Workshop tips!

This past Saturday, I had a blast hosting another live lit workshop at The Old Town School of Folk Music, where I used to teach kids' music and creativity classes. 

The class was full and the attendees inspiring. They played along with aplomb, and wrote some beautiful stuff!

We started out the workshop with a few physical games to get the juices flowing. Then, I doled out prompts. We talked about how to mine their best personal stories.

No one wanted to take a break when I asked, so we chartered on.

I watched and coached as they toiled and scribbled, and these sweet folks came up with the most awesome stories. After some feedback, we realized that four hours had just flown by without a bathroom break.

Here are a few of the tips I spurted out in the workshop:

• Always move the narrative forward.• Offer at least a modicum of self-exposure and vulnerability.• Make use of your voice, your body, your hands, your facial expressions, even (especially) in the moment/s when you don’t verbalize. • Know your strengths as a teller, and use them. Work on fixing what doesn’t work, especially if the fixes are related to technical things like nervousness, delivery, diction, or vocal volume. • Your story needs a beginning, a middle, and end!• Paint a few scenes with “show don’t tell” sensory elements.• Introduce other characters by setting up "in scene" dialogue moments. • Build the tension by sharing your internal or external conflict with the listeners.

There are many more tips. Take our classes and learn them all!

In the meantime, I just stumbled upon an advice page from a show called Tenx9 Chicago, if you'd like more of these tidbits. Here's a very basic list of how to tell a live lit story.

And here's Tenx9 Chicago's advice on how to WRITE a personal story.