We can be excellent storytellers but if we have no stories to tell or listeners to hear the stories, we are not really storytellers. Building a repertoire takes years. Many new tellers are so anxious to get out there and tell stories that they lose sight of this fact.    

          Building a Repertoire

     When I first started telling stories, I had to begin with small select audiences that fit my repertoire. I like challenges and also took an occasional program that stretched my repertoire and forced me to learn new material.  There is nothing wrong with this, we all do it. Yet, I have seen many new storytellers take on these programs then turn around and ask others what stories they should tell. Having mentors to help you in your work is a good thing, but expecting others to do the work for you is not. If you decide to take a program that requires you to learn new stories I suggest a few tips that will help you develop your repertoire and also some independence in your work. They are as follows:

1. give yourself plenty of time to develop the program. Do not take an assignment for one week from now then expect to learn new stories to tell in it.                                                     2. learn a few flexible stories that can be used with many different audiences in different ways. These staple tales form the foundation of your repertoire. In this way, you only need to learn one or two new stories each time you get a program.                                           3. make it a goal to learn at least one new story each time you get a gig, even if you do not tell it at that program. I like to sandwich this new tales between really good ones I have told a lot. Don't be afraid to let the audience know it is a new story. (I would not do this for large festival programs. Use this technique for schools or private programs in organizations.)                4. I've been telling over 20 years. Because of this, my friend and mentor Dan Keding says I should learn 20 new stories every year. I have not met this goal and I don't know if anyone does, yet having a goal is important.

Use the following links for more storytelling tips.

Facial expression, eye contact, body movement

Microphone use

Finding stories to tell

     I've used many methods for finding new stories over the years. The most important caution I can offer is to make sure you give credit to your sources, and be very careful of copyright laws especially with print sources such as books. The laws governing copyrights in the storytelling community can be blurred and continue to be a subject of conversation and contention. I can only offer guidelines based on my own experience and opinions. (See Copyright in Storytelling and Storytelling Ethics)  Here are some suggested, generic  places to find stories.

1. August House and Libraries Unlimited, as well as the National Storytelling Network, offer books and recordings. These are excellent starting points as many of the materials are written for telling.       2. Anthologies: There are too many actual collections of stories to list. You might begin with a genre you enjoy. My personal library includes over 500 books which I have collected for over twenty years. These include Irish folktales and fairy tales, Scottish stories, ghost stories, Greek stories, Indigenous tales etc etc etc. Unlike the books written specifically for the oral tradition, these books were written to preserve cultural ideals and the stories of particular traditions. Because of this, they will often be more detailed. You will need to sort through them and pull the parts that make the story. It may be possible to use everything you find in a tale but the story may then be too long for most venues. (See length of stories and programs.) A word of caution: When trying to fit a story to an audience or a program length, if it is a cultural tale, be aware that you may lose the culture if you change things or leave them out.            (See the Culture of Stories.)                                        3. Listen to other storytellers.  Hearing others tell is one way to learn new stories and, more importantly,  to learn a variety of styles of telling. Be very careful when "borrowing" a story you have heard someone else tell. It is always good to ask permission if you wish to tell it exactly as they do. If the story is in the "public domain", you may tell it. This is where copyright gets sticky. (See Copyright in Storytelling and Storytelling Ethics) 4. Original and Adapted Tales. An original tale is completely new, although story ideas and formats may follow patterns of classical story. An adapted tale is where you have taken an existing story and changed it in some way. You may have kept the tale as is but added repetitive phrases for the audience to say, music or songs, or movements. You may have retold the story from a different character's perspective, or created a completely new spin-off story. (See Writing and Adapting Stories.)