Pausing for laughter

I got to tell a story at the September Carapace. I was trying to pay attention to audience reactions during the story and how I reacted to them. I said some things that were funny. People laughed. I paused for the laughter because I wanted people to be able to hear me when I started talking again. At one point though, I think it was near the end, the laughter went on for so long that I was thinking, “I don’t have a lot of time. Please let me finish.” Storytelling is a kind of conversation, but an uneven one. The speaker gets an extended turn to speak and gets a microphone. But the listeners do participate in the conversation with laughter, applause, and the occasional exclamation (“oh!”). Sometimes this includes turn taking. Applause happens at the end of a story. I pause for laughter (as do a lot of storytellers). Exclamations often happen at the same time the storyteller is still talking. When the audience does get a turn for laughter, everyone may not agree how long that turn should be. When I’ve been in the audience I have laughed longer at things that I found very funny. Laughter is often uncontrollable. It can be difficult to force yourself to stop. And why should the audience stop? They are experiencing a positive emotion and giving the storyteller positive feedback. I believe that my eagerness to get back to my story had to do with the time limit. Time doesn’t stop when the audience takes a turn to “speak” and so inevitably they are stealing time from the storyteller. I wonder whether I (and others) would feel more easy about letting the conversational turns flow as needed in a situation where time is more flexible and/or there is more time allotted.