A History of Storytelling

Mikayla Leskey | Arts and Entertainment

Silhouette of woman with kid playing behind sheet. / Photo by 'ADDICTIVE_STOCK', licensed by Envato.com.

We all have stories to tell—it doesn’t matter your age or gender or race or class, or anything really, you have a story. Whether that story be of your entire life or something that happened to you yesterday. Every choice you make is the basis of a story, even if it’s choosing what to eat or not doing homework, you can make a story out of it.

For as long as humans have existed, we’ve created stories. It was one of the first forms of entertainment that we had. Also, our first form of passing down history to one another. At first, it was just us sitting around the campfire, listening to these stories that one day would be history. History that probably was mixed up in some way, shape, or form, because it’s difficult to remember stories that aren’t written down, and maybe that’s why we have these myths of heroes and monsters or legends.

More than that, people saw themselves in these stories, inspired to live their life just like these heroes, and when they realized they couldn’t, then they just interjected themselves into the next story they told. That’s how we got those first memoirs, people being inspired by stories and decided to share their own life as a story, too. 

Then, in the middle-ages, poets and bards came about. They would go from town to town, sharing the wonders of kings and queens and heroes of the times. Bards would have music accompanying their tall tales, whilst poets captivated their audience by the sound of their voice and the story alone. The important thing here is that this is when stories started getting captured and written down, at least, in a more understandable way. Cave paintings would be the first form of documentation, but we’ve only gotten more advanced from there. 

When the printing press was created, laws were too. The wealthy would pay for things to not be printed, or to take things out of the piece. Some workers found ways around it, nonetheless. But that isn’t the story for today—the printing press changed the narrative. It made stories, books accessible for everyone, not just those fortunate to have a poet or a bard come their way, or wealthy enough to see a play. 

The tradition of storytelling only grew, no longer having to rely on memory for their tales, storytellers began fine-tuning their stories, making them seem grander and more reliable. Their stories grew more complex, as did the way we tell stories. No longer just a form of verbal telling, you can find it anywhere. From video games to TV and Film, to plays and sports—everything has a story, so what’s yours?