Norman Maclean on Story Telling

"If I am a story teller, I got my early training in a bunkhouse, and, if you are familiar with the bunkhouse variety of the narrative art, you can see readily that my present stories still have these humble origins. When I first went in the woods I was so young I just listened to the masters--but even then things fundamental to the art began to appear. I saw early that oral stories have to be short... Early, too, I learned that your friends won't listen to a story unless a lot happens in it... [A]nother characteristic of the western story is that practically always it has something to do with the truth, but it was only later that I realized how complicated the relations are."

--Norman Maclean, foreword to "A River Runs Through It and other stories"