StoryTraining: Selecting and Shaping Stories That Connect

11

Storytellers Who Show and Tell

When I was a child, my greatest fear was tornadoes. Actually, it is more accurate to say that I was afraid of tornado warnings. As a toddler, whenever the Emergency Broadcast System would run tests on television, I would hide under the dining room table, bracing for impact. Detroit had no instances of tornadoes during my childhood, but, although I stopped hiding under tables, I still had that fear as a 12-year-old going to summer band camp in Western Michigan. Tornadoes rarely touch down in major cities, but do you know where they do touch down? In Western Michigan.

One afternoon that summer, I got lost in the woods on the way back to my cabin in the pouring rain. As the storm siren blared and I watched storm ...