The Storytellers Way

This book enables the realization of one's potential as a storyteller. The authors believe that everyone can tell a story, but to tell it well requires a certain set of skills. Whether one is just starting out or wants to develop storytelling expertise, this book is an essential guide. This guidebook can be used to tell stories for entertainment, teaching, coaching, healing, or making meaning.

Included here is a wealth of stories, exercises, questions, tips, and insights to guide the reader along the path of storytelling, offering time-tested and trusted ways to improve one's skills, break through blocks, and become a confident storyteller.

Ashley and Sue share the trials and triumphs of their personal storytelling journeys and what it means to be a storyteller today.

Ashley Ramsden is a storyteller of international acclaim and has been a storyteller for more than 25 years. He started storytelling in Australia, where he trained as an actor and soon established MYTHOS, a company dedicated to reviving the art of storytelling. In 1986, he moved to the United States, where he developed a range of remarkable storytelling performances and one-man shows. In 1988, he returned to England, where at Emerson College he began to host an annual International Storytelling Symposium, and founded the International School of Storytelling in 1994 and continues to teach there today. The school, which is unique to the United Kingdom, draws storytellers from all over the world and focuses on different branches pertaining to the art of the storyteller. These include Storytelling as a Performing Art; Storytelling in Education; Storytelling as a Healing Art; Storytelling in the World of Business; and Storytelling and the Environment.

Ashley also travels the world performing and leading courses. He is equally comfortable telling stories at Sydney Opera House and in a friend’s livingroom.

With a background in theater and speech, Ashley has developed unique methods of teaching storytelling and working with the voice. He is especially well known for his one-man shows of A Christmas Carol, The Amazing Adventures of the Hodja Nasruddin, Tistou, and The Man Who Planted Hope.

Sue Hollingsworth completed an MBA and was a Business Development Director, mostly for U.S. software companies. There she first encountered structured stories as a qualified Dale Carnegie Coach and began using stories extensively in her leadership and coaching work. The answers to why some people were better storytellers than others began to become a little clearer. When she attended her first storytelling festival in 1994, she experienced a profound awakening to the power of story to create meaning, connection, and community in our lives, and her life was changed forever. After leaving the business world, she trained as a storyteller at Emerson College in England and co-founded the International School of Storytelling. She has been working with stories and storytelling ever since. In 2016, Sue decided to return to the passion of her traveling days and the joys and challenges of telling and working with personal, true-life stories. She has refocused her work on training, coaching, mentoring, and facilitating people and processes around true-life and biographical storytelling, as well as fostering and supporting the development of storytelling communities around the world to further this work. The Centre for Biographical Storytelling was launched in 2017 and is currently the core of her storytelling work.