Thursday 5 June 2014

What stories do teenagers tell?

Last week I was musing about what stories teenagers enjoy listening to.  But what about the stories they tell - either in response to stories I tell, or more informally in other parts of a workshop?

Well, it's a universe, just as it would be for adults.  It's also likely to be heavily influenced by the kind of stories I have told to them - and, of course, what my ears are open to really hear.  However, I am starting to discern themes and types.  I also perceive common influences on their storytelling style, cultural material from films and books and popular culture that they sometimes weave into their stories, often very creatively.

So here are some.  I'll take younger teenagers first, 12-15s.  I'm going to put them in a (biased, subjective, approximate) hierarchy of greatest to least interest as stories:
  • hero tales of misfits and outsiders finding their role in life - or failing to do so
  • folktales of the granting of wishes, special powers
  • stories about bullying, isolation
  • true stories of family mishaps
  • urban myths, usually ghoulish
  • novelistic stories of the experience of 'being a teenager'
  • stories with subverted endings - where the baddie goes unpunished, or the heroine turns out to be corrupt
  • tales of judgment, punishment
  • action adventures high on technology and short on realism, except sometimes (and strikingly) in realistic relationships between characters
  • destructive stories where everyone is killed off and nothing ever really changes
And older teenagers, say 15+ - much of the above but also:
  • love stories
  • personal tales of how one came to be the way one is, or how a character in a story came to be the way they were
  • vampire/horror tales
  • stories of personal mishaps and troubles
A lot of this reflects the experience of other tellers who have worked with this age group - but some of the items on these lists I haven't encountered in the literature.  I'd be very interested to hear from you if you have worked with teenagers using storytelling and have any thoughts.

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