In June 2025, Stephanie Mitchell joined us for our Storytelling weekend with Daniel Morden and Phil Okwedy read on to find out more about the experience…
“Last weekend, I pulled a daring escape from my day-to-day life in London and absconded to ravishing north-west Wales for a workshop at Tŷ Newydd. There, a group of 14 of us gathered under the tutelage of the inestimable Daniel Morden and Phil Okwedy to learn some basic techniques of oral storytelling.
Storytelling is the centre of my life; I’m a memoir coach. My business is even called Storytelling the Truth. I was at the workshop mostly for fun, to explore a different angle into story – one that I’ve long been interested in but never pursued – and because a dear friend from the States had come over for it and I wanted to hang out with her. But I was hopeful that I’d learn a few things that would be worth passing along to memoir writers as well. And lo and behold, so I did.
Traditional myths and stories are a world apart from memoir in form and content, and oral storytelling is a very different art to written storytelling. But I discovered a few key things in common.
- Start by identifying the message or main point of the story.
Traditional stories tend to be very spare – what comes down to us is pure plot. It’s up to the storyteller to decide what meaning they want their audience to take from that plot, and then to flesh out the bones of the plot in a way that reflects that meaning.
The same is true in memoir. You know the plot of your life – that’s the easy part. But figuring out exactly what message or argument you want to convey through your book often takes more time and care – and it’s what makes or breaks your writing.
- Prioritize showing over telling.
Just the way writers strive to reveal things through details and specifics rather than summary, oral stories come to life when the teller uses their body, face, or voice to show a moment rather than stating in words what happened. For example, to borrow from a story Phil told us last weekend: If the story is about an archer and there’s a moment when he successfully shoots a bird with an arrow after several misses, the storyteller could say, “He drew back his arm yet again and loosed his arrow, and this time, it struck the bird, which fell to the ground”… or they could show the motion of shooting the arrow, follow it with their eyes, act like they see it hit the bird, and follow the bird with their eyes as it falls to the ground. The teller could even add a subtle thud when the arrow hits or the bird lands. Just like in memoir, more often than not, the showing will be more effective than the telling.
- Show or tell, not both.
It’s perfectly legitimate to choose to tell rather than to show. In both storytelling and memoir, you can’t show every single thing; part of the art is choosing the right moments to show and the right moments to tell. But always pick just one. If the teller chooses to show that moment with the arrow and the bird, they shouldn’t then follow the bird landing on the ground by saying “This time, he struck the bird and it fell to the ground.” We just saw that happen. There’s no need to tell us as well.
The same applies in memoir. After you’ve drawn a vivid picture, don’t follow it with explanation or summary. That undercuts all the lovely showing you’ve just done and slows the pace of your story.
- Strive for economy.
The storyteller faces the same danger as every other teller of tales, including the memoirist: that they will dwell too long on a point in the story and the reader or listener will become bored. This is best avoided by paring away everything that isn’t essential to the story, whether for plot, argument, character, or mood. For the storyteller, as Daniel told us, this means a serious economy of word and gesture – nothing extraneous. For the memoirist, “nothing extraneous” can look quite different, depending on the writer’s voice. But even if they (like me!) are a wordier writer by nature, shaving off everything unnecessary is key. That’s what keeps the story moving and the reader reading.
Will there be more storytelling in my future? Ooh, I hope so. It flexes a different set of creative muscles than writing, a set much closer to the one I relied on daily in my previous life as an actor, and yet it also recruits circuitry I love using in my work today. And there’s something about a place like Tŷ Newydd that makes learning a new creative skill almost effortless. The tranquility of the setting and the way you are taken care of by the brilliant staff relax the part of you that is always caught up in running your life, allowing you to immerse yourself in the work in a whole different way.
If I do take up storytelling in the months and years to come, I will have Phil, Daniel, and three short days at Tŷ Newydd to thank for it.”
Stephanie Mitchell (www.storytellingthetruth.com) has been a book coach and editor for over fifteen years. Since 2018, she has specialized in working with people to write their first memoir – whether they’ve got a published novel under their belt, a long-running blog, or no writing experience whatsoever. She runs the Memoir Writers’ Book Club on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2156775708131325/), giving daily tips on what’s working in traditionally published memoirs. Download her free workbook to identify which stories to keep in your memoir and which to cut at www.storytellingthetruth.com/freeworkbook.
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