All humans are hungry to share and hear personal stories. Good storytelling is not easy, but with commitment, everyone can do it. And with practice, good storytellers become great.   

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The Flame Workshop is a  creative, supportive space. Participants arrive with different skills and levels of understanding. 

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Deb quickly determines expectations for personal and artistic growth.  Together, they create a criteria for “what makes a great story” and begin to listen – a most important and little practiced skill.  

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Deb practices and models caring critiquing techniques -- clarity, brevity, and kindness.  Even online the participants become close to one another and find a safe environment to take risks. 

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Tellers  transform their experience into a remarkable, compelling story.  

The core learning involves storytelling Deb has learned, compiled over her 28 years of internationally acclaimed personal storytelling.   She has taught, coached, and lead over 1000 storytellers.

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The rules involve foundational elements of storytelling including: high stakes, transformational experience, hooks and buttons, detailed setting, fallible narrator, plot, action, first-person present tense, and exploding all the senses. 

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Deb takes time to analyze the responsibility of the storyteller, the challenges of truth, and memory.  She believes storytelling is not about the teller, it's about taking care of the audience, not just listening but hearing. This attitude also makes it easier for less crowd-comfortable participants; knowing it is simply a human relationship.  ​

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Participants arrive having unique needs and expectations. They leave knowing what elements make an experience ready for a story, skills to craft that story, the ability to share that story in front of a group, and having gained new understanding of their colleagues and friends.