Response to Story Memorization Presentations

Memorization is key to communicating a good story. Almost everyone can answer the question of a line of some pop song from his or her youth word for word is asked. This is because music, as a form of storytelling, is very visceral and can evoke extremely deep emotions in people. The question is how does it do this? What makes music, or stories that utilize rhyme and rhythm in general, capable of implanting themselves into our minds without prolonged study? After hearing many story presentations, I think I''ve found the answer.

In every good song or short, rhyming story, progression is key. The plots are always moving and little time is spent on descriptive factors. This is because, the longer you linger on one aspect of a story like a description, the easier it is for the audience to get bored. Descriptions are mainly used to present a complete picture of something, but short stories and music don''t have that advantage. There are only so many lines at their disposal and every one counts.

I don''t know if it''s because I have a terrible memory or not, but I cannot honestly recall a single line from stories that I''ve recently heard or read. I can remember bits and phrases, but not any whole line. I feel this is because none of them utilized true progression. Yes, almost all of them had a beginning, middle, and end, but you can fit a lot of words into eighteen lines. Most of these words were used to describe things: How people looked, where they were, or why they were doing something. If more thought was put into advancing the plot in some sort of linear, easy-to-follow progression, I think all stories would be much easier to follow. Take a story I recently heard about a call center operator and thir interactions with the customer. I know the name of the operator and the general idea of the story yet cannot remember any lines.

I also think that metaphor and simile add to the difficulty of remembering stories, while cliche actually helps. In fact, if you''re going to use a metaphor or simile, might as well make them cliches because that seems like the only way people are going to remember them. Cliches are cliches because we''ve all heard them a million times. So, when they''re heard, they stick with us much easier than metaphors or similes that can become very abstract, depending on the author.

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Repetition is another key factor that not many stories utilize. The farmer and the dell is another example of how repetition can really help your story out. I would have liked to hear an example of this to see if I retained it to determine how essential it really is. I think the main lesson here though is, keep it simple. The same is true with business names. Take Specialty Answering Service. The name of the company uses the term answering service in the name reiterating what it is they do. Imagine if the company was names 77 telephones, you may have a hard time determining who they are or what they do. Try to keep progression on the mind, don''t overdo it with metaphors and similes that could be too abstract, and try to include repetition because it seems to be a tried and true example of good storytelling that''s easy to remember.