Sophisticated simplicity - building stories like a film scene
Most Roman tour guides speak English as a second language and understandably some will have doubts about their grammar, pronunciation and sentence structure. Less experienced guides sometimes tend to talk too much and too quickly for their listeners. The result is your customers become tired of listening, get bored and end up being dissatisfied with the tour they paid a lot of money for. Instead, I think it's better if guides say less and build their ideas in a simpler clearer way.
Storytelling is a key part of your job and it's a performance that needs lots of practice. However, first you need to build your story; simply and clearly; using uncomplicated grammar. I recommend structuring your story the same way a film scene is composed of separate shots, which are then edited together to create atmosphere, feeling and empathy for the characters in your story. Here are two examples:
Inside the Coliseum looking down as a spectator
Imagine you are back in ancient Rome. You’re a typical teenage Roman boy, probably wearing sandals and a toga. In your bag you have some bread and fruit and a cheeky bottle of wine that no-one knows about. You’re sitting here, surrounded by a yelling crowd of fifty thousand Romans. Iugula Iugula Iugula Iugula. They’re cheering for their favourite gladiator who is winning the fight. Some of the spectators have gambled their money on Iugula, others on his opponent. Some will win, some will lose.
The hunting games finish. All the poor dead animals are carried away and a group of men come out and start throwing balls, possibly made of wood, into the crowd. If you catch one of these balls you win a piece of meat, a piece of one of the dead animals, the leg of a lion, the heart of a zebra or some other exotic animal. Nice. Have any of you ever tried a giraffe steak or a tiger's brain.
Now imagine it’s lunchtime. You start eating your bread and have a secret drink of your wine from your lunchpack. Down below, a group of about fifty men are dragged into the arena. What’s going to happen? These men are criminals and they must be punished. They must be executed, publicly, to the roars of the crowd. Then their dead bodies are fed to the hungry lions. But wait, some of them are not actually dead. They will be soon.
Standing in front of the Arch of Constantine
Imagine we are back in the fourth Century AD. These railings are not here. There is a huge crowd lining a street that enters the city of Rome from there (point) and passes through this arch - this triumphal arch. The greatest public exhibition of power in the Empire was a triumphal parade. Thousands of Roman soldiers entering the city victorious, returning from a foreign conquest, parading gold and other valuables, and enemy prisoners; all the time cheered on by the adoring crowd.
The most important figure in the parade stands in a chariot wearing a crown. He is the victorious general whose army has killed more than fifty thousand enemy soldiers. The parade will end up there on the Capitoline Hill where some of the defeated enemy prisoners will draw their last breath in a public execution.
Storytelling is a key part of your job and it's a performance that needs lots of practice. However, first you need to build your story; simply and clearly; using uncomplicated grammar. I recommend structuring your story the same way a film scene is composed of separate shots, which are then edited together to create atmosphere, feeling and empathy for the characters in your story. Here are two examples:
Inside the Coliseum looking down as a spectator
Imagine you are back in ancient Rome. You’re a typical teenage Roman boy, probably wearing sandals and a toga. In your bag you have some bread and fruit and a cheeky bottle of wine that no-one knows about. You’re sitting here, surrounded by a yelling crowd of fifty thousand Romans. Iugula Iugula Iugula Iugula. They’re cheering for their favourite gladiator who is winning the fight. Some of the spectators have gambled their money on Iugula, others on his opponent. Some will win, some will lose.The hunting games finish. All the poor dead animals are carried away and a group of men come out and start throwing balls, possibly made of wood, into the crowd. If you catch one of these balls you win a piece of meat, a piece of one of the dead animals, the leg of a lion, the heart of a zebra or some other exotic animal. Nice. Have any of you ever tried a giraffe steak or a tiger's brain.
Now imagine it’s lunchtime. You start eating your bread and have a secret drink of your wine from your lunchpack. Down below, a group of about fifty men are dragged into the arena. What’s going to happen? These men are criminals and they must be punished. They must be executed, publicly, to the roars of the crowd. Then their dead bodies are fed to the hungry lions. But wait, some of them are not actually dead. They will be soon.
Standing in front of the Arch of Constantine
Imagine we are back in the fourth Century AD. These railings are not here. There is a huge crowd lining a street that enters the city of Rome from there (point) and passes through this arch - this triumphal arch. The greatest public exhibition of power in the Empire was a triumphal parade. Thousands of Roman soldiers entering the city victorious, returning from a foreign conquest, parading gold and other valuables, and enemy prisoners; all the time cheered on by the adoring crowd. The most important figure in the parade stands in a chariot wearing a crown. He is the victorious general whose army has killed more than fifty thousand enemy soldiers. The parade will end up there on the Capitoline Hill where some of the defeated enemy prisoners will draw their last breath in a public execution.
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