Before Stories Were Written, They Were Heard

If you sit with a story long enough, you begin to notice something.

Long before we ever put words on a page, stories lived in the air between people. They were shaped by breath, by pauses, by the way a voice rose or softened. They existed because someone chose to tell them… and someone else chose to listen.

As a writer, I sometimes forget just how old that tradition is. Writing surrounds us everywhere we go: Words etched into pages and flickering on screens, always waiting to be discovered by a reader. Spoken stories, though — they live only in the moment they’re shared, with a kind of immediacy the page can’t hold, before quietly fading into the silence once the telling ends.

For most of human history, stories were spoken. Not by ink, but by voice. Not by permanence, but by repetition. They survived because they mattered enough to be told again.

Those early stories weren’t just for fun. They also shared practical knowledge. They warned us of dangers, explained how to live with one another and how to live on the land, and gave people a way to understand where they came from and where they belonged.

Spoken storytelling wasn’t a performance. It was a way of making sense of the world.

Long before we learned to read, we learned to listen.

A spoken story unfolds in its own time. You can’t skim it or jump ahead. You receive it at the pace of another person’s voice. And as the listener, you have to stay with a spoken story. If your attention drifts, the story doesn’t pause to catch you up.

That’s part of the experience. With spoken storytelling, understanding doesn’t always come right away. Sometimes a detail only makes sense much later, or a pause can speak louder than words. You don’t always understand right away — and that’s part of the experience.

We still see this instinct early in life. Children are read to long before they can read on their own. They respond to rhythm and tone before they recognize letters, and they can sense meaning even before they can put a name to it. That order tells us something important.

Spoken storytelling trained us to listen for meaning over time — not all at once. It’s through these powerful narratives that we pass down knowledge, carrying history and culture from one generation to the next.

Writing changed how stories travel.

Writing changed what stories could do. It gave stories endurance. It allowed them to travel across distance and time. It preserved voices that would otherwise be lost.

I’m grateful for this. Writing has shaped my life.

But writing also changed how stories behave. On the page, a story becomes silent and private. You can pause it, skim it, reread a passage, or skip ahead. The reader controls the pace.

Spoken storytelling offers no such control. When a story is told aloud, both the teller and the listener share the same stretch of time. If attention wanders, the story continues without you. That risk creates a different kind of connection, asking more of everyone involved.

Neither form is better. They both serve different human needs. But they do different work.

A voice carries meaning that the page cannot.

Voice carries more than information. It carries intention. Doubt. Restraint. And sometimes, what matters most is not what’s said, but how — or when — it’s left unsaid.

When a story is spoken aloud, the pace, tone, and pauses shape its meaning. A hesitation can say as much as a paragraph, and silence can hold fear, grief, or wonder without explaining any of it.

As listeners, we don’t remember every detail. We remember how the story felt. We remember where our attention sharpened, where it softened. We remember what stayed with us.

Oral traditions change over time without losing their core. Details shift, but the meaning holds. Spoken storytelling values continuity over precision.

Stories were meant to be passed on.

Storytelling is not about performance. It’s about passing something on.

A piece of understanding moves from one person to another. Not perfectly. Not completely. But enough to continue. That’s how knowledge survived before libraries. That’s how values crossed generations before institutions took over. That’s how people learned who they were in relation to one another and to the land.

Spoken storytelling created shared time. Everyone listening entered the same unfolding moment. That shared attention mattered. It still does.

The human ear hasn’t changed as much as we think.

Spoken storytelling is still part of daily life. We lower our voices when something matters. We say, “Let me tell you something,” when we want to be heard. We listen differently when a story is spoken, even if we don’t consciously notice why.

When I read my own work aloud, I hear things the page doesn’t show me. Some sentences look fine, but feel wrong when spoken. Others surprise me. They ask for space. Or for silence afterward. The ear is less forgiving than the eye, but it is often more truthful.

I was reminded of this again while listening to the new audiobook edition of the Merlin Saga. Hearing the story spoken — carried by another voice, with its own cadence and restraint — revealed patterns and pauses I hadn’t fully noticed on the page.

Before the story begins, I offer a brief spoken introduction, not to explain the tale, but to greet the listener and step aside. The narration itself, beautifully read by John Lee, does what spoken stories have always done: it asks the listener to slow down and stay.

If you’ve listened to the new audiobook, I’d love to hear from you. I always enjoy hearing what listeners notice — what lingered, what surprised you, and how the story sounded in your own imagination.

Stories live fully when page and voice meet.

Writing helps stories last longer than we do. Speaking lets them move from one person to another. Listening is where they settle, for a while.

We don’t need to choose one over the other. But it helps to remember where storytelling began. Stories were shaped by breath before grammar and carried by memory before the page.

Stories were never meant only to be read. They were meant to be heard, remembered imperfectly, and passed on — one voice to another.