Storytelling Websites and Resources

General Storytelling

Storytelling Organizations/Discussion Lists

Warm-up Exercises

Breathing Techniques and Tutorials

Recommended for 5440

Proper Breathing in Public Speaking; by Katherine Axtell
This article from Whitman College discusses the use of proper posture, initial air intake, and mouth position for breathing and public speaking.
Overcoming Public Speaking Anxiety: Breathing Exercises
Discusses why breathing patterns change when we are anxious and gives some breathing exercises to help overcome that anxiety.

Remember the Right Breathing Techniques for Public Speaking; by Martin Ng
Discusses how to achieve proper breathing for public speaking including a self test to determine if one is breathing properly.

A Breathing Exercise to Calm Panic Attacks
A "simple breathing exercise that will restore your comfortable breathing and soothe many of the physical symptoms of a panic attack."

Recommended for 5611

The Voice That Captivates
This business centered ezine article focuses on breathing exercises that can be done to improve breathing and voice quality.

Breathing and Resonance for Good Voice Production; by Maggie Hall
Gives a few breathing exercises for toning the diaphragm and also some resonation exercises to ensure you are using all of your resonating chambers.

Lung Pressure and Power: A Potpourri of Topics; National Center for Voice and Speech
This article discusses the physiology of the voice and how lung control can effect the voice.

Creative Dramatics

Personal Narratives

Tale Type, Motif Indexes, and Folklore Research

Motif Index

Folk Narrative section of the American Folklore Society - Bibliography of Tale-type and Motif Resources

Journal of Folklore Research

Websites Dealing With Folklore, Storytelling, and Motif Indexing

Folklore Guide

Teaching Storytelling

American Folklore - A to Z story index and a "go-to" must for story sources

American Folklore Society

Folkloristic Research Ethics

Open Folklore (includes Gray Literature)

Tall Tales at AmericanFolklore.net - "We've got giant mosquitoes, Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, Brer Rabbit, and folklore stories that will make you laugh so hard you'll bust a gusset!"

Fable Resources

Proverb Resources

Oral Tradition

Biases of the Ear and Eye; Daniel Chandler
From Orality to Teleliteracy; an article by Steve Mizrach
Herodotus and North Carolina Oral Tradition
Native American Oral Literature
Preserving the Past through Oral Tradition
Oral Tradition and Storytelling
Oral Tradition Journal Online
Orality Past and Present; an article by Robert M. Fowler
A Talk Concerning First Beginnings: Teaching Native American Oral Literature

Ethics Resources

Storytelling-Related Codes of Ethics

Copyright

Grants and Funding

List of Grants

Working with Audiences

Storytelling in Schools and Curricula

Programming Resources

Special Populations

Props and Storytelling

Movement, Masks, Props & Much More (requires login)
Props with Storytelling
Many Storytellers Use Props ... The Ins and Outs of Using Props (scroll down)
Interactive Storytelling Visual Literacy Props
Folkmanis Puppets
Book Props
Do Storytellers Use Props When Performing?

Folk and Fairy Tales

The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress

List of Folktales with Active Heroines

Folklore & Mythology Electronic Texts

Hans Christian Anderson Stories

Ghost Stories and Folktales of the American South

Categories of Folklore

Disney Fairy Tales

SurLaLune Annotated Fairy Tales

Fairy Tale Debate

Stories to Grow By

Grimm's Fairy Tales

Grimm's Fairy Tales on Family Resources

Page of Links to Folk and Fairy Tale Resources

Arabian Nights Stories

Aeosop's Fables

Myth and Fables from Around the World

MSU Library Digital Fables Collection

Willa: An American Snow White (scroll down)

The Mountain Laurel

Bettelheim in Encyclopedia.com

Bruno Bettelheim: The Uses of Enchantment (1975)

Bettelheim on the Frog King

Interview with Jack Zipes

Tolkien Gateway: The Book of the Lost Tales

Fractured Fairy Tales

Gullah Tales

Myths, Folktales, and Fairy Tales

Tellitagan Children's Stories

19th Century German Stories

Fairy Tales

Kashmiri Folktales

Dibaajimowinan and Aadizookaanag

East Asia Kamishibai Stories

A Study of Fairy Tales

Storytelling through Music

Classical Music Storytelling (Read about famous ballets and composers such as Aaron Copland)
Musical Storytelling
Using Music in Storytelling
David Holt | Folk Singer
Multimedia Storytelling with Music and Pictures
Folk Music Newsletter (May change link, look for July/August 2001 edition)
History Songs (Has Real Player based songs about historic events)
Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts (An example of a song that tells a detailed story)
Top Ten Sites for Finding Song Lyrics
Music Lyrics Resources
The Mudcat Cafe'
Glossary of Folk Instruments
Bibliography on American Folk Instruments
Knockgrafton Productions
Musical Folktales from Around the World

Poetry Resources

Beauty and the Beast and Bluebeard Sources

Beauty and the Beast
Beauties and Beasts (The Oryx Muticultural Folktale Series) [book resource; view the TOC and read the first chapter free]. Collected by Betsy Hearne.
Story Base for the Ballet of Beauty and the Beast
Sur La Lune Version of Beauty and the Beast
Tales that are Similar to Beauty and the Beast from Various Cultures
From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers
History of Beauty and the Beast
Bluebeard Tales from Around the World (Surlalune Fairytale Series) [book resource; review TOC and read Chapter 1 free]
Bluebeard
Bluebeard
Original of the Bluebeard Tale
History of the Bluebeard Tale
Tales Similar to Bluebeard
Mr. Fox Story (a tale Similar to Bluebeard)<
Modern Interpretations of Bluebeard
The Story Quilt Project: A Classroom Curriculum
Quilt Me A Story

Storytelling in the Movies

Folk Music Newsletter (talks about movies with storytelling and folk singer themes)
Notes on Telling Stories Cinematically
Examples of Cinematic Storytelling
An Inside Look at the Original Beauty and the Beast
The Piano
Documentary Films
Screenwriters Federation of America

Environmental / Ecology Story Resources

Family Stories

Holiday Stories

Halloween Ghost Stories

Oral History

Peace and War Story Resources

List of Traditional Stories about Peace and War

University Oral History Projects

Urban

Worklore & Business Leadership Storytelling

The Art of Storytelling
Storytelling: Passport to the 21st Century
History Matters: Stories from the Past Scroll through the page to see stories that are related to work lore -- there are several.)
Labor and Labor Movement Resources
Industrial Lore- Interview Excerpts
Making Do: Women and Work
Interview Excerpts of Workers in the 1930s and 1940s
Oral History of 90 year old Woman and Her Experiences Working in a Stamping Factory
What is Storytelling?
From The Story Factor: The 6 Stories You Need to Know How to Tell

Multicultural Stories

Mythology

Digital Storytelling / Globalization

Eldrbarry.net

Samples of Digital Stories

Storytelling and International Festivals

Terms and Definitions

Storytelling Resources

StorytellingBookList.htm

Storytelling Quotes

"Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story-a story that is basically without meaning or pattern." - Eric Hoffer, U.S. philosopher, "The Passionate State of Mind"
"Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole." - Eudora Welty, "One Writer's Beginnings"
"I have learned in my 30-odd years of serious writing only one sure lesson: Stories, like whiskey, must be allowed to mature in the cask." - Se O'Faol, Atlantic Dec 56
"If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive." - Barry Lopez, "Crow and Weasel"
"To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal." - W. H. Auden
"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." - G. K. Chesterton
"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." - Hannah Arendt
"The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in." - Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare
"Family lore can be a bore, but only when you are hearing it, never when you are relating it to the ones who will be carrying it on for you. A family without a storyteller or two has no way to make sense out of their past and no way to get a sense of themselves." - Frank Pittman, U.S. psychiatrist and family therapist, "How to Manage Mom and Dad," Psychology Today (November/December 1994).
"Of course it's true, but it may not have happened." - Patricia Polacco's grandmother
"Story is the vehicle we use to make sense of our lives in a world that often defies logic." - Jim Trelease
"There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories." - Ursula K. LeGuin
"The folktale is the primer of the picture-language of the soul." - Joseph Campbell, The Flight of the Wild Gander
"As we share stories, we exalt in the joy of completed journeys, solved problems and happy endings." - Joe Healy
"If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you're dumb and blind." - Salman Rushdie, "Songs Don't Know the Score," Guardian (London, January 12, 1987).
"There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years." - Willa Cather, "O Pioneers!"
"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms." - Muriel Rukeyser, U.S. poet, "The Speed of Darkness"
"Faith! he must make his stories shorter Or change his comrades once a quarter." - Jonathan Swift, "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift."
"It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about." - Tom Brokaw, Northwestern University Byline Spring '82
"There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells." - Flannery O'Connor, "Mystery and Manners"
"All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by.Religion, whatever else it has done, has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need." - Harvey Cox, Professor of Divinity, Harvard, "The Seduction of the Spirit"
"Earth and I gave you turquoise when you walked singing. We lived laughing in my house and told old stories." - N. Scott Momaday, Native American poet, "Earth and I Gave You Turquoise"
"The tale is often wiser than the teller." - Susan Fletcher, "Shadow Spinner"
"'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever." - Philip Pullman, 1996 Carnegie Medal acceptance speech
"People who don't have stories in their cultures go nuts." - Rafe Martin
"Telling the proper stories is as if you were approaching the throne of Heaven in a fiery chariot." - Baal Shem Tov, quoted by Steve Sanfield
"Australian Aborigines say that the big stories--the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life--are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush." - Robert Moss,
"Stories tell us of what we already knew and forgot, and remind us of what we haven't yet imagined.? - Anne L. Watson
"We can never know truth, but some stories are better than others." - Aaron Shepard
"Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told." - Henry David Thoreau
The tales are like rays of light, taking their colors from the medium through which they pass. W. A. Bone, Children's Stories and How to Tell Them
"The greatest tales, well told, awaken the fears and longings of the listeners. Each man hears a different story. Each is touched by it according to his inner self. The words go to the ear, but the true messages travel straight to the spirit." - Juliet Marillier, Sons of the Shadow