Why has storytelling been an enduring art form throughout the course of human history? Heroes, villains, conflict, and action elicit emotions from listeners, as characters overcome their tribulations and grow into stronger people. The simplest explanation is that stories speak to emotions and the soul while information without the structure of a story speaks to the mind. At the dawn of every culture, a group of citizens huddle around a fire, recalling in awe-filled voices the heroes whose struggles transformed and remade their world. Good storytelling is packed with fascinating characters, driven by an intriguing plot, and engages listeners in absorbing, rewarding seduction; that is a story that cannot be missed. A story should be a beautifully woven tale of unexpected heroes who succeed against all odds, despite the impossibility of their predicament.
Communication
- Voice Tone
- Body Language
- Value and Feeling Words
- Trigger the Conversation
- Magic Questions
- Comical Attraction
- Poetic Language
Drama of Heroes, Villains, Conflict, and Action Storytelling
In the game of seduction, the purpose of storytelling is not solely entertainment. The purpose should be to attract, to draw people into your narrative without their conscious realization. You can attract through storytelling by portraying your feelings and reactions as living parts of a resounding narrative. The stories you tell should be journeys as rich in questions as they are in answers. You will learn storytelling that is intriguing and inspires feelings in others by painting vivid pictures with your words.
The first step to storytelling is writing them down. Your story ideas may be based on old tales or come from original germs of the plot, but they must be woven in your own words and told with your own style of feeling and emotions. People remember stories with vivid word pictures. Feel the emotion in this story example, in the descriptions and precise language:
“Her golden eyes widened, first with fear, then with nervous excitement as her old flame swaggered towards her. She barely recognized him; his hair was long and unkempt, his clothes ragged, his eyes wild with some unspoken freedom. It was as if he was possessed—not with a demon, but with a lifestyle. She wanted to run and fling herself bodily into his arms. But the years had passed—she touched her face, and the newly carved wrinkles there—and a lot of water had trickled under the bridge. She wasn’t even sure he’d recognized her tremulous tones over the phone. But now she’d raised the devil with her free tongue by asking to see him, and with an impulsive, angry gesture, she bit that tongue. She would not allow an insulted pride, not when the sunset of her beauty was so close.”
There are many ways to tell the same story. When you prepare your details, imagine the stories as a play or movie in which you can take on the role of every character. The words you use should reconstruct the sounds, smells, sights, tastes, and sensations of the imaginary world of the story.
Storytelling: Turn a Seedling into a Rose Bush
Storytelling begins as an idea, maybe just a phrase, and then sprouts into something glorious and captivating. Once you embrace this metaphor, you can understand how to turn your storytelling into a rose bush that will be admired by all.
Here are a handful of ideas to get you started, if you cannot draw inspiration from your own life. Start with a descriptive detail and captivate your listener right off the bat. Frolicking in a snowstorm. (Feel the snowflakes on your face―) Taking a Mediterranean vacation with your best friend. (Smell the olives groves―) Find a sexy toy and wild magazine on an airplane. (Feel that jolt of passionate excitement―) Watching the sensual, hot yoga teacher. (See her supple legs moving without effort―) Having a skiing accident. (Feel the snow give way under you―) Playing with your favorite childhood pet. (Hear that distinctive yap―) Spending a day with your childhood love. (Feel her soft hand in yours―) Finding out about your stripper teacher. (Smell her heady perfume as she walks past your desk―) Spending the evening at an old disco while wearing wigs. (Feel the scratchy line where the wig touches your scalp―) Visiting a naked beach resort. (Hear the pleasured sighs of sunbathers being sun screened―) Standing on the balcony. (See the sun dipping below the horizon―) Participating in e-mail seduction. (Feel the smooth mouse under your hand―)
Populate Your Stories
Storytelling characters should be complex and multi-leveled, just like real people. In addition, tell tales of real, quirky people, not rubber-stamped imitations. It all begins with names. Carefully consider your character’s name, as it says a lot about them.
Can you imagine if the hero in Raiders of the Lost Ark was named Jedd Jones instead of Indiana Jones? Or if Dorothy Gale had been Sue Kelly? When you’re telling a sensual, intergenerational saga, or even just relating a simple encounter, character names are important. They endow your characters with a certain flavor all their own and can enhance the personality traits you develop over the course of your story. If you choose a name that grates against the character’s disposition, your listener will feel a vague irritation each time that name comes up. Name appropriately, and your characters will feel natural and real.
All the passion in the world will do you no good unless you have somewhere to put it, and that is where your hero comes in. A good story is grounded in reality, so when you’re crafting your hero, you don’t need to make a carbon copy of Superman or a grandma who rushes into a burning building to save a baby. Though these are examples of heroes, whichever character in your story lends their point of view to the narrative will be your tale’s hero.
Storytelling: Conflict and the Instigator
Storytelling plot can be described as a series of related incidents that advance the narrative of the story. The plot is the “then what happened? And then?” What is the device that drives your story forward? Another way of describing the plot is a series of significant events in your story. The plot may differ from what actually happened because it only includes important events and actions. No one wants to hear about every time your character eats a meal or takes a bathroom break.
Storytelling centers around conflict of some sort. If no obstacles appear, the story is flat and has no driving motivation. A great problem, often personified as an identifiable villain, crystallizes the driving motivation of the story and helps the details and actions come alive.
Conflict in Storytelling can be of Four Different Kinds:
“Between people.
Between a person and society.
Between a person and nature.
Between different aspects of the self.”
It is very hard to find the conflict focus without a good villain, who must be the yin/yang to your hero. Villains are instigators of the distress that the hero, heroine, and/or realm find themselves in at the beginning of a story. Without a clear villain, your listener has no focus for the struggle your heroes will face, no recognizable entity that they can love to hate.
Every story has to answer three questions:
“Who is your hero?
What do they want?
Who is preventing them from getting it?”
These questions will tell you the three most important ingredients of your story—your hero, your villain, and your conflict. Then you can move on to organizing the specific actions that will take place over the course of your storytelling.
Action by itself is not a plot. The action that changes the story’s ending and consequences of the story is a plot. Only include scenes that are necessary, and that will affect the ending.
The actions you tell and the order in which you choose to tell them to make up your story’s structure. Look at story structure as a semicircle. This shape shows rising action, a climax, then a much faster-falling action, and resolution—all the necessary ingredients of a classic story structure.
As you write down your story, summarize each significant plot point in order from beginning to middle to end. This will refresh your memory as to where the story is traveling, even if you venture off the path on a few diversions.
Storytelling: Snappy Dialogue and Changing Tides
One definition of dialogue is a simulated conversation. Examine dialogue segments in published stories, and you will find that characters do not verbalize the same way that people do in actual life. Dialogue is a kind of shorthand for speech, not an actual transcription; it takes out most of the hesitations, the hedges, the half-finished sentences. It is much shorter than a real conversation, and swiftly gets to the point so that readers aren’t left yawning.
In a story, dialogue performs two main undertakings. It helps flesh out characters and advances the plot. It can also set the tone of the story and provide comic relief, as well as instigate conflict between characters. You can disclose many important hints about your characters by choosing the exact words they utter.
In stories, there are two main types of dialogue: Monologues where characters speak mainly to themselves, and conversation where characters speak to or at each other. Either of these can accomplish anything dialogue is meant to accomplish, so vary the type of dialogue you use throughout your story. Some tips for writing vivid dialogue: Dialogue often moves very fast, but it can be slowed with description and action intermixed. Dialogue tags should usually be simple—said is one of the most frequently-used words in literature for a reason—but sometimes you can intersperse intense tags to show a particularly powerful line of dialogue. Don’t have your characters speak in complete sentences most of the time. This is not how people really talk, and your characters will feel more realistic. Dialogue should always be interesting. If a line of dialogue is boring, cut it out of the story.
Transitions solve the problem of moving a character or characters from one scene to the next or from one period in time to the next without explaining every detail of how the transaction was made. A transition is merely a shift or move in the story that leaves out the exact play-by-play and gives the listener a sensation of the movement of time.
You can create great transitions by using various elements present in all stories: a change in the time of day, a shift in the weather, a switch from darkness to light or vice versa, the introduction of a new character, or the departure of a character.
Storytelling: Keeping Up Steam
In a good story, the beginning, middle, and ending are the three most important elements. However, beginnings are the most critical of these, because unless you hook your audience, they will bore fast and never make it to the middle or ending. Beginnings set the tone and mood for the story, so introduce the main characters and the conflict right away. Always pick an interesting place to begin, in the middle of the action, and don’t slow down until it’s time for a slight fall in action.
When you get to the middle, do not lose the story’s steam. The middle plays a significant role in connecting all the action before and after the climax. The middle is where character development should take place, and you can raise the level of tension or suspense as the middle progresses.
Endings bear the weight of wrapping up the story and providing closure, both for your characters and your audience. Do not moralize—if your characters are meant to explain a moral stance, they should have done it in the context of the story. Do not feel you must tie up all loose ends; some plotlines are best left in mystery. Do not go on too long, and do not explain too much. Your audience knows when the story should be over and will get restless if you far past that point.
Storytelling: Description Tips
Look at your outline and visualize your first sensory-rich scene. Craft it with vivid words, and make it easy to see your vision—use enough detail to paint a picture, but don’t use so much that your narrative is weighed down.
See the action take place in your head as if you are watching a play. Who is in the scene? What is happening, both “on-camera” and “off-camera?” What is the source of the conflict, and where does it work into the scene?
Sensual scenes are especially important to paint with the perfect word images. Where and when does the sensual scene take place? Can you describe what the setting looks like, down to the smallest details? Which character—hero or villain—is on stage? What are they doing, and how are they doing it? Why are they stumped and mystified, or yelping in satisfaction, or casually settling back? What is their conflict? What is stopping them?
List the seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching details of the seduction, the sensuality or seriousness of the mood of the scene. Imagine you can hear what the characters are saying. Pay attention to every texture, every color, ever feeling, every taste—everything physical detail counts.
Amidst the word art, intermix dialogue. top and listen to the distinct voices of your characters; you can even talk out the dialogue of the scene if that helps you imagine it. Pretend to walk, talk, and act like the characters.
As you go along composing scenes, you may discover new actions to add to your outline or realize that a change in order is necessary to tell a better tale. You may make several outlines before you are done. Cut out the dry facts and insert more on how the characters feel.
On your own, imagine that you are one of the characters in the story. Write down the story from your point of view. Be sure to describe what you see, smell, hear, taste, and touch. Pretend to be the character and speak your story aloud, like a monolog in a play. Share these monologs with a trustworthy friend so you get to know all the characters in the play.
Some questions to ask yourself as you craft your story: How much of the story is based on your own experiences? How do your own family and friends fit into the story? What have you learned from writing the story? Who or what inspires you? How would you describe the experience of writing a story? What would you like the person listening to take away from your story?
Storytelling: Perfect Phrases
Storytelling uses simple phrases to captivate. Metaphors and similes abound in a great narrative, sucking us in with visuals we can readily relate to. Here is a list of sample phrases; base your own off of these or draw on them for inspiration.
A sweet web of seduction. Passionately sizzling. A spellbinding romance fit for leather-bound tomes. The seduction of lyricism by sensuality. Simmering passionate chemistry. A luscious love story. Her gaze was brilliant and scorching. The fare was rich and delicious, and we acted as if there were treasure buried beneath it. Romantic skeptics tainted by the scars of lost love. Her enthusiasm was deftly interwoven with her palpable excitement. Our love was like a living thing, animated by passion.
Read every phrase of your story aloud repeatedly, listening for the cadence and rhythm of your words. As you refine your story, you also learn it; this is great practice for telling the story verbally. Narrate to a mirror and watch your body language. Speak the story into a tape recorder, to hear where your voice rises and falls seductively. Slow down and take your time. After many days of practice, you will wake up to find that you have complete ownership of the story. Using the skills that you learned in the creation process, you can make up stories on the spot, when something strikes your fancy and the audience is right.
Your storytelling voice should be well-pitched. Use good diction and remember to breathe; you are in control of your tones. Hone your sense of timing, both comedic and dramatic, and learn to listen to your own voice without the aid of a tape recorder. Meanwhile, your body should be responsive to the action; be spontaneous with expressions and emotion.
Storytelling: Flavorful Words
Words fuel our imaginations, giving shape to our flights of fancy. They can be strung together to create pictures in our minds of engaging activities, exotic places, foreign locales, or erotic situations. The relative sexiness of words makes choosing the right ones very important. Hooking a listener by making the story enjoyable and engaging is the point, after all.
Be aware of the flavor of the words you are considering, and match them with the respective flavors of the characters, scenes, and story actions. Properly lining up flavors will create a story with feeling.
A storyteller’s choice of language should be descriptive and articulate. Here is a list of choice sensual words to be used in storytelling. All of them are intensely descriptive and very specific in what they describe; it is nearly impossible to mistake the teller’s intent when he or she uses one of these words. Aching, arched, batter, battering, big, billowy, blazing, blossoming, blunt, boiling, bore, budding, bulging, bursting, bushy, busty, buxom, circumcised, clenching, clinching, colossal, copious, corkscrew, creamed, creamy, curved, cut, cute, deep, deflating, delicate, dewy, draining, drenched, drill, dripping, drive, dwindling, eager, emergent, engorged, enormous, erect, escalating, exploding, fertile, firm, flaccid, flooding, gargantuan, giant, gigantic, glowing, gorged, grind, gushing, hairless, hairy, hammering, hanging, hard, heated, heaving, heavy, hippy, hirsute, hot, huge, immense, impaled, insatiable, intense, jam, jerking, juicy, large, limp, little, loaded, long, loose, luscious, mammoth, massive, maul, milky, moist, mounting, nail, narrow, penetrate, pile-driving, pile drive, pinched, pink, piston, pliant, plump, plunge, pound, pouty, probe, prod, puffy, pump, quaking, quivering, raging, ram, ravaged, receding, rimmed, ripe, rippling, rising, roaring, satiny searing, shooting, shove, shuddering, silken, silky, sixty-nine, skewer, slick, slippery, smooth, soak, soft, spasm, spasming, spear, spewing, spoon, spraying, spread-eagle, spurting, stab, stacked, stick, stretch, stretched, stroke, stuff, suckle, swaying, sweltering, swinging, taut, tender, tight, tilted, torrid.
Storytelling Enjoyment
To keep alive the art of storytelling, one must kindle the imagination and spark creativity. Storytelling is an art form that provides entertainment, pleasure, and enjoyment, and satisfies the playful spirit of seduction. As a storyteller, you can help yourself and others to develop new appreciations, new understandings, and new insights.
Your stories can motivate another’s desire to explore a topic or a place. They can help change attitudes and show your listeners that they share a common background. Stories may be a part of sensual romance, the tale of how sexual desire with emotional ties between the hero and heroine was satisfied.
Sensual romance is hot and spicy, yet always erotic; bold yet familiar; pushing boundaries yet always making the listener feel as though the hero and heroine are committed to each other in some way. Openness and trust between the characters heighten the sensual tension between them, yet also provides depth to their relationship. Ultimately, their romance and emotional involvement are at the core of the story. Well-told stories of sensual romances take listeners to the height of enjoyment.
A well-told sensual story not only affects the senses but the emotions as well, pulling the listener into the story and making them part of the character’s lives.
Spark the Story
Though all five senses are important, the most important aspect of the descriptions in your stories is the way things feel. The biggest organ in the human body is the skin; we can all relate to a lover’s touch sending sparks of electricity racing through our nerves, radiating a warm flush through the skin. You can use great descriptive words for a character’s action, but your listener will not be hooked until they know just what it felt like.
Make sure you tell the listener what your characters are thinking as well. Getting inside another person’s head is half the fun of telling and listening to a story. People respond better to realistic characters, and the best way to make your characters real is to explain what they’re thinking.
A memorable character will fulfill one or more of these criteria: Provoking a profound intellectual, emotional, or sensual response that lasts beyond the end of the story. Carrying the recipient to another place, another time, by imagery or memory or resonance. Causing a fundamental shift in thinking or perception. Leaving something behind that the recipient will hold for a long time. Making something the recipient needs to do easier, faster, or more pleasurable.
Once in a while, the aim of a storyteller is simply to entertain, to provide a moment of escape from a hectic day or terrifying night. Sometimes the aim of the story-teller is to educate, to help others in their comprehension of something. The best part of guidance in this way is that it takes our defenses down: our natural resistance to heeding the words of others is low, and we are not always conscious of being taught anything until it’s too late, and we are caught under the bard’s spell.
Copyright 2014 SeductionAndRomanticDinner.com
