5 Tips For Zen Storytelling
The path to Enlightenment
Zen Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories with wisdom hidden within them.
Sometimes a good Zen story will include embellishment, improvisation, and theatrics. Every community and culture has its own stories narratives or stories, which are shared as a means of education, or instilling ethical clarity and moral values.
Crucial elements of the best Zen stories include:
- plot,
- characters,
- setting,
- narrative point of view,
- a lesson or riddle to be pondered.
The term “ Zen storytelling” can refer specifically to oral storytelling but also broadly to techniques used in other media to unfold or disclose the narrative of a story.
Drew Reggie the co-founder, of Digital Press, says this about how one becomes a good storyteller. It certainly relates to Zen stories as well.
4 Rules Of Good Storytelling
Being a good storyteller is all in the details. It’s about painting a picture, allowing your audience to visualize the characters and setting. But it’s also about movement — keeping your story headed in some direction with every sentence so you don’t bore your audience and lose their attention.
Here are a few rules for good storytelling.
1. Make Sure It’s A Story Worth Telling
A story has characters, a setting, a conflict, a resolution, and some sort of theme. Make sure that there is a punchline or purpose for telling the story. Maybe something funny happens at the end, or maybe it involves meeting a celebrity in the restroom of a restaurant, something unusual. To keep the attention of readers or listeners, something interesting has to happen at some point. Kind of obvious, but I’ve heard some pretty pointless stories so it’s worth mentioning.
Bonus tip: Try teaching your audience a lesson of some kind through your story — maybe a nice success story that teaches a lesson about the art of selling.
2. Keep It Moving
Every part of your story should have a purpose. With every sentence, you should be moving things in some direction.
I give my girlfriend a hard time because she is known in her friend group as a bad storyteller. The biggest reason is, that she fills stories with unnecessary details. That’s when you lose people. The second a story isn’t going somewhere, you’ve lost your audience.
By the way, the same is true in film. Every single scene should advance the story. If you answer one question, present another. Keep people paying attention and wanting to find out what happens next. Think of an in-person or written story the same way.
3. Create Moments
Avoid a slow leak of information that barely moves the story forward. Instead, try building and building to one big moment, a turning point. Repeat this throughout the story so that it is always building up to something. Then, be sure to follow up with a resolution of some kind.
4. Use Dialog
Dialog allows your audience to more easily envision the characters in your story. It paints a more vivid picture and adds personality. But again, make sure every line serves a purpose in your story. Add side remarks for comedy or additional description, but keep the dialog moving the story forward.
Side note: For in-person stories, avoid saying “I was like” and “she was like” before every single piece of dialog. This gets repetitive and, therefore, annoying. Change it up.
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Telling a good story in person is a lot about body language. Practice in front of a mirror or watch videos online to get a better sense of how you can improve. And being a well-written storyteller takes a lot of practice.
Write one of your favorite stories, read it out loud, and critique your work. Then pass it around to friends for feedback. Anyone can become a good storyteller. So, get started!
Here is a story my teacher shared about priorities.
“A teacher of Zen stood before his students with some items on the table in front of him. When his talk began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, about 2 inches in diameter.
He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
So the teacher then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks.
He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The teacher picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up the remaining open areas of the jar.
He then asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “Yes.”
“Now,” said the teacher, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things — your family, your partner, your health, your children — things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter — like your meditation pad, your job, daily spiritual practice, and your home, The sand is everything else, the small stuff.”
“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness and a meaningful life. I living a householder’s life, play with your children. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party, or fix the disposal.”
“Take care of the rocks first — the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”
This story is an excerpt from my course “The Mystics Academy”
©Lewis Harrison, all rights reserved.
Here are a few in a similar vein
@LewisCoaches
@w.aaron.waddell
@thebeautifulmystic
Before you go…
I am Lewis Harrison, a teacher of Essential Zen and Mystic Taoism. I am also the award-winning author of over twenty books on business, leadership, personal growth, and strategic thinking. For over a decade I was the producer and host of the show “What’s Up” on NPR-affiliated WIOX FM in New York. Learn more about me at askLewis.com
Here are links to three of my best-selling books on mysticism: