I’m revisiting this entry because I didn’t do a good job of explaining Penguin’s project. That’s because I couldn’t find a good explanation on the site. Here’s one I found by a blogger named “Melissa” at Central Region AA|RF Planners: Penguin challenged 6 authors to create new forms of story … Continue reading
Author Archives: KatHansen
Narrative Interior Design?
The April issue of Domino magazine has a feature enetitled “The Narrative Decorator.” Maybe its my lack of visual sensability, but I couldn’t discern a whole lot of storytelling in the design work of Fawn Galli, the featured decorator. Words/phrases like “dreams,” “favorite memories,” “fantasy,” “storyscapes of fabric, furniture, and … Continue reading
Story Prompts from Conversation Questions
Although Alex Shalman is talking about questions for controlling communication (to make yourself stand out and your conversation partner feel important), the questions he suggests in his Lifehack.org article would work equally well to elicit stories: What do you do when you’re not doing this? What is important to you? … Continue reading
Followup to Networking Stories: “Wow! How?” Stories
In response to yesterday’s entry about elevator speeches/stories, Stephanie West Allen (what would I and this blog do without her?) turned me on to two relevant entries from her blog: Lessons from Mayberry contains a section on the “Wow! How?” story that aligns with yesterday’s entry. The idea is that … Continue reading
Patient Stories
Medical student Clinton Pong, who blogs at Not My Second Opinion writes: I love stories. One of the things I feel so lucky about as a student doctor is my opportunity to hear the stories of my patients! They give me with small snippets of their lives, bits and pieces … Continue reading
Networking Stories
I heartily agree with Chris King, who writes the following about storytelling and networking: When we are meeting people at a Networking event, we are usually asked, “What do you do?” If we answer with a label (“I’m a consultant, lawyer, website designer, etc.) the reaction is blah. But, if … Continue reading
My Pecha Kucha Story
Today is my birthday, so I thought it appropriate to post my pecha kucha story about me. I mentioned it in an earlier entry but didn’t post it as it didn’t make much sense without narration.
Another Job Successfully Landed Through Social Media
Add new grad Andrew Cafourek (above) to the contingent of those who have secured jobs through social media. I wrote about some others here. In his blog, Andrew C., he details how it happened: A few weeks ago, I was reading Jeremiah Owyang’s blog and saw a post on people … Continue reading
Folktales as Root of Personal Storytelling
Limor of Limor’s Storytelling Agora asserts that personal stories should start with folktales: “Starting with folktales is important just like starting with classical music or classical dance – it is both the basics and the top,” she writes.
Limor offers a couple of interesting exercises for “cystallizing” personal stories as folktales and folktales into personal stories.
I’m not that much into folktales, but Limor is convincing as she describes participants’ typical reaction to these exercises:
People noticed the ‘ancient’ story was more powerful. When it goes through the process of crystallization and detachment from a personal perspective, there is more space for others to enter with their own thoughts.
Another thing people noticed was the deficit in details that are ‘personal’ to the specific event in favor of deep symbols. The ‘ancient’ story had descriptions in it and they were important for creating visual images but the symbols stayed the same through the entire process.
I think another point that was evident was our natural feel for deep structures in stories. My way to elicit this natural feel during the above process is to create time limits. You can see them mentioned beside each step.
Above all they could see how folktales we usualy glance through in the hunt for a ‘great’ story are great stories. There is a strong tendancy to use personal stories as if they are more relevant, more engaging for the audience. After you practice the above excercise and it’s next step described underneath several times, any story becomes personal and you can use folktales easily as if you were telling something that happened to you yesterday.
A couple of other things I like about Limor’s blog are the Proverb-generated Story exercise and her definition of storytelling.
Both can be found in the extend entry to this post.
Micro-Stories: Bigger and Bigger
The banner of the blog Shortfolio describes its purpose as “very short stories,” but compared to the 3-word and 6-word takes covered in my last entry, these “very short stories” of 500 words seem like War and Peace. You can keep current with updates to Shortfolio through its widget on … Continue reading