From toasts to eulogies, from job interviews to social events, this book will help you with ideas, structure, delivery and more.--CNN

LONGLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD

Over the past twenty-five years, the directors of The Moth have worked with people from all walks of life--including astronauts, hairdressers, rock stars, a retired pickpocket, high school students, and Nobel Prize winners--to develop true personal stories that have moved and delighted live audiences and listeners of The Moth's Peabody Award-winning radio hour and podcast. A leader in the modern storytelling movement, The Moth inspires thousands of people around the globe to share their stories each year.

Now, with How to Tell a Story, The Moth will help you learn how to uncover and craft your own unique stories, like Moth storytellers Mike Birbiglia, Rosanne Cash, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Gilbert, Padma Lakshmi, Darryl DMC McDaniels, Tig Notaro, Boots Riley, Betty Reid Soskin, John Turturro, and more.

Whether your goal is to make it to the Moth stage, deliver the perfect wedding toast, wow clients at a business dinner, give a moving eulogy, ace a job interview, be a hit at parties, change the world, or simply connect more deeply to those around you, stories are essential. Sharing secrets of The Moth's time-honed process and using examples from beloved storytellers, a team of Moth directors will show you how to

- mine your memories for your best stories
- explore structures that will boost the impact of your story
- deliver your stories with confidence
- tailor your stories for any occasion

Now featuring new prompts for engaging storytelling and filled with empowering, easy-to-follow tips for crafting stories that forge lasting bonds with friends, family, and colleagues alike, this book will help you connect authentically with the world around you and unleash the power of story in your life.

Moth GrandSLAM all-time champion storyteller, writer, and business coach Matthew Dicks presents a guide to using the power of storytelling for success in business of any type or size. Matt has found that the basic principles of effective storytelling are universal, teachable, and more crucial than ever for business communication. Jam-packed with examples, Stories Sell reveals the ingredients of a compelling story and then demonstrates how they can be incorporated into persuasive marketing copy, productive face-to-face conversations, effective sales pitches, and presentations that people actually want to hear. Topics include:

- The three elements of a winning story: stakes, suspense, and surprise
- Finding the right narrative structure (and why beginning at the beginning isn't always the best method)
- The power of being vulnerable: how admitting your mistakes can build rapport with audiences
- When and how to use humor
- Zigging while others zag: making yourself stand out from competitors

Whether you're an online marketer, advertising professional, salesperson, small business owner, independent contractor, or Fortune 500 executive, Stories Sell will teach you to find your voice and get your message across for maximum impact and profit.

Come for the engrossing content, and stay for the lessons that might just change how you talk, write, and lead. --Adam Grant

Learn how to take any story and make it perfect--from storytelling expert Karen Eber, whose popular TED Talk on the subject continues to be a source of inspiration for millions.

What makes a story perfect? How do you tell the perfect story for any occasion?

We live in a story world. Stories are a memorable and engaging way to differentiate yourself, build connection and trust, create new thinking, bring meaning to data, and even influence decision-making. But how do you turn a good story into a great story that informs, influences, and inspires?

In The Perfect Story, Karen Eber--leadership consultant, professional keynote storyteller, and TED speaker--shares the science of storytelling to teach you to:

• Leverage the Five Factory Settings of the Brain to hack the art of storytelling
• Build a toolkit of endless story ideas
• Define the audience for your story
• Apply a memorable story structure
• Engage senses and emotions
• Tell stories with data
• Avoid common storytelling mistakes
• Use your body to tell dynamic stories
• Ensure your story doesn't manipulate
• Navigate and embrace the vulnerability of storytelling

Without relying on complicated models or one-size-fits-all prescriptions, this book makes storytelling accessible with practical and impactful steps for anyone to tell the perfect story for any occasion.

Through interview vignettes, The Perfect Story also shares approaches from different storytellers, including the Sundance Institute cofounder, an executive producer of The Moth, the former creative director at Pixar, the TED Radio Hour podcast host, and many more.

Whether you are leading a team, giving a presentation, hosting a podcast, selling a product or service, interviewing for a job, or giving a toast at a wedding, The Perfect Story will help you take your stories and make them perfect.

The Storytelling Almanac is a tool that will improve your skills as a story creator. Regardless of the industry you work in, the mediums you employ, or the audience you create for, this book will help you begin to understand the underlying psychology beneath the differing elements of story. Offering a unique story lesson for each week of the year, timely examples are provided, and challenging exercises end each chapter. Bonus sections on the seasons of storytelling and improving your pitching are also included.

With special emphasis on character, myth, and structure, The Storytelling Almanac can work as a linear guide for telling a better story, a reference guide for specific challenges that storytellers face, or simply a guide that allows readers to follow their interests in the world of story.

Using techniques perfected over more than twenty years of consulting and classroom workshopping, the principles in this book are more than just theory. They are tried and true, based on the universal human experience, and embraced by successful storytellers around the world.

These tales, carefully and thoughtfully transcribed by Sivinski, have been passed down through Appalachia's oral histories over decades and even centuries. This wonderful selection was mainly drawn from the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University and special collections at Berea College. Drawing on the work of other regional archivists and folklorists, Sivinski grapples with issues of gender balance in Appalachian storytelling. The problem, Sivinski posits, does not rest with the fairy tale genre itself but in the canonization process, in which
women's contributions have been diminished as oral traditions become transcribed.

Appalachian women have historically demonstrated resilience, wit, and adaptability, and it is time that more collections of regional folklore reorient themselves to make this fact more apparent. Stories are living, breathing narratives, meant not just to be read but to be read aloud. This timely selection of unique stories, along with beautiful, evocative illustrations, makes Fairy Tales of Appalachia an intriguing addition to the much-contested fairy tale canon.

A new, interactive approach to storytime, The Whole Book Approach was developed in conjunction with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and expert author Megan Dowd Lambert's graduate work in children's literature at Simmons College, offering a practical guide for reshaping storytime and getting kids to think with their eyes.

Traditional storytime often offers a passive experience for kids, but the Whole Book approach asks the youngest of readers to ponder all aspects of a picture book and to use their critical thinking skills. Using classic examples, Megan asks kids to think about why the trim size of Ludwig Bemelman's Madeline is so generous, or why the typeset in David Wiesner's Caldecott winner, The Three Pigs, appears to twist around the page, or why books like Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express and Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar are printed landscape instead of portrait. The dynamic discussions that result from this shared reading style range from the profound to the hilarious and will inspire adults to make children's responses to text, art, and design an essential part of storytime.

Cinematics Storyboard Workshop is for any artist who wants to learn how to create professional, production-ready storyboards for film, animation, television, and video game cinematics.

Modeled on the Cinematics course by artist and educator Gregg Davidson, this must-have guidebook is a concise, in-depth guide to the fundamentals: from storyboard mechanics and camera angles, to shot progression and staging, as well as current digital storyboarding and previsualization practices. Founder of The Animation Academy, Charles Zembillas, called Cinematics Storyboard Workshop one of the best books on learning how to storyboard.

Georgiana Keable introduces a staggering wealth of world stories about nature and our role in it. These are traditional stories that have stood the test of time and often speak of what is universal and enduring in our experiences of and relationship with nature. Culturally diverse and told with great energy and panache, the stories will engage young readers and encourage them to become natural storytellers.

The book includes several story maps to help readers think visually about stories, as well as other ways to remember the various stages the tales. The author also reflects on the heart of each tale--what it is about and ways that readers can turn their own experience into stories. Each section includes a practical activity for individuals or groups.

The author's message is clear: The resources needed for natural storytelling are all around us in abundance--in nature and in our imagination.

GIFT IDEAS COLOURING BOOKS FOR GROWN-UPS BEST GIFT IDEAS

This incredible adult coloring book by best-selling artist is the perfect way to relieve stress and aid relaxation while enjoying beautiful and highly detailed images. Each coloring page will transport you into a world of your own while your responsibilities will seem to fade away...

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Each image is printed on white pages to prevent bleed-through.

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Enjoy coloring your favorite images a second time, color with a friend, or have an extra copy in case you make a mistake.

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THE ENDURING MYTH THAT MAKES US HUMAN

What makes a hero? Who better to answer that question than Lee Child...

'It's Lee Child. Why would you not read it?' Karin Slaughter

'I don't know another author so skilled at making me turn the page' The Times

In his first work of nonfiction, the creator of the multimillion-selling Jack Reacher series explores the endurance of heroes from Achilles to Bond, showing us how this age-old myth is a fundamental part of what makes us human. He demonstrates how hero stories continue to shape our world - arguing that we need them now more than ever.

From the Stone Age to the Greek Tragedies, from Shakespeare to Robin Hood, we have always had our heroes. The hero is at the centre of formative myths in every culture and persists to this day in world-conquering books, films and TV shows. But why do these characters continue to inspire us, and why are they so central to storytelling?

Scalpel-sharp on the roots of storytelling and enlightening on the history and science of myth, The Hero is essential reading for anyone trying to write or understand fiction. Child teaches us how these stories still shape our minds and behaviour in an increasingly confusing modern world, and with his trademark concision and wit, demonstrates that however civilised we get, we'll always need heroes.

You do not just have one story to tell. You have endless stories inside of you, just waiting to be told. The goal of the Storytelling Workbook for Beginners is to help you work your storytelling muscles on a daily or weekly basis, so you can be able to spot storytelling opportunities at any given time and know which story will be the most effective to use. By setting up a simple story structure for you to understand and follow, as well as a routine practice of working that storytelling muscle, you can create up to 100 stories with this one workbook. And soon, you will be well on your way to becoming a compelling storyteller From filmmaker and storytelling expert Rain Bennett, this workbook establishes the Four Ps that serve as the framework of his award-winning stories -- People, Problem, Purpose, and Platform.This workbook is perfect for entrepreneurs, marketers, communication directors, small to medium business owners, nonprofit communicators, influencers, competitive storytellers, and people who know that stories create human connections

Using a fun, irreverent, and infographic approach, Margot Leitman breaks storytelling into concrete components. Whether you want to write a great wedding toast, deliver a compelling keynote speech, or simply entertain friends and family, comedian and Moth 5-time champion storyeller Margot Leitman provides a clear and engaging roadmap to telling your own personal stories in this approachable storytelling guide.

From content and structure to emotional impact and delivery, Leitman guides you through the entire storytelling process, providing personal anecdotes, relatable examples, and practical exercises along the way.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Getting Started
Chapter 1. You Already Have Great Stories
Chapter 2. Getting Past Fear
Chapter 3. The Truth
Chapter 4. The Universal Theme
Chapter 5. The Thesis-Based Story

Part 2: Elements of a Story
Chapter 6. Passion
Chapter 7. Layering a Story
Chapter 8. Perspective
Chapter 9. Character
Chapter 10. Rooting for the Storyteller
Chapter 11. The Full Circle
Chapter 12. Someone Else's Story
Chapter 13. The Unexpected
Chapter 14. The Benign

Part 3: The Performance and Beyond
Chapter 15. How to Memorize & Vocalize a Story
Chapter 16. The Business of Storytelling

This book is essential--a reminder that the world would be a better place if everyone knew how to tell a good story.
--Diana Spechler, author and seven-time Moth StorySLAM winner

In 1993 when Robert Lepage suggested to his colleagues that a specific identity and image be found for his next working group, he imposed one condition. The word theatre was not to be part of the name of the new company. This gorgeous full-colour book documents the results of that landmark decision: the dynamic creative arts company Ex Machina, constantly on the move in search of new forms of storytelling--from Lepage's own Dragon's Trilogy, through Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for the Metropolitan Opera of New York, to Peter Gabriel's world tours, or Cirque du Soleil's Kà in Las Vegas. Its frenetic dynamism means the company must constantly move simultaneously between story draft and stagecraft as it invites audiences the world over to their theatrical experiments where technology is part of the human adventure. Onstage, hierarchies, methodologies and narrative codes are turned inside out to create a rich stage vocabulary, free of the conventional constraints of theatre.

The artists of Ex Machina believe that theatre craves new sources of inspiration, notes Michel Bernatchez, the company's producer. What is needed is a commingling of the performing arts such as dance, opera and music with the recording arts such as cinema, video and multimedia. It calls for encounters between scientists and playwrights, between scenic artists and architects.

Robert Lepage has said, Theatre, like the world itself, evolves very rapidly, as do its practitioners and its audience. The influence of film and television and the new dramaturgical possibilities offered by multimedia have opened the way to new forms of expression and new languages of staging that have only barely been explored. It is thus not simply the content and form of theatre that we are questioning, but also the role theatre will play in the new exchange of ideas in the 21st century.

This must-have collection of behavior tales offers story medicine as a creative strategy for parenting, teaching, and counselling. Telling the right story at the right time can help children face challenges and change behavior.

All 42 stories begin with an undesirable or out-of-balance situation. Through metaphor and imaginative story journeys, they lead to a desirable resolution. The stories can lead to nurturing positive values in children.

Following the alphabet from A to Z, each behavior is identified in the story title--angry, anxious, bullying, demanding, fussy, greedy, jealous, loud, obnoxious, quibbling, uncooperative, and so on.

The stories, some humorous, some serious, are especially relevant for children of three to nine years of age, as well as the child in every adult! They are for telling and adapting--turn them into homemade picture books or puppet shows, or even create new tales based on them. Pencil-drawn illustrations by Allmut ffrench accompany each story.

Surprise yourself with new plots, infinite characters and settings, and a supreme confidence in your own process. Armed with the power of improv--and liberating exercises like Ad Agency, Raise the Stakes, and Family Portraits--you'll soon be an idea machine. With Improv for Writers, your creative storytelling well will never run dry again.

Advance praise for Improv for Writers

Here's a secret. Many authors started out as drama geeks and later found that theatrical skills like deep-diving into character and improvising on the fly were essential tools for writing fiction. Jorjeana Marie's generous, joyful and oh-so useful book applies the principles of improv to writing and though a series of targeted, fun exercises shows writers--both the seasoned and the new--how to unleash their creativity and find their best story.--Gayle Forman, New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay and I Have Lost My Way

Part practical, part playful, part encouraging and affirming, Jorjeana Marie's Improv for Writers is a certain antidote to writing blocks--and writer's block This book is a necessary and vital tool for authors and storytellers everywhere.--Karma Brown, bestselling author of The Life Lucy Knew

Thank you, Jorjeana Marie for infusing joy and play and experimentation in the often-arduous act of writing fiction. I'll be turning to these exercises whenever I need to jump-start my writing session and will be recommending many of my writing students to do the same.--Nina LaCour, Michael L. Printz Award-winning author of We Are Okay, Hold Still, The Disenchantments, and Everything Leads to You; and You Know Me Well, a novel written in collaboration with David Levithan.

Magician and storyteller Taylor Hughes reexamines moments of his personal life through the eyes of wonder. It is a heartfelt and sometimes hilarious journey that will encourage and inspire you to chase wonder in your own life.

Your life is not a puzzle to be solved, it is a mystery to enjoy!