Covert Metaphor

After reading an email from Jamie Smart recently, it occurred to me that trying to learn how to construct covert metaphor was useless until you learned the basics of storytelling. It’s a natural progression. You begin to collect a small amount of your favorite stories, each with a simple message or moral, and simply memorize them and tell them to as many people as you can. The more you do this, the more you can begin to tweak the stories to your liking.

Experiment with tonality and put emphasis on certain words by trying to express the emotion in which that word represents. If the word is exiciting, then feel excited. If it is curious, then become curious.

After some months of collecting and telling stories, you can begin to play a little. First you can play with loops. Start one story, then start another in the middle, and finish off the first, followed by the ending of the second. Experiment with two stories in the beginning, and then learn to juggle multiple stories and sequencing of loops. Then you can start dropping in embedded suggestions. This is especially easy to do when the command itself is actually a part of a character’s dialogue.

I recommend starting out with simple three minute stories, some of which are even told to children. Even children’s stories are effective on adults. Plus some of those stories spark up a little long forgotten magic. You can tell three minute stories to about anyone you cross during your day. How courageous are you? Do you have the guts to tell a story to a stranger, to your waiter or waitress, your coffee barista?

I think a great author to begin your storytelling career with is Margaret Macdonald and her book The Storyteller’s Start-Up Book. Then add her Three-Minute Tales. Focus on those two for a bit, and then you can begin adding her other story books. Once you’re comfortable with telling stories it will become much easier to add in conversational hypnosis and covert metaphor language patterns and techniques.

admin :: Jul.03.2007 :: metaphor, storytelling :: No Comments »

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