I’ve seen people, creators, so-called experts offer storytelling advice without ever showing what storytelling actually is. Frameworks, slides, hooks, formulas — all telling you the theory, none of it demonstrating the thing itself.
Recently, someone showed me instead.
I attended “Writing Right For Young Adults,” a session with Manisha Chaudhry, part of the Selangor Children’s Literature Festival. I’d signed up for my daughter. She fell sick, so I came to take her seat. I didn’t notice the workshop was three hours long until 30 minutes before it started.
I told myself — this is going to be boring. Who has the time to sit through a three-hour workshop, listening to an expert talk about storytelling, in this digital-forsaken, over-infused society? Yeah. Me. I’m the one.
Walking in, I was the last person to arrive, and had to introduce myself during the icebreaker.
The speaker was, I’d guess, a woman in her sixties, from India. Barefoot. Standing next to a whiteboard paper chart, holding a mic. No slides. Just talking — occasionally reading straight from a note. No dancing, no shouting, none of the theatrics you’d expect from a typical motivational seminar just to keep an audience engaged.
In my years doing business and presenting ideas, the night before a presentation was always the most anxious part for me. Trimming slides. Repositioning them. Wondering if the visuals would land, whether the audience would be in awe of the slide quality.
And here she was — paper chart, mic, nothing else — and thirty people in that room had their eyes and ears locked on her. The only time I checked my phone was when my wife messaged me about my daughter’s condition.
That’s a storyteller in action.
I didn’t realise I was paying attention until she asked if anyone had a childhood story to share. Everyone participated. Some hesitated at first, but eventually found the courage. And just like that, the three-hour session ended without me realising it had passed.
The speaker was Manisha Chaudhry — author, translator, senior publishing professional, and Director of Jaipur BookMark, the publishing platform of the Jaipur Literature Festival.
Why It Doesn’t Need To Make Sense
But I have to share the actual essence of what she taught — especially about children’s storytelling, and why it’s so powerful.
She said something worth sitting with: not every story needs to make sense. The Emperor’s New Clothes. The Pied Piper. Malay folktales like Batu Belah Batu Bertangkup, Pak Pandir, Si Tanggang. When you’re a child, you don’t question the logic. You just consume and listen.
That took me back to something from my own childhood.
I remembered Standard 5, primary school — I was picked to perform a storytelling piece in English. My teacher chose the story for me. A king, living in a kingdom with his queen and princess. One day, having tea in the palace garden, a big, scary dragon flies down and demands to eat the princess — or it will destroy the whole country with fire, burning everything to the ground.
The king and his ministers search for a solution. The princess suggests making a doll stuffed with chilli — so when the dragon devours it, the chilli kills the dragon. The plan works.
When I became a father, I started retelling that same story to my daughter. One too many times — until I began recreating new plots on the spot. Some made sense. Some were pure nonsense. Maryam would laugh and roll her eyes at the same time. But she kept asking me to tell it again.
Looking back at that dragon story now, it doesn’t actually make sense either. Why must the dragon devour the princess as a peace treaty in the first place? Among many other things in that plot that don’t hold up to scrutiny. That’s the whole point of a children’s story.
I didn’t fully understand what I was doing until Manisha explained it. Most children’s stories work like capsules, planted in a child’s head and kept as memory. When those memories surface later in life, the child brings the questions back to their parents. The plot was never really the point. The real purpose is to instill critical thinking, build social interaction, and shape emotion.
She also raised something I hadn’t considered before: should we only write stories with happy endings? Would it traumatize a child to read something heartbreaking? And what happens to that child later in life, if all they were ever told were happy endings — when the reality they grow into is far harder to understand, like a war in Gaza?
This seminar opened up one of many perspectives on just how powerfully a children’s storybook can shape a child. That’s the actual power of storytelling.
Clarity is the most underrated business investment. — Lokman S., BIKIN