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 A Cautionary Tale

When witches get together, they naturally talk shop, just like everyone else, and this, after all, was a gathering of all the world's witches.

There in the big cave where they meet, it became a contest: whose magic could do the most harm? Spells, poisons, incantations: one after another, the magics just got worse and worse.

(Terry Pratchett calls such gatherings “witch trials”, where—like everyone else—witches vaunt and strive to outdo one another. The food is always good, at least.)

Finally the last witch stood up. Her hands were empty. She had no cauldron, no wand, no pouch of baneful herbs.

“I have a story,” she said.

The witch told her story. It was horrible: a story of death and rapine, suffering and cruelty. All the witches agreed that this was by far the winning wickedness, the worst magic yet.

There followed a pause and a stirring among the gathered multitude.

“You've gone too far,” the witches told her. “Even for bale-workers like us, this is beyond the pale. This story is just plain too evil. You have to take it back again.”

Humans are story-telling animals. We live and die by our stories, and most of us tell them every day.

(“When I was down at the store today....”)

Here's how to do it better.

One story at a time, please.

A good story has a single trajectory. The sad fact is that most of us are only half listening to one another at any given moment, so as soon as you start in with the digressions, your listeners have already lost the momentum of the narrative, and you've blunted your story's edge.

Spare us the back-story.

With stories, it's always tempting to want to start at the beginning. Don't. The creation of the universe is not a good place to start your story about what happened at the ritual last night. Give your listeners only the information that they need to have in order to get the point of what you're telling them.

Keep the detail relevant.

If it really doesn't matter that she's wearing a blue coat rather than a red one, don't mention it.

Keep it short and toward.

If you've been talking for more than five minutes, I can guarantee you that nobody is listening to you any more. Deliver, or shut the eff up.

Be specific.

Which of these two phrases tells you more? Which makes the man in question sound more desirable?

a. “A really cute guy.”

b. “A guy with a butt like two halves of a white pumpkin, and cheekbones you could cut your hand on.”

Don't be the hero of all your own stories.

He's a good friend, whom I love well. But, dear gods, he's always the hero of all his own stories. After a while, quite frankly, I get tired of hearing about how wonderful he is and, by implication, what a clown I must be by comparison because I am most decidedly not the hero of everything that I do.

Build to a specific point.

The whole story should be leading us somewhere. Telling a good story is a matter of building tension, which is finally released at the climax.

A good story is like good sex.

Stories, whether oral tradition myths, written fiction, or written nonfiction, change over time. Each generation changes its heroes to suit them. Storytellers tell the same myth a dozen different ways to suit different audiences, occasions, and lessons. Nonfiction writers revise their books and make new editions (like I did.) Every printed or recorded version of a book is a snapshot in time.

It occurred to me as I sat in the morning sunshine mending a quilt that I had made that I was in a way making a new version of my quilt. It started as a way to use up silk test strips from when I operated a custom fabric dyeing business, and every piece in it was a silk fabric I had hand dyed. As I used darning, a type of needle weaving, to mend parts of the fabric that had worn, aged, or cat-clawed away, I kept the same log cabin design and every fiber I put in it was also hand dyed, and yet, the more I mended the more it became a completely different textile.

[No spoilers here. I haven't seen the movie, so this is 100% spoiler free]

On March 6, 1710, workmen excavating a crypt beneath the nave of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris discovered a number of carved blocks from a Gallo-Roman votive pillar set up by the Guild of Boatmen some time during the first quarter of the first century CE. By far the most famous image from this pillar shows the head of the Gaulish god Cernunnos, bearded and deer-eared, his antlers hung with torcs.

On March 18, 1314, Jacques de Molay, 23^rd and last Grand Master of the order of the Knights Templar, was burned at the stake on an island in the Seine River in Paris. The order had been suppressed, seven years previously, on charges of heresy, including the worship of a mysterious bearded Head. De Molay's last request of his executioners is that they tie him so that he can face the Cathedral of Notre Dame as he burns. They grant his request.

Lore-master Kazi Khosnawas sits under an old walnut tree and tells a story.

Eight generations ago, before the time of Shuragali, Kalasha women wore black beads from Peshawar, but now they favor red beads. Here is why.

Shuragali was staying in the bashali, the Women's House, because she was just about to give birth, but Tiliwari lurked outside, seeking to devour her. (Tiliwari, a cruel being in the shape of a man covered with hair, his mouth red with blood, preys upon pregnant and parturant women.) Shrewd Shuragali enticed him into the bashali and pushed him into the fire, where he burned to death. Ever since then Kalasha women have worn red beads in tribute to her courage and resourcefulness.

This is a local story, says lore-master Kazi Khosnawas. That's how we know it's true.

In my view, one of the most comforting activities one can do after a loved one has passed through the veil is telling stories about the deceased.  Stories tell us who we are, where we came from, what we might become.  They are our primary teaching tools. 

“We're all made of stories.  When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on.  Not forever, perhaps, but for a time.  It’s a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it’s true, but then so’s everything.”