The photo-sharing site Shutterfly has a section (essentially a blog) called Shutterfly Storytelling that offers lots of nice ideas for creating digital photo books that tell a story. The accompanying blog says: “At Shutterfly, we all have a real passion for telling our stories so we thought that this blog … Continue reading
Category Archives: Storytelling and Constructing Identity
Jonathan Harris on Storytelling Platforms
. In the above video, he talks about The Whale Hunt as storytelling platform, as well as other storytelling platforms, including the very talk he’s giving as a storytelling platform. Pop!Tech, which describes itself as “a one-of-a-kind conference, a community of remarkable people, and an ongoing conversation about science, technology … Continue reading
Get into Position to Recall the Stories of Your Life
What autobiographical story might this body position evoke? Katinka Dijkstra, Michael P. Kaschak, and Rolf A. Zwaan have conducted research that shows that people can recall their autobiographical stories faster by getting into body positions “similar to the body positions in the original events” than they can when in different … Continue reading
An Online Place for Lifestory Writers to Discuss Their Craft
My new friend Sharon Lippincott of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing has joined with Jerry Waxler to start a Yahoo-based discussion group for those interested in lifestory writing. Although my interest in that area is embryonic at best, I’ve joined the group and am impressed with the warm and generous spirit its founders and members convey.
You can join here, and in the extended portion of this entry, I have also borrowed (stolen) QUITE liberally from Sharon’s site to further explain the group. Here’s the first part of Sharon’s invitation:
Calling All Life Writers
There is good news for anyone who would like to hang out with other people who write life stories, memoir, journals, personal essays, or other forms of recording their lives in writing. Whatever your reason for writing about your life, the newly formed Life Writers Forum is a great place to ask questions, share thoughts, post short stories or excerpts from longer works, and generally shoot the breeze about writing.
Storytelling, Authenticity, and Outright Lying
When I read the following quote by Peter Guber in an article called “Four Truths of the Storyteller” in Harvard Business Review, I immediately thought of my mother: … many people assume that storytelling is somehow in conflict with authenticity. The great storyteller, in this view, is a spinner of … Continue reading
Autobiography, Memoir, or Lifestory: What’s the Difference?
In a reprint from her book The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, Sharon Lippincott (who blogs at The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing) ponders whether there’s any difference among the terms autobiography, memoir, and lifestory. (She later uncovers a number of other terms for similar genres of writing … Continue reading
Stories are the Essence of a Culture
“Stories are the essence of a culture” is one of the tenets of the group behind Living Cultural Databases. Starkly, the group notes that “once the stories are no longer re-told, the culture is dead.” On oral heritage and the importance of storytelling, the group writes: Stories are the essence … Continue reading
Microsoft Photo Story 3
Can’t test this product out as it’s for Windows, and I’m a Mac gal, but it did inspire me to start a new section of Story Tools (which I haven’t done yet, but it’s coming).
Still Deeply in Love with A Goodman: Part 1
I wrote a while back about how much I love the Web site and company, a goodman. A blogger named “gwennis48” has blogged at Luther I. Replogle Foundation about a presentation that Andy Goodman delivered sponsored by the Washington Grantmakers and Nonprofit Roundtable. The blog posting is a really nice … Continue reading
The DVD of Your Life
Lifefilm_Intro from lifefilm on Vimeo. After I read an article in the Christian Science Monitor about a company that makes DVDs of people’s life stories, I wanted to find out more about the company, LifeFilm Productions. Not one’s whole life story — the sample films on the company’s site are … Continue reading