Category Archives: Storytelling and Constructing Identity

See this earlier entry.

A couple of posted items talk about the value of telling your own story. a goodman’s wonderful newsletter, Free Range Thinking, tells of Dr. David Olds, founder of the Nurse-Family Partnership, which sends nurses into the home of low-income first-time mothers. As ambassador of the program, Dr. Olds was often … Continue reading →

True Mom Confessions is: … a place where women [can] confess their fears, frailties and fantasies … without any risk of judgment or consequence. … We provided a simple platform, and now mothers from around the globe add their voices to the ever-evolving conversation about what motherhood really is …. … Continue reading →

Stephanie West Allen turned me onto a cool site called Bitstrips where you can create your own comics. Great for telling stories! I created a sort of alter ego I call Kat Story, above.

Boomoirs is a site to collect and share the stories of baby boomers. Discovering the site — through Stephanie West Allen — was timely because my husband and I were just having a discussion about the new social-networking site for “boomers,” BoomJ, which has publicized a demographic group we’ve never … Continue reading →

StoryMaker describes itself as a simple tool for creating digital stories. Using audio, pictures and text you can create storyboards, slideshows and much much more. To create your own StoryMaker file, just click on the ‘Create a new StoryMaker file’ button below and follow the instructions that follow. You will … Continue reading →

Decided to add to my original entry below about obituaries when I read Joanna Moorehead’s story in The Guardian about German photographer Walter Schels who thinks it not only odd, but wrong that death is so hidden from view. Aged 72, he’s also keenly aware that his own death is … Continue reading →

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 →

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.

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.

Continue reading →