Crafting a Campfire Story

By Jeremy Broadwater

Motlow Buzz Contributing Writer

            I can still remember as a young child sitting around the campfire listening to my grandfather and dad telling stories. I can still hear the crackling of the fire wood, the smell of it as it burned. My dad and my grandfather were the storytellers. They would often start every gathering by positioning the firewood and igniting a fire symbolizing the power and light to bring truth.  

We recently celebrated Halloween and generally, if you are like me, you are enjoying nightly gatherings watching horror movies or listening to scary and eerie stories about ghosts, goblins, vampires, and all things that go bump in the night. I have always enjoyed all things of the unknown, whether it is horrifying or some crazy supernatural occurrence that has left my mind boggled.

I remember as a very young child hearing the stories about my family’s history of hauntings and the crazy tales of other beings following them from the old country eons ago. This has always fascinated me to a great degree growing up. I have used horror movies and horror books as sources of influence and fuel to create and tell my own stories. I share them with friends to scare them out of their minds.

           Creating and telling your campfire story takes a lot of skill and imagination. Over time it will become easier and easier to frighten or to wow your listeners. If you can remember your dreams, mainly nightmares, it can help you to spin a great story.

Andrew Blackman, a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal, wrote that keeping a “dream” journal can help you create a good story for your campfire gathering. You will be able to recall the dreams on demand after writing them down. If you want to learn more about this, visit Blackman’s at https://writetodone.com/author/andrew/.

Develop a rich vocabulary to vividly describe what the person in a tale is sensing, his/her surroundings, and what missions the hero of your story must accomplish. Vocabulary usage is challenging but essential. I struggle with it. I find it useful to discover new words in the dictionary or a thesaurus. Finding synonyms or antonyms for those words helps me to add depth.

Reading is another way to build your vocabulary. It’s also important to learn from the storytellers of old. Study how they write, including their verbs, modifiers and sentence structures. I found this site to be very helpful: https://wordcounter.net/blog/2014/01/22/1027_25-ways-to-improve-your-writing-vocabulary.html

            Is it stormy or foggy? Create an appropriate atmosphere in your storytelling that mirrors the one you are experiencing in real time. Edger Allan Poe had true-to-life descriptive tales that captured the imagination of thousands, bringing shivers down their spins. You could feel the chill and dampness of the pit in Poe’s chilling tale “Pit and the Pendulum.” You could almost smell the scents of various aromas the characters smelled.

Algernon Blackwood’s tale “Wendigo” makes us feel the night’s bitter, cold air as the campfire’s heat keeps us warm. We hear sticks crack under the feet of something unknown and the sweetened scents of decay from a strange something wondering out in the darkness. We can't see it, but it can see us. We become terrified as we imagine a sleeping Defago experiencing discomfort as when the wendigo lurks just outside of Defago’s and Simson’s tent. Our hearts skip beats as Defago runs outside the tent after hearing the menacing voice of the Wendigo, and it’s there, just beyond the open flaps of the tent.

            What is the nature of your story? Every story needs a moral so that the listeners can learn and take away something valuable. Every story needs a character who takes risks. Only by the grace of God can the character survive till the end. Your story should show the character’s bravery, especially to younger listeners. The hero faces terrors and troubles that would seem be his end, but by some unknown power he never gives up. Like all of us, he might doubt himself. The names of the character need to fit what they symbolize. If you want more information about this, visit https://thewritelife.com/6-creative-ways-to-name-your-fictional-characters/

            Your body movement should also be part of the story. Get into it and act it out as much as you can without being too distracting and goofy. Your facial features should change constantly with the ebb and flow of the story. With body language, you need to figure out the right body postures and the right time to jump scare your audience. It is all in perfect timing. Think of it as a musical piece with everything having its place.

Michael Roth’s research paper titled “The Role of Gestures in Storytelling” explains this very well. His research shows how young children use gestures without any verbal communication present. Body language is a big part of any kind of storytelling. Native Americans use a lot of gestures and dances within their stories.

            When my dad told a story, he would ask us to gather around a fire he built. Neighbors would be invited to join us. He would tell tales about hunting trips that he took with his father and brother. He described the noises and sights in the woods. He also talked about how scared he was as a young boy camping out in the woods and hearing all the night sounds closing in on him. One tale he told was about a screech-owl.

He told his story in casual fashion while sitting in a wooden lawn chair with listeners gathering around him. He would sit upright like a king before his people with his hands on his knees and his head looking forward at us. My dad explained how a screech-owl had scared him witless as a child. Somewhere outside the tent was a monster coming to devour him. My dad signaled with his hands in hypnotizing movements, distorting his face like he was afraid. At the end of his story, he made a silhouette of an owl on the tree above us.  At just the right moment while everybody was staring at the shadow, he would scream and scare us all.  

Like my dad, I have written a campfire story for friends and family called “The Scarecrow Man.” The story is about a working college man named Ted who loves Halloween and enjoys decorating. One of his favorite decorations is a scarecrow he nails to a tree that stands 6 feet, 6 inches tall. The man is awakened by strange noises outside of his bedroom, where the scarecrow stands. When he investigates, he believes he see the scarecrow moving. He quickly comes to the conclusion that he is hallucinating due to exhaustion from lack of sleep. The following evening, however, Ted is faced with a terror beyond imagination. What terror does Ted face? To find out, visit my blog at https://storytellingaroundthecampfire.blogspot.com/. I hope you enjoy it.