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The Art of the Story-Teller by Marie L. Shedlock
page 38 of 264 (14%)

Here I would like to make a judicious pause, and then the children in
the audience would shout in chorus, with joyful superiority: "Little
Red Riding-Hood!" before I had time to explain that the children in my
dream had done the same.

This method I repeated two or three times, being careful to choose
very well-known stories. By this time the children were all encouraged
and stimulated. I usually finished with congratulations on the number
of stories they knew, expressing a hope that some of those I was going
to tell that afternoon would be new to them. I have rarely found this
plan to fail to establish a friendly relation between oneself and the
juvenile audience. It is often a matter of great difficulty, not to
_win_ the attention of an audience but to _keep_ it, and one of the most
subtle artifices is to let the audience down (without their perceiving
it) after a dramatic situation, so that the reaction may prepare them
for the interest of the next situation.

An excellent instance of this is to be found in Rudyard Kipling's
story of "The Cat That Walked . . ." where the repetition of words
acts as a sort of sedative until one realizes the beginning of a
fresh situation.

The great point is never to let the audience quite down, that is, in
stories which depend on dramatic situations. It is just a question of
shade and color in the language. If you are telling a story in
sections, and one spread over two or three occasions, you should
always stop at an exciting moment. It encourages speculation in the
children's minds, which increases their interest when the story is
taken up again.
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