Emotion, Intellect and Connection

This past week a fellow Storyteller from my church's Storyteller's club asked me . . .

Something like this:

"What emotion do you work with
or try to express when you tell a story?"

This was just an initial question to get some discussion going but, I've been thinking more about it and thought I'd put some of them down as they come to me.

I need to give this some more thought and would appreciate your thoughts on this one.

Here's what I'm thinking so far . . .

I suppose there are many emotions that I work with but, I think it is more than emotion. It has to do with the intellect as well. Somehow the two come together to make the story connect with the person in the audience. This doesn't happen automatically. It takes work. I have to know my audience, perhaps (in Biblical Storytelling) know the audience the story was originally told for. I need to figure out what things I need to do that will engage their thinking and emotions. I am not there to manupulate their thinking but to lead them into the story. This has to do with leading and facilitating people . . . hopefully more on this later.

I can't explain this in just the few words that a posting like this offers but, from my previous postings on Internalizing, Reflecting on the Beatitudes, and On Remembering I'd like to make a connection between learning and leading.