What’s the Story of the Story? Narrative Critical Method and the New Leadership Story

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Why does the public buy into stories like the Balloon Boy? Why do the media purvey stories that are often not as they are portrayed to be — and the public gets sucked in?

Those were questions raised yesterday in a thought-provoking teleconference by Paul Costelllo, director of the Center for Narrative Studies in Washington, DC.

I had seen Costello give a powerful keynote address at this year’s Golden Fleece Day in April, and he was my partner in one of the icebreaker activities we did that morning (hence, the lovely closeup photo of him at right). He’s a stimulating thinker and presenter.

Costello is developing a narrative critical method that suggests that we stand at a distance from a given story — on the balcony, as he says — and look at the big picture, the patterns that emerge. He suggests we ask: What’s the story of the story?

Other examples of stories that were not what they seemed include the Columbine shootings (misconceptions about which were cleared up in a 10th anniversary book by Dave Cullen), weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bernie Madoff, subprime loans, and the death of Pat Tillman.

Just as storytellers make choices in how they choose to tell stories, Costello says, the audience has a choice in how we consume the stories.

Costello applied his narrative critic al method to his book The Presidential Plot. The teaser for the book here gives a flavor for Costello conveyed in yesterday’s teleconference:

Stories are great to share but do they really make any difference to the world? This book takes the 2008 election as a Case Study to show that a narrative critical method can bring a whole new explanatory power to our understanding of the public stories and their impact on us as citizens. It begins by asking Why are we suckers for a good story? … We bought the story that we need to go to war. We bought the story that fraudulent companies like Enron were re-inventing the energy business. (They were — it was pure invention). We bought the story about our innocence and our exceptionalism, that told us that we don’t torture and our military don’t lie, and most recently, we have been sold the tale that our money is as safe as a bank ! That has proved to be too true.

Costello’s current initiative is applying his narrative critical method to the Middle East, an effort called New Story Leadership, described on its site like this:

New Story Leadership for the Middle East (NSL) addresses [old stories of grievance, suspicion and fear, recycled endlessly, that have kept generations of Israelis and Palestinians from imagining and moving toward a future free of conflict] by offering Israeli and Palestinian college students a transformative leadership experience in America that will help inspire a new story of possibility for their generation. [you can find many more details about the project on the site]

Narrative critical method is a way to diagnose what are often diseased story systems, Costello says, and to design new story architectures that fit the systems. You must ask: Can you get to where you want to go using X story? Thus, in the case of the Middle East, Costello says, the question is: Can you get to peace using the current story? No, Costello says, you can’t get to peace with the old story, so you must change the story.

Put another way, the question is: “What has to go into the story for X to be the ending?”

And just why do we get sucked into stories that turn out to be something they are not? Costello says we have habitual narrative vulnerabilities — fear, for example — that make us susceptible. He talks about a “military-industrial story complex,” stories as products, and audiences as consumers of these products who have the ability to choose the way we wish to consume stories.

So many of the stories we’re subjected to could benefit from narrative critical analysis. We truly need to ask: What’s the story of the story? I’m excited by Costello’s potentially world-changing methods and initiatives.

Still More Job Action Day Stories: Their Layoffs Fueled Their Creativity

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Yep, it’s true that the next Job Action Day is almost a year off, but the message from this year’s event — about taking positive action for your career is worth repeating.

I received a ton of great stories about laid-off workers who found new opportunities. These four transformed unemployment into creative entrepreneurial ventures:

Kim White
I am a single, work-at-home mom, and I homeschool my son, who has chronic migraines. So when I lost my position as a marketing director for a franchise expert in direct response to the stock market crash, I had to scramble. I found a graphic-design position through Craigslist pretty quickly, but the company I worked for was paying relatively little to keep my copyrights and use them on several of their high-paying websites, other than the small site they had contracted for.

When I asked that client to pay me more promptly, they fired me. Deciding that I needed to be more self-sufficient and spread my opportunities out a bit, I began building my own websites in three different subject areas (content at www.crunchydata.com, slideshows at www.fauxflix.com, and digital scrapbooking freebies at www.freequickpage.com) and started writing for content aggregator websites for residual income. I am in my third month of this venture, and am starting to see my profits increase. I definitely see myself being able to make a living this way.

I also began selling my digital designs on Etsy a couple of months ago. There were no sales for almost two months, and all of a sudden this week, I started getting orders.

The first content site I wrote for was eHow. When glitches with their payment system prevented several of us new members from earning anything the first few weeks (they resolved this), I recruited a group of like-minded people for mutual support. We are helping each other to earn more online, and we see this as one of the keys to our growing success.

I am also the national Theme Weddings Examiner and the Sacramento Digital Scrapbooking Examiner for Examiner.com.

Nancy Lynn Jarvis
The real-estate market was a mess. What was a Realtor to do?

I’m a 20-year veteran of the real-estate industry who is writing murder mysteries set in Santa Cruz County instead of selling houses. I never planned to write anything, but since I couldn’t make money as a Realtor, after having been quite successful in the past, I decided to use my experiences and have some fun. The money hasn’t been great, but my
friends who tried working through the market weren’t making much money either.

You can read the first chapters of The Death Contingency and Backyard Bones .

Real estate is an interesting business. The stress level involved in buying or selling a home ranks right after death and divorce. People reveal a lot about themselves during the process. The business attracts its share of colorful practitioners, too.

Their stories and my own experiences provide the settings where my Realtor and part-time sleuth character, Regan McHenry, works while she unravels mysteries.

After earning a BA in behavioral science from San Jose State University, I worked in the advertising department of the San Jose Mercury News. A move to Santa Cruz meant a new job as a librarian and later a stint as the business manager of Shakespeare Santa Cruz.

My work history reflects my philosophy: People should try something radically different every few years. Writing is my newest adventure.

Brian Peters

I left my job at a Japanese bank on Park Avenue in Manhattan September 2008 and used my severance package to travel around the world. Since coming home, I’ve built up a blog and am ready to publish a book on my trip and how the goal of round the world travel is achievable to anyone — even someone who has lost their job. The blog was recently selected as one of the best round-the-world travel blogs

David Moye
I managed to get a job — and switch careers — during the worst recession since the 1930s by creating a puppet show.

When I was laid off from a journalism job in September, I decided to switch to PR.

But even though I had experience in knowing how to pitch the media and had consulted for PR agencies, a lot of places wouldn’t give me the time of day.

So I decided to show off both my knowledge of media relations and my creativity by creating a YouTube series called PR Puppet Theatre where I offered PR advice to my daughter’s puppets.

I filmed five episodes and, using the contacts in my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, got two of them featured on the CNBC.com Web site where it was called “must-see entertainment/ education for every PR flack.”

I made sure when sending out my cover letters and resumes to point out: “If I can get a cheesy puppet show on CNBC, think of what I can do for your good clients.”

That pitch helped me get my current job at Alternative Strategies, a boutique PR agency in San Diego, and I am doing a pretty good job so far. After seven months, I have pretty much broken every company record for media placements and billing.

My Big, Fat Marketing-Storytelling Synthesis: 10 Observations, Part 2

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Continuing interesting story observations folks have made about marketing, advertising, public relations, and branding, from yesterday’s entry …

 

    • Even names and labels can tell a story. Sarah Mahoney says (in an article that now appears to be password-protected) many marketers miss the opportunity to create a storyline through labels, especially when attempting to tout green products. Meanwhile, Russ Meyer blogs at What’s up below deck?

about the Mortgage Lifter tomato and the story behind it (the tomato became so popular that its developer was able to pay off his mortgage). Not every product can have an enigmatic, intriguing name that begs to have its story told, but it doesn’t hurt for your product (or service) to have a compelling, storied name.

 

 

My Big, Fat Marketing-Storytelling Synthesis: 10 Observations, Part 1

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Here’s a piece I’ve been meaning to post for a long time. First had it scheduled for January, then February, then April, and now here we are.

Some interesting story observations folks have made about marketing, advertising, public relations, and branding:

  • Storied characters provide a human way for marketers to relate products to the public. That’s the assertion of a multi-part series about characters in in advertising on the blog hubbub. Interestingly the blogger, who offers his photo and bio, but not, as far as I can tell, his name, says the three archetypes for advertising characters are slaves (from real slaves to corporate servants), heroes, and clowns.
  • Customer experiences must tell customers the story you want them to re-tell. That’s the edict of Frank Capek, who writes here. He poses these questions: “What are the stories your customers tell about their experience with you and your business? What do they think you really stand for? What are the most memorable aspects of their experience? What surprises them? What frustrates them? How do you make them feel?” Further:

    Your ability to retain customers is directly related to the nature and quality of the stories they tell themselves about their experience. … If you don’t effectively tell the story… how can ever expect that your customers will either get the message… or have the material to be able to pass the story effectively on to others.

    Most businesses don’t make full use of their customers’ stories, says John Williams on Entrepreneur.com, in an article that no longer seems to be online. But, “the brands that win tomorrow are those whose customers tell the best stories,” writes Alain Thys.

    Want some ideas for how to tell a story customers will re-tell? The blogger behind Rocket Watcher offers 4 Characteristics of a good product story.

    Before branders can expect customers to re-tell the story they want re-told, they should listen to the stories customers are already telling about the product (or service), says Nicholine Hayward on econsultancy Noting that the key drivers of a brand’s storytelling strategy are motive, means, and opportunity, Hayward advises that brands need to give consumers a reason and a reward for telling their own stories, arm them with a storytelling arsenal, and provide channels and platforms that invite and incentivise consumers to tell their stories.

    How about an example storytelling aimed at encouraging customers to re-tell it? That’s what Starbucks did in response to McDonald’s McCafe coffee drinks, which they claimed were an attempt to “commoditize” coffee, wrote Clair Cain Miller in the New York Times. Full-page, text-heavy ads “describe[d] how Starbucks selects only the best 3 percent of beans and roasts them until they pop twice, and gives its part-time workers health insurance,” Miller wrote.

    The Story Lady, Ronda Del Boccio, describes a storied customer experience that started well but didn’t deliver on its initial promise — a server that explained the origin of oil as a dip for bread at Macaroni Grill (but Del Boccio was disappointed that no more storytelling followed).

    Reinforcing this idea of consumer involvement in telling a brand’s story, Ian Tate, creative partner at Poke, said during a creative workshop (reported about on the Amsterdam Ad Blog): “It’s not just about telling a story anymore, the consumer has to be involved and should be able to ‘live the story.”

  • Storytelling architecture provides structural patterns that fit brands. Laurence Vincent describes structural patterns, such as the MasterCard “Priceless” campaign:

    The storytelling architecture relies upon telling the story through purchases. Each purchase builds dramatic tension. The denouement occurs with the final element, which has no price. That example is heavily tied to the brand advertising, but there’s no reason the pattern could not extend to other brand touch points. In musical notation, that pattern could be expressed as A-A-A-B, where the A’s are the verses and the B is the chorus.

    What storytelling architecture and patterns can you pick up on in other storied advertising/marketing

  • The Unique Story Proposition can anchor every story you tell in branding. Anyone who has ever studied marketing or advertising knows about a product’s or service’s Unique Selling Proposition; the Unique Story Propositions “stem from the reason a brand exists,” writes Alain Thys in an article that helpfully offers The Ten Truths of Branded Storytelling.
  • Public relations is the strategic crafting of your story.Those are the words of Seth Godin, who often writes about storytelling in marketing. David E. Henderson, writer I really admire, goes a step further when he writes: “I predict the time will come when traditional public relations agencies and services are replaced by consultants and a new forms of agencies that will have the skills to teach effective storytelling.”

See Part 2 tomorrow.

Is This the Future of Storytelling in Newspapers?

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Seemingly at just the exact moment yesterday when I was posting my entry about storytelling in the troubled world of newspaper journalism, my friend Thaler Pekar was expressing great enthusiasm on Facebook for an upcoming publication, San Francisco Panorama, a one-time-only newspaper to be published by McSweeney’s. Here’s why the publishers say they created San Francisco Panorama:

You can understand why this publication is a one-shot deal; these folks took five months to put together a newspaper. Obviously most newspapers are created in a day (kind of a miracle, I’ve always thought).

More about why they’re doing it:

Issue 33 of McSweeney’s Quarterly will be a one-time only, Sunday-edition-sized newspaper–the San Francisco Panorama. It’ll have news and sports and arts coverage, and comics (sixteen pages of glorious, full-color comics, from Chris Ware and Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman and many others besides) and a magazine and a weekend guide, and will basically be an attempt to demonstrate all the great things print journalism can (still) do, with as much first-rate writing and reportage and design (and posters and games and on-location Antarctic travelogues) as we can get in there. Expect journalism from Andrew Sean Greer, fiction from George Saunders and Roddy Doyle, dispatches from Afghanistan, and much, much more.

As you look at the images of San Francisco Panorama pages on the nine-page press release (or download the PDF version), you do get a sense of how this publication combines traits of the Internet and print newspapers — or perhaps magazines to a greater extent — to be a 21st-century newspaper.

If any media company can figure out how to create something this cool in less than five months at a per-copy price of less than the $16 McSweeney’s is charging, it could just be the future of newspapers.

PS: One other cool thing — McSweeney’s collaborated with dozens of out-of-work and laid-off Bay Area journalists, as well as students, to produce San Francisco Panorama.

Four Pronouncements about Storytelling in Journalism

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We had only one heartbreak during our wonderful summer and early fall in Kettle Falls, WA — we were unable to have a daily newspaper delivered to us. The Spokesman-Review of Spokane had recently cut costs by ending home delivery in our area. Given that we were 20 miles from the nearest store, we could get the paper only on the couple of days a week when we went into town.

Heartbreak might seem like too strong a word, but not for lifelong, die-hard newspaper readers. On our trip back to Florida, we sampled many newspapers along the way, and happily were able to pick one up at most of our RV stops.

Meanwhile, discussion continues about the health of newspapers — or lack thereof — as well as the role of storytelling, not only in print journalism, but in the new digital formats that are enhancing the presence of newspapers on the Internet and possibly keeping newspapers alive.

Here are four (somewhat) recent pronouncements about storytelling in journalism:

When storytelling is reduced to content, ideas die. These were the words of Gary Goldhammer in an impassioned blog entry called The Last Newspaper. Goldhammer imagines a character, Daniel, who has purchased the last newspaper ever to be published and is answering questions from curious onlookers and telling them about how “what they now refer to as ‘content’ used to be called ‘stories,’ delivered by trained individuals known as ‘storytellers’ and ‘journalists.'”

He goes on to rail against content:

Stories are personal and transformational. Stories have definition and character. Stories are history personified. … But content is cold, distant. Content is a commodity — a finite consumable of fleeting value. Content is artificial intelligence.

Goldhammer has a kindred spirit in This American Life’s Ira Glass, who said in a keynote address to the American Library Association: “most journalism makes the world seem smaller and stupider and less interesting” [because it tries to eradicate the narrative.] But we live in a world where stories provide hope.”

Narratives ask us to invest in characters, was the pronouncement of Daysha Eaton, based on a talk she attended by Celeste Freemon, who teaches literary journalism at UC Irvine and is a senior fellow for social justice/new media at the USC Institute for Justice and Journalism. Unilke Goldhammer, who seems to think good storytelling can take place only in the print incarnation of newspapers, Freemon’s talk and Eaton’s blog entry recognize that narrative that invites investment and characters can be accomplished in digital forms.

In fact, storytelling is essential to new forms of journalism, which is pretty much what Amanda Michel, editor of distributed reporting at the investigative outlet ProPublica, says in an article about her on the Columbia Journalism Review site by Megan Gerber. “Journalism Plus” is one term these new forms of journalism (Robert Scoble coined the term, reports Josh Halliday in InJournalism magazine.) Medium is immaterial to those who espouse Journalism Plus. Halliday quotes student editor Greg Linch: “Journalism is not about the medium — it’s about the story. Audio and video helps the subject tell [his or her] own story. Multimedia storytelling allows us to do better journalism.”

So what are some of these new forms, and how well do they tell stories? Some examples:

  • A College Media Online Journalism Contest 2.0 offers clues by way of its categories of winners: audio slideshow, breaking news video, video package, data (best use of data, best use of mapping), interactive package design, interactive graphic design, overall design, use of social networking sites, community engagement, innovation, breaking news package.
  • Telling stories with Google Maps, as described by the Readership Institute: “Not enhance stories by adding maps, but tell stories using the maps.”

The Readership Institute, in the person on Rich Gordon, also lists what it takes to tell a good story online: The story needs to be visual, interactive (as in, the user is in control of the storytelling experience, interactive (as in, users can interact with the content), structured, multimedia, technology-driven, navigable, user-generated, personal, usable, and a team game.

Final pronouncement: Readers are looking for meaning. This statement was part of heartfelt talk by Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Hallman of The Oregonian, as excerpted by the excellent site Nieman Storyboard. In his talk, Hallman struggled with the changes in how he now tells stories and how, in his opinion, his Pulitzer-Prize-winning story would have been ruined with an online component. Part of the struggle is that editors prescribe shorter, more disciplined stories. That’s not easy, Hallman said, but stories can still be told in short form; in fact — because readers are looking for meaning — storytelling will be the salvation of newspapers. One writer who is using a very short form to convey meaning to readers, as well as invite them to invest in characters, is Brady Dennis, who writes a series called 300 Words. He won an Ernie Pyle Award for human interest for these 300-word stories.

In an interview with Dennis by Michael Weinstein on the Poynter Online site, Dennis says, “I believe that each person not only has a story to tell, but that each person has a story that matters.” He suggests that a good writer need not struggle with long-form vs. short-form storytelling: “I learned it doesn’t take 3,000 words to put together a beginning, middle and end. A good story is a good story, no matter the length. And sometimes the shorter ones turn out [to be] more powerful than the windy ones.”

The Sticky Guy (One of Them Anyway) Says Stories Make Your Resume Sticky

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If it’s Friday, it must be “Fast Company columnist supports storytelling resumes” day. At last that has been the case the last two Fridays, and both times Thomas Clifford told me about the articles.

Last week it was Nick Corcodilos supporting storytelling in or instead of resumes.

Today, it’s Dan Heath, half of the Heath brothers team that authored Made to Stick, which in part talks about how stories make ideas “sticky.”

In a Fast Company article this week, Heath actually says it’s impossible to make resumes — with their bulleted format — into storytelling communications that stick. Instead, Heath says to use your cover letter to make your resume stick by telling sticky stories in it:

Make it your goal, in the cover letter, to do two things: (1) Give headlines; and (2) Defend the headlines with stories. For instance, if you’re applying for a job in retail consulting, a headline might be: I’m the right guy because I have experience mining data to find useful insights. But don’t stop there. Support the claim by telling a story from one of your past clients: “In a recent engagement, my team worked for a major supermarket chain that had issued ‘loyalty cards’ to its customers. It worried that these loyalty cards were not improving profits — that they were simply giving away discounts to customers who would have shopped there anyway. They wanted us to study whether they should drop the discount cards. It was my job to explore the data in a systematic way — I’d love to discuss the process with you — and what I found, in short, is that discontinuing them would have been a $100 million disaster.”

I completely agree that cover letters lend themselves to storytelling far better than do resumes. But about a third of hiring decision-makers don’t read cover letters.

Thus, I am far from giving up on the idea of the storytelling resume.

More Job Action Day Stories: They Turned Their Stories into Business Ventures

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Job Action Day is technically over for this year, but there’s no reason its message about taking positive action for your career can’t continue — especially since I received so many great stories about laid-off workers who found new opportunities. These three applied their experiences — their stories — to entrepreneurial ventures that enabled them to work at their passions:

 

Denise LaBuda
I have recently reinvented my work path. I have spent the first 25+ yrs of my career working for large companies in marketing positions or consulting to those organizations. I was laid off in December 2008, and I am now building a business following one of my passions.

I am deeply troubled by the almost complete lack of training offered to our citizens around money. Over many years of watching the pain brought about in the adults around me because they did not have foundational skills in budgeting (let alone borrowing and investing), I have started a business to work with families to teach their kids budgeting skills before they leave home for college or work after high school — and hopefully begin to break this bad cycle.

For me, it is very exciting, scary, overwhelming, and deeply satisfying work. I know that it is time for me to give back to the great society in which I live, and finding work that has significant impact is now very important to me. Are my shifting priorities due to my age, my experiences, the sick economy? Probably all three.

Cindy Clawson
After 20 years working as a human-resources professional in the financial, healthcare and advertising industries, my HR position was eliminated. As I pondered what to do next, I spent time talking to friends, family and colleagues about my passions and goals in life. It was during these conversations that a I decided to venture into the entrepreneurial world and pursue my own business as a Professional Organizer. I have always loved to organize “stuff” and streamline processes, so helping others do this just comes naturally. You can read more about me and my business, Ideas in Organizing, by visiting my web site.

I love what I do, and I have already touched people’s lives in ways that I never thought I could. I have learned more about the world of small businesses and have a much greater respect for the small business owner. My priorities have changed in life — I no longer have a six-figure income, work long hours, play politics, and have no control over decisions made by the CEO or the board. It’s more about finding what makes me and my family happy, persevering and making it work. Life is good.

Michael Ambrose
In March of 2009, I unexpectedly lost my job working for a manufacturing company due to the economic downturn. I was paid very well and had worked with the company for the better part of 15 years when the cut occurred. While I knew the business was suffering, and cuts would be made, it still came as a complete shock because of the critical nature of my position. I would later find out that a previous employee who had been laid-off from his job made contact with the company and is now making substantially less money doing the work I once enjoyed.

Having only a high-school education with some additional college, I was very realistic about my chances of getting a job in the manufacturing sector at the premium salary I had been earning. I was prepared not to let that hinder me from finding any reasonable
employment, almost no matter the pay. What I was unprepared for was just how bleak the job outlook would be.

Still, I did not let this deter me from also working to make a change in my life to something that was potentially more rewarding and outside of “the usual.” With the help of my partner, Lexi, we set about turning the very difficult divorce and custody experience I had endured into a job that would serve to help others. I’ve actually been doing that for free via a successful personal blog I maintain. I did this out of the desire to see others avoid mistakes I had made during the long journey through the Family Court System, which continues today.

In an effort to turn this successful effort into a paying job, we created a new website to help others who are going through a high-conflict divorce and custody situations. The website is called Mr. Custody Coach. I utilized my research and writing skills to create a web-based business that is chock-full of helpful information and dedicate my time to helping our clients prepare meaningful parenting plans. Then, they can take their plan to an attorney and work to its implementation.

Since embarking on this project back in the spring of 2009 and a launch at the end of the summer of 2009, our business is continuing to grow. The best part of this endeavor? It’s a topic about which I’m passionate and serves to help people while saving them substantial amounts of money in legal fees — savings that can be earmarked for the most important parts of their cases while we assist them in planning wisely. It’s a job I can truly say is exciting and rewarding in a way that no other job has been in my life.

Story Prompts, Activities for All Occasions: Part 2

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Continuing a list of story prompts and activities begun in yesterday’s entry:

The next prompt requires some herculean thinking and work, as well as knowledge of transmedia storytelling. It comes from a blog entry for a class called Theories of Texts and Technology taught by Blake Scott. (The entry is by “lamothej,” but that’s the extent to which I’ve been able to identify this blogger).

Take a well known story/narrative (it can be a story that’s been read in class, an influential TV show or movie, an intricate comic book, a popular video game, etc.) and build off of it to create a “narrative universe” by adding to the story through transmedia storytelling.

In her Storycatcher Blog Christina Baldwin described a session with her publisher in which participants formed a circle and asked these questions:

  • What did you notice on the fringe of society 15 years ago that is now at the center?
  • What do you notice on the fringe of society now that you hope will move to the center in the next 15 years?
  • What are you willing to do to contribute to that happening?

The responses to these questions might not necessarily be stories, but for Baldwin, they were, as she related in the blog entry.

The site jpb.com describes a visual method of brainstorming to generate stories (rather than mere lists):

… To facilitate brainstorming session participants to build stories rather than lists of ideas, you need to be explicit in your instructions and, ideally, provide objects that help participants focus on building their story.

Explicit instructions need to be given as an introduction to the brainstorming activity and should be incorporated into the creative challenge itself. For instance, if you want a team of brainstormers to generate ideas on how to improve the efficiency of your
manufacturing plant, don’t ask the typical “In what ways might we improve the efficiency of our production line?” This is just asking for a list. Rather ask, “Describe the journey of [your product] riding down an ideal production line.” Add to the challenge some additional instructions such as: “Include as many ideas as you possibly can and do not worry at this time about contradictions, impossibilities or strange ideas.”

The author also suggests using other props and tools to aid brainstorming, visualization, and story generation.

Finally, from the newsletter of my friends at Anecdote, an exercise for enhancing the visual palette when telling a story:

Pair people up: a storyteller and a listener. The storyteller has to start their story by describing the place where the story begins: “It all started in a tiny red brick house on the upside of the street. The poplar trees were blowing in the wind and my Dad was sitting on the front steps …” That sort of thing. The listener then has the job of interrupting the story at anytime to get more description. “Poplar tree?” they might ask, at which point the teller needs to say more about the poplar trees until the listener says “continue.” The storyteller then just keeps telling their story from that point on. One of the variations they had us do is then walk side by side and talk about our stories. There is something about strolling which improves the conversation.

Story Prompts Offer Versatile Applications: Part 1

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I love collecting story prompts and activities because they have applications across the spectrum of the kinds of things I explore here, on A Storied Career. Organizational practitioners can use them as warmups/icebreakers or to get at deeper objectives. Memoirists and journalers can use them to get their creative juices flowing and explore aspects of themselves they may want to write about. Careerists can use them to learn more about themselves so they can convey their authenticity to employers. The list goes on…

Here are some nice ones I’ve encountered. More to come tomorrow:

Eldrbarry.net offers a whole slew of Storytelling Games and prompts, from activities that use no props, like “Cast of Thousands,” to storytelling board games, roleplaying games, and games that use decks of cards.

Joe McKeever describes 10 ways for preachers to sharpen their storytelling skills, taken from Austin Tucker’s book, The Preacher as Storyteller; however, I can see uses for these activities outside the pulpit:

  1. Summarize a short story.
  2. Turn a cartoon or comic strip into a narrative.
  3. Place a quotation in its historical context.
  4. Glean from leisure reading and TV time.
  5. Quote a verse of a hymn or other poetry in its narrative setting.
  6. Use one of the elements of narrative to brighten exposition.
  7. Try your hand at creating a parable, a fable, or an allegory.
  8. Narrate in a few sentences your own thoughts on the passing parade of life.
  9. Use your testimony or the testimony of others.
  10. Recast a news story.

In a list of 100 Useful Web Tools for Writers, Laura Milligan includes a section called Finding Inspiration that offers links to idea prompts and inspirational tools.

From an article on this year’s International Day for Sharing Life Stories back in May, the story prompt, “Miracle Story,” “a story centered by what, by its impact on your life and/or surprise, felt like a ‘miracle’ to the teller.”

“Evergreena” in her blog, Evergreena’s Journal, describes a game she invented with her brother in which they both start a writing a novel with the same title and characters and race to get to the 50,000-word mark. “Whoever gets there first is the winner.” She notes they both finished in six days in 2007 and five days in 2008. I know it’s not easy to write 50,000 words in five to six days, and I’m not sure what purpose this activity serves, yet I find it oddly compelling.

Thomas Clifford once kicked off a blog entry with the question: “Do you remember the exact moment you knew what you wanted to do for the rest of your life?” What a great story prompt! And I do remember my moment. A story I wrote in third grade, “Our Funny Dinner,” was published in the school paper. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be a writer.

Katie Neuman described in a blog entry a Charlie Rose lecture in which he revealed his secrets of storytelling. The list of Rose-inspired questions Neuman devised to apply to her field works as a set of story prompts for products, services, businesses, and job-seekers:

    • Explain to me what your [product/service/self] does and why it excites you.
    • Tell me the moment you realized there was a need to invent this new [product/service/self] because you had a vision of something that could be.
    • Tell me the moment you saw on your [customers’/employers’] faces that your [product/service/self] would change their lives.
    • Take me back to what it was like when you were first getting the [product/service/self] off the ground.
    • You joined the [entity] years after it was up and running. Take me back to the moment when you realized you just had to be a part of realizing this vision.

More story prompts and activities tomorrow.