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Volume 3, Issue 12 - 14 June 2006
Brought to you by Aneeta Sundararaj and Eric Okeke
For the online version of this newsletter, please click
on this link:
http://www.howtotellagreatstory.com/gsn/14062006.html
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A WARM WELCOME TO ALL OUR NEW SUBSCRIBERS!
OVERVIEW OF NEWSLETTER CONTENTS ...
-
From the Editor's Desk
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StoryAfrica
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StoryAsia
-
Storytelling Nuts and Bolts
-
Jack's Fables
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Prompts To Tell Your Great Story
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What's Your Fascinating Story
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Blow Your Own Trumpet!
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Resources For Storytellers - Articles, Blogs, Books,
Websites and so on
from the editor's desk ...
Dear [First Name],
Much has happened here at 'How To Tell A Great
Story'. For one, I have great pleasure in introducing two new
columnists - one is Jack Stewart and the other is Kristy Taylor.
Jack's column will be called Jack's
Fables and Kristy's,
Storytelling Nuts and Bolts. Go and have a look yourself to
see what they're about.
I also interviewed Jack Stewart, John Beavis,
Gail
Trahd, Michael LaRocaa and John di
Lemme for 'Blow Your Own Trumpet!'. Each of them has a special
story to tell and John di Lemme has even offered the subscribers
to this newsletter a special offer on his products. You can read
excerpts below and follow the link to read the actual
interviews.
Remember how I told you about my aborted attempt
to create A Storyteller's Forum. Well, my story was not as
horrifying as Jenna Glatzer's story. I wrote a piece about it
and you can read it under 'What's Your Fascinating Story?'
We've now
got over 300 articles on storytelling and what I've done is to
feature one whole article in this newsletter - rather than the
normal excerpts from five other ones. This way, you get the
benefit of one whole article without having to click on another
link.
With all of this work going on, I have not been
able to write a story for StoryAsia in time. I'm sorry about
this. I promise, by the next edition, you'll have enough of
stories to pick from.
There's a new contest running and it's for a copy
of the ebook version of Michael LaRocca's, Rising Form The
Ashes. Click on the link under Subscriber's Contest to place
your entry.
Please, do vote for this site in the
'The 101 Best Websites For Writers' - details are in the section
entitled VOTE FOR US
...
Here's to your storytelling success.
Aneeta Sundararaj
editor@howtotellagreatstory.com
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WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU
...
If you would like to send us your feedback about
this newsletter, you can either send an email to
editor@howtotellagreatstory.com or fill in the
webform at
http://www.howtotellagreatstory.com/survey.html
VOTE FOR US
...
Please nominate us for the next set of entries for
'The 101 Best Websites For Writers' competition by
sending an email stating your comments and
nomination about this website (How To Tell A Great
Story) and this newsletter (Great StoryTelling
Network Newsletter) to
writersdig@fwpubs.com with "101 Best Web sites"
as the subject.
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How
To Tell A Great Story (5th Edition)
-
Do you
catch people holding back their yawns every
time you speak?
-
Do you want to converse better in
social situations?
-
Do you have trouble
narrating your own experiences in a way that people
will listen?
-
Do you want someone to ask you how
your day was and be able to narrate even the simple
things you do in an interesting way?
The answers to these questions lie in
learning the BENEFITS of
How To Tell A Great Story.
Your
Friends, Colleagues and Business Associates Will
Be
On The Edge of Their Seats
Every Time You Open Your Mouth!
If you would like to know more, please click on this link for more
details:
http://www.howtotellagreatstory.com
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STORYAFRICA
* Watch this space
Eric Okeke
Writer, Storyteller.
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STORYASIA
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Jack's Fables
Angelic presents
“I’ve got to eat. The mice must have seen me
coming, and I’m not big enough to get rabbits. I’ve ripped open half the bin
bags in the area. Birds were never my thing. I’m desperate.”
“If I nip through the cat flap in Bumble Cottage,
I can chance a showdown with those two overfed sods Harry and Jimmy. A bit of
hissing and snarling in between gobfuls, I’m out quick, and can come back later.
Truth is, I’m doing them a favour. They eat too much. “
To read more,
please click here ...
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Storytelling Nuts and Bolts
The Full Stop
Let’s start with the end – the full stop. There’s nothing worse than being led
down the garden path with a long winding sentence, that doesn’t really seem to
go anywhere, that slowly starts to bore you to death with all of the commas, and
don’t forget the conjunctions, that are trying to hold the terribly long
sentence together. Now, wasn’t that boring? Didn’t it make you want to tear your
hair out? Not a full stop to be seen.
To read more,
please click here ...
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PROMPTS TO TELL YOUR GREAT STORY
...
You're planning your summer vacation.
You can only bring 7 items with you. Describe them in detail and why
it is essential you bring them with you.
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WHAT'S YOUR
FASCINATING STORY?
Fascinating story # 9 -
One Hour
Last Friday, 2nd of June 2006, I came
across this story – it was an entry on a blog with the title ‘Absolute
Write is gone’. It was a horrifying read and here’s a gist of what
happened:
Absolute Write [AW], a leading site for
information on writing and publishing was given one hour’s notice
before their web hosting company shut down the website. Now, how
did such a travesty come to be?
The reason given for shutting down the website
was because AW was accused of sending out spam. Apparently, the
scamhunters of AW had posted the email address of an alleged scam
literary agent in the AW forum based on a list of 20 worst literary
agents. In so doing two things were noted:
· firstly,
such a post was considered illegal under the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA); and
· secondly,
because the alleged scam literary agent's email was posted in the
forum, she began to receive spam, thereby making AW a spammer.
To read more,
please click here ...
To tell your own Fascinating Story,
please click here...
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BLOW YOUR OWN TRUMPET!!
Cat
Man - an interview with Jack Stewart
Excerpts ...
Jack ... Purrfect Symphony and Relax
With Cats.
After seeing animal carnage on the TV in
Zimbabwe in 2002, I went to bed feeling depressed. I
dreamt in the middle of the night, seeing one of our
cats, Tommy, and the idea of putting cats purring to
music flashed through my mind. Ridiculous? You bet.
So absurd was it that I only told my wife
a few weeks later, and a close friend Jeff Moran, who is
a sound therapist, one year later. If there was
one person on the planet who could turn the idea into
reality, it was him. Another year later we released it.
It gets rave reviews. But like Dyson’s vacuum, and the
wind-up radio, the challenge remains to get it bought by
enough people. It works for people and cats! Cats purr
at a frequency that relaxes and heals, the same
frequency that heals humans. Simple eh? But to most
people who hear about the concept, even cat lovers, they
are reluctant to buy it, thinking they will hear a bunch
of screeching cats. It is truly beautiful music, and the
purrs are barely audible, as they [and several tracks of
sound therapy] do their work.
To read more,
please
click here ...
Money Matters - an
interview with John Beavis
Excerpts
Aneeta: How did you get into
the business of copywriting?
John: I’m actually a qualified
PE Teacher by trade! I made the great leap into copywriting 25 years
ago, simply because at that time I couldn’t feed and clothe my two young
children. That and the fact that I wanted a life! A ‘real’ life! And you
don’t get that on a few shekels and dirham. Sorry, but you don’t. Money
isn’t everything is possibly true, but it is the bridge to all things
and you can do little without it. If you’re about to start out in any
career do not kid yourself that money doesn’t matter. Trust me -
it most definitely does!
To read more,
please
click here ...
Without action our dreams are vapors that disappear
- an interview with Gail Trahd
Excerpts
...
Aneeta: As you may know my
website caters to storytellers. How important do you think storytelling
is for those in business (whether it be an online or off-line business),
and what advice would you give these storytellers?
Gail: Oh my gosh! I
think storytelling is the basis for communicating in many different
arenas. The best way that people learn is from stories. It’s the
best way to remember a principle and to learn from others experiences.
I have a business that has an offline and online component and I
definitely use quick stories to bring home my points to my clients.
Online sales letters, if they are written well, are stories. They
are stories that keep the reader reading until the very last sentence.
To read more,
please
click here ...
Gifts from Asia - an interview with
Michael LaRocca
Excerpts ...
Aneeta: Now, I see you’ve
visited Penang! My hometown’s not far away from Penang and I was so
excited to read this. Tell me something that you liked about Penang.
Michael: Food. I've
always loved Chinese food, and that's easy to get in China, of course.
But I've also always loved Italian food, Mexican food, Indian food,
German food... Where we stayed in Penang, the world's cuisines
were all located within walking distance of each other. I quit
smoking while I was in Penang, so I gained a bit of weight, but what the
heck. We visited Penang in June, when it was about 30 degrees,
same as Shaoxing. But it felt so much cooler in Penang because it
doesn't have that polluted haze that parts of China have. I've
since learned that Penang isn't considered clean by many Malaysians, but
compared to where I was coming from it certainly is. Quiet, too.
To read more,
please
click here ...
A laser focused
Champion - an interview with John di Lemme
Excerpts ...
Aneeta: Such
praise. *Blush*. Thank you. Let’s start with some information about you.
Where did you grow up, what were you doing before you became this
‘Millionaire Maker’?
John: Let me tell you a little about myself. You and I, along
with all your readers, have something in common. We were all born. I was
born in 1965, 8:35am, room 404. I get very specific about my day of
birth because each of you reading this interview has to understand that
you were born for greatness, you were born with a Why inside you. You
were born for the specific reason why you were put on this Earth to
achieve massive success. In the system of life, we get bombarded with so
much negativity, that we never achieve our massive success that we were
given in our birth right. It wasn’t network marketing that interested
me; it was the freedom potential to build a business with passive
residual income that interested me.
To read more,
please
click here ...
If you'd like to be interviewed for this column, please
contact me at
editor@howtotellagreastory.com
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ARTICLES FOR STORYTELLERS
Learning How To Write
By Michael LaRocca
As a student of Spanish, my goal was to think in Spanish.
Skip the word-by-word translation so I'd have the necessary speed to
speak and listen. I know words in Spanish that I'd be hard pressed to
translate. Usually profanity, I confess. Chingow!
For years my students here in China have studied grammar, and know it
better than you or I. They read. They write. But speaking involves
moving faster than that. In conversation, we don't have time to write it
first and make sure it's all grammatically flawless, then read it aloud,
perhaps after a bit of rehearsal.
So, I try to give them a chance to practice putting words together on
the fly, rules be damned. The rules they've internalized will kick in
and keep them comprehensible, which will build their confidence in their
ability to keep creating conversation that way.
This is not unlike what we go through as authors. First we study
rulebooks, perhaps take some classes, and conclude just about everything
we're is doing is wrong. So many rules to memorize.
We might dread sitting down to write with all those constraints.
But really, it's not about memorizing rules at all. It's about
internalizing the rules, following them (or not if you prefer) without
being consciously aware of what they are. They're there, but in the
background.
The story's what matters. You're supposed to be having fun, not
"working." At least not during the creation phase.
We don't always take the time to say, "I've written ten active sentences
in a row so maybe I'll whip in a passive one now" or "I need a beat for
every X lines of dialogue." I published four novels and edited dozens
more before I learned what a beat was. (It's a pause so the reader can
catch his/her breath.)
And, of course, since it is writing and not speaking, we can always go
back and revise later. Then rely on editors to catch what we missed, or
at least make us wonder why we wrote it this way instead of that way.
Some authors aren't even consciously aware of "the rules." They've never
taken a class, never read a book about writing. They're simply avid
readers who one day decided to write. But they've internalized the rules
as well. It comes from reading.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you want to write, you
must read. If you don't like reading, maybe writing isn't for you. It's
not about writing because you want to say, "I am a writer." It's about
writing because you enjoy writing.
And, it's really nice when you've been writing for a long time to go
back and read a book about how to write. You might find one or two
things to tweak in your technique, as opposed to a daunting laundry list
of flaws. It's much easier to internalize one or two new rules than 50
or 100!
If you would like to submit your own article on storytelling,
please click here...
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BOOKCLUB
Review of
Awaken the Giant Within
It surprises me not one bit
that this book has sold over a million copies.
Briefly, this book has, as its
subheading, ‘How to take control of your mental emotional, physical and
financial destiny.’
There are four parts to this
book:-
Part 1 – Unleash Your Power
Part 2 – Taking Control – The
Master System
Part 3 – The Seven Days to
Shape Your Life
Part 4 – A Lesson in Destiny
To read more, please
click here
Review of
Cut The Strings - The
True Story of a Soul Reclaimed
I was a little stunned when Lynn sent to me a copy of this ebook. I
never expected it and I read it with much interest. My attention was
grabbed right from the start. It was these words which set me reading
this entire ebook in one go:
Bryn
Jones, who wrote the Preface used these words when signing off: ‘proud
friend to Lynn and Glen Grocott.’ ...
To read more, please
click here
If you would like to submit your own article on storytelling,
please click here...
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BLOGS FOR STORYTELLERS...
Here are some of the first blogs that I've found fascinating
to read. I hope that you enjoy reading their stories as
well...
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RESOURCES FOR STORYTELLERS...
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TELL EVERYONE ABOUT ...
How are people going to know about your great storytelling
resources [books, websites, newsletters, forums, e-books,
manuals, ideas, thoughts, tapes and so much more] if you
don't tell them? Here's your chance - Send info about your
stuff and we'll post it here for free. Please keep the
number of words to no more than 125. Send an email to
editor@howtotellagreatstory.com
with 'Tell Everyone About ...' in the subject line.
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WHAT OUR READERS ARE SAYING ...
And we can both be thankful
to Aneeta for providing yet another way of making the world smaller
through networking.
Dr. Neill Neill
Yes, one of the beautiful things about Aneeta's work is that it
brings people together.
Rosemarie Skaine
I have just ordered your e-book and read your bonus #4 Great
Storytelling Articles. WOW! did I enjoy. I heard a lot of wisdom
coming from your printed words and look forward to reading the
rest of your book. From what I've read so far, I know that I'm
in for a treat. ...
My name is D'lores and I am a newly retired
teacher. Growing up with ten brothers and sisters you know that
I have been telling stories all of my life. I have been telling
African American folktales and stories for about eight years in
and about my community. I am always looking for ways to better
myself and build upon what I already know.
Looking forward to consulting with you (a first for me),
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READERS
WANT TO KNOW ...
Thank you for your regular newsletter. I would to know if you have
contacts or know people who have worked on story telling for
business development and corporations. Do you have any study on
dreaming as part of storytelling. Is there any University that gives
Master or PhD degree on corporate storytelling and corporate
dreaming through lifetime experience. Your feedback will be
appreciated.
firoz55@hotmail.com
If you have a
query you'd like to post to our readers, please send it to
editor@howtotellagreatstory.com and we'll see what we can do to help
you.
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