Assisted storytelling: Deploying shared knowledge as a practical matter

Previous studies have shown that storytelling in conversation consists of more than a speaker producing an extended narrative. Stories issue from the concerted action of storyteller and story recipients. The current study identifies features of storytelling found when some participants share knowledge of the source events for the story. Practices for assisting story initiation are described. Through these practices participants arrange who will deliver the story and concomitantly establish the other participant as a story consociate and thereby as a possible co-teller. Practices for assisting the delivery of a story are then described. A set of story entry devices is identified, and these devices are shown to provide occasions for changing tellers in the course of a story. Repeated use of these devices can provided repeated opportunities for re-arranging who will continue the story, thus producing the possibility of a collaboratively told story. The report ends with a discussion of assisted story reception. Assisted storytelling is shown to be a systematic elaboration of storytelling organization with opportunities for a story consociate to participate in both the delivery and reception of the story from the story preface, throughout the story, and into the final reception by story recipients.