and this one is likely the most obvious – telling stories makes you a better storyteller. The willingness to stand up and share a story you love helps you in so many ways. Fundamentally, it teaches you that you CAN do it. As a result, it gets easier and easier to tell stories – you didn’t die last time, and you will not die this time either. In fact, last time people laughed or they cried, they gasped or they cheered. If you think about it, they were with you in the story.
A Story That Pulls the Three Things I Learned All Together
We walked down the street at a brisk pace. When we arrived at the door and walked inside, the first thing I noticed was art everywhere—on the walls and in every little nook and cranny. Some of the art were things I liked quite a lot; some of the art I didn’t quite understand. But I was in a place where art happens.
Lying around the room were crates, and to me this looked like it was going to be the seating. So I got my husband to help me, and we started arranging the crates into semicircles around what I imagined would be the “stage”. It seemed like a good way to help out.
As I sat there anxiously waiting for my turn to tell a story, I forgot about my nervousness when I fell into the stories people were telling. I felt scared, I felt happy, I felt bewildered—so many emotions flooded through my mind and through my heart as I watched and listened to the storytellers. Never once did I think, “Boy, that person is not very good.” Instead, I was lost and transported into other times and other places by people who were sharing their stories.
Pretty soon, it was my turn to get up and tell a story. Since Liz told me the theme was Arizona stories, I told a story about a lady I knew when I was a kid who was a snake charmer. But my story had a little bit of drama because the snake charmer didn’t charm the snake too terribly well and got bit! The same good feelings that I had about the other storytellers, I saw my fellow storytellers (and listeners) probably had about me too. I saw people wince, jump, look sad, and look happy.
A couple of weeks later, I went to an event called Folktale Fridays at Fiddler’s Dream. This event is hosted by Chrissy Dart who teaches the Multicultural Folktales class as part of the South Mountain Community College Storytelling Institute. Her partner in this endeavor is her fabulously talented daughter, Rachelle Dart. I had loved the event in Miami where they both shared stories, and I was like, “Where do I get more of this?” I figured this Folktale Fridays event would be perfect.
It turned out when I went to the event that Chrissy wasn’t going to make it, so Rachelle was going to run the event. I did not go there with any intention of telling a story, but Chrissy’s daughter asked me outside for a second. When we went out, she told me the theme for the night and asked me if I might have a story to share because one of the scheduled speakers was not going to be able to attend the event.
As she was asking me this question, I was trying to zip my purse closed. The bright yellow of my purse reflected the evening light into my eyes. As I finally got the zipper pull to move across the teeth, it just happened to catch on my pen, and the pen slid out through the last opening of the purse. As I looked down thinking, “Oh my goodness, I don’t know if I can tell a story here,” the words on my pen popped up and said, “Be Brave.”
Well, if the only fate is the one we make, it seemed that it was time to be brave and share a story. I had only learned one folktale for my STO292 Storytelling class… Once again, I learned storytellers are nice people—everybody just enjoyed listening to stories. As I watched the other storytellers, I thought about the things I learned and new ways to share a story. I thought about how the things I saw matched my ideas about who I want to be as a storyteller. When I got up and did my story, it wasn’t the first time I did it, it wasn’t the tenth time I did it, but it was better than the times I did it before, because telling stories is one of the ways you become a better storyteller.
If you’re going to make your own fate, you may as well have a fate that allows you to have a whole heck of a lot of fun hearing great stories and telling some of your own!
(This year, Amy produced the storytelling session at the 2026 Miami Loco Festival as part of her Community Storytelling Fellowship. The picture at the top of the post is her band of tellers.)
Leave a Reply