What is story telling?

Storry telling let me think of "The Big Fish" , a 2003 fantasy drama film, directed by Tim Burton and written byJohn August It is loosely based on the novel Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace and Stars Ewan macGregor, Albert Finny, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Alison Lohman, Steve Buscemi, Helena Bonham Carter, Marion Cotillard and Danny DeVito, among others. The Story is about the Will Bloom (Crudup) returns to his family home in Abama, having spent the past three years not talking to his father Edward (Finney). Dying, Edward recounts his life story in his own unique, exaggerated way, full of fantastic events (portrayed in these flashbacks by McGregor). Will tries to get to know his father and find the truth, discovering that his father did lead an extraordinary life and that his storytelling was his finest achievement.

well, well

story telling is the conveying of events in words, images, and sounds often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture and in every land as a means of entertainment, education, preservation of culture and in order to instill moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot and characters, as well as the narrative point of view.
The earliest forms of storytelling are thought to have been primarily oral combined with gestures and expressions. Rudimentary drawings scratched onto the walls of caves may be forms of early storytelling for many of the ancient cultures. The Australian Aborginal people painted symbols from the stories on cave walls as a means of helping the storyteller remember the story. The story was then told using a combination of oral narrative, music, rock art and dance. Ephemeral media such as sand, leaves, and the carved trunks of living trees have also been used to record stories in pictures or with writing.

The evolution of technology has changed the tools available to storytellers. With the advent of writing, the use of actual digit symbols to represent language, and the use of stable, portable media stories were recorded, transcribed and shared over wide regions of the world. Stories have been carved, scratched, painted, printed, or inked onto wood or bamboo, ivory and other bones, pottery, clay tablets, stone, palm-leaf books, skins (parchment), bark cloth, paper, silk, canvas and other textiles, recorded on film and stored electronically in digital form. Complex forms of tattooing may also represent stories, with information about genealogy, affiliation and social status.

Traditionally, oral stories were committed to memory and then passed from generation to generation. However, in the most recent past, written and televised media has largely surpassed this method communicating local, family and cultural histories.

resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling