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What Kind of Storyteller Are You?

March 19, 2024 | 3 min read

Storytelling is the beating heart of humanity, a tradition that connects us across time, culture, and space. From the earliest cave paintings to the latest blockbuster films, storytelling has been our most powerful tool for expression, understanding, and connection.

Through stories, we make sense of the world around us, exploring our fears, desires, and dreams. We pass down wisdom from one generation to the next, preserving our history and shaping our future. From authors and journalists to filmmakers and musicians, storytelling is at the core of who we are.

The ultimate beauty is that there's no one way to be a storyteller. Every storyteller has a unique perspective and brings their own experiences and talents to the craft. In fact, we storytellers often have a specialty or superpower in one area or another.

We gathered some of our favorite talents to create a few common storyteller archetypes we see in the Freewrite Fam.

So let's find out: What kind of storyteller are you?

 

Discover Your Storyteller Archetype

Choose the category that best describes your storytelling prowess to discover what type of storyteller you are. You might even fall between one or two categories.

Knowing your strengths will help you embrace your unique style and tone — and give you ideas on what areas to work on.

 

The Puppet Master excels at plot and adventure. Your stories are never lacking in action, and you consider yourself the master of twists and turns. Your specialty is regaling an audience with tales of daring exploits, fantastical journeys, and epic quests, whether fiction or true to life.

You thrive on the thrill of exploration and discovery, igniting the imaginations of all who listen.

 

You're an Empath — to fictional characters. And real ones, of course! The Empath specializes in developing characters and invoking complex emotions. Your stories are driven by interpersonal relationships and the personalities of your characters, who feel real and whole.

(And, yeah, you occasionally make the audience cry.)

 

You are all about language. You might write songs, poems, or novels, but no matter what it is you're creating, it's sure to be lyrical and enchanting. You delight in a clever turn of phrase and obsess over the way a sentence sounds. (Yes, you've even been known to hang out on Thesaurus.com.)

For you, the craft of storytelling is all about elevating language to an art form.

 

The Sage embodies wisdom and insight, often sharing profound lessons with others in the form of story. This includes everything from self-improvement guides to narratives with strong philosophical questions.

You're probably a Sage if you like your stories to have a moral or to invite the audience to reflect deeply on the human condition. There's a good chance you like symbolism and metaphor, too!

 

Playful and mischievous, the Jester's main challenge is to entertain others. Humor is your weapon of choice, as well as wit, satire, and unexpected twists to keep your audience engaged — and laughing.

Of course, beneath the laughter is a keen observer of human folly illuminating truths about society and human nature. That's the Jester.

 

You like facts. From journalism to memoir, journaling to academia, your stories dwell in the realm of reality. Your main role is to witness this one true life and share it with others.

You are a custodian of knowledge and experience. A witness to the mundane, the incredible, the truth. 

 

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So, are you a Puppet-Master Bard? A Sage Jester? Let us know on X or Instagram!

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The winning short story in the 2026 Freewrite 500 is "Deathbed Victory" by Rocky Halpern.

I wish my mother could be a little less enthusiastic about losing weight from chemotherapy. Her sharp wrists and angular neck are trophies others remark upon. They look past her hair and eyebrows that are like hay carried away by a thunderstorm and ask if she’s doing keto or mediterranean. 

The world is mesmerized by shrinking things. Mini candy bars, happy meal toys, tiny dogs that fit inside a purse, dollhouses, adults who weigh as much as children. 

My mother wants me to go on Ozempic. I sit next to her hospital bed, and she wraps her wisp of a hand around my thick, pulsing wrist. She asks me to dream of wearing matching bikinis on the shores of a tropical beach. She wants me to share in her religion, recite the sacred text: Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. 

But chemo has rubbed her tastebuds down to a dull throb, so what does she know about it anyway? 

She dozes off as evening begins to creep. The TV mounted to the wall across from the bed plays a muted rerun of Friends, the one where Monica wears a fatsuit. She is half my size, at least. I turn off the TV, let go of my mother’s hand, and head toward the cafeteria. 

I examine limp premade salads, gray tuna fish sandwiches, and an unmanned make-your-own smoothie station. Eating dinner here doesn’t leave me with much of an appetite. Maybe I don’t need weight loss medication after all, I can just skulk the halls and wonder how much time we have left together. 

How much of that time will my mother spend wishing there was less of me? 

How much less of her can there be before she disappears? 

A nurse is checking her vitals when I return to the room. My mother looks at me, laughs softly, and asks the nurse, Can you believe she used to fit inside of me? 

I think of how we must have been, her warm body encasing mine like a bacon-wrapped date. I wonder if she ate hot fudge sundaes when she was pregnant with me. I wonder if there is a single moment of her life where she didn’t feel terrified of her body. 

My mother is a ghost and it’s the proudest she’s ever been, her deathbed victory lap. Somewhere, Jenny Craig sheds a tear and whispers into the ether, It’s not just about losing weight; it's about gaining life.