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This Person Knows How To Tell A Story


There’s more than only having a narrative structure or a plot outline to TELLING a great story. There is a skill that I admit I lack: knowing how to spin a yarn, how to tell a tale. Spielberg had it. Stephen King had it. Jane Austin had it. Homer had it. Shakespeare had it. Aeschylus had it. Mark Twain had it. Who else do you think has it? Someone who does not just spit out a plot, but someone who weaves a tale?

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My candidates: Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, James Cameron and John Ronald Rual Tolkien.

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I love James Clavell's books, and with a couple of exceptions, he's a great story teller.

I also admire writers who can take a non-fiction story and make it as engrossing as a novel, like Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote the books Casino and Wiseguy (Goodfellas).

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They are Thank you.

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Kate DiCamillo. She just has it. She knows how to tell a story that stays with you, in a way that makes you want to keep coming back to it. Also, I want to add Walt Whitman.

However, I would say most of the storytellers you listed sometimes have it and sometimes don't. They're not always on the money - but when they are, they are big time.

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