Storytelling is relating a tale to one or more listeners through voice and gesture. It is not the same as reading a story aloud or reciting a piece from memory or acting out a drama—though it shares common characteristics with these arts. The storyteller looks into the eyes of the audience and together they co-create the experience of the tale. The storyteller begins to see and recreate, through voice and gesture, a series of mental images; the audience, from the first moment of listening, squints, stares, smiles, leans forward, or falls asleep, letting the teller know whether to slow down, speed up, elaborate, or just finish.

“Insofar as we account for our own actions and for the human events that occur around us principally in terms of narrative, story, drama, it is conceivable that our sensitivity to narrative provides the major link between our own sense of self and our sense of others in the social world around us”

Storytelling involves appealing to the listening audience. “Entertainment is a requirement for successful storytelling. No story works without it; otherwise it becomes a lecture” (Spaulding, 2011, p. 4). In a very real way, the act of telling is a performative act. What is meant here is that the act of telling is different than giving a speech or lecture because the performative event (Bauman, 1975) is a unique experience. It is a practice that depends on direct connection between the teller and the listener. The direction of the story can change from the way the listener reacts or the teller shares the story.

Storytelling is part and parcel of human socialization—a tool for making us known, both to ourselves and to others. In fact, anything we experience that does not get structured narratively does not get remembered