BiographyWriter.net is offering a nice five-page PDF download, INITIAL AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL QUESTIONNAIRE, that can get you started with self-exploration for autobiographical work, memoir, or just getting to know yourself better.

It’s certainly not the most comprehensive set of prompts I’ve seen, but for a free download, I’m not complaining! The site offers other resources as well.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

For A Storied Career’s parent site, Quint Careers, I recently reviewed HeadStrong, by my friend Tim Tyrell-Smith. In one of the chapters I especially liked, Tim offered a wonderful list of questions to ask yourself to get at “what’s memorable and interesting about you.”

Happily, Tim has also published this list of 31 questions on his blog.

These questions are primarily intended to generate sound bytes — which could be in story form — for networking situations — in which an individual might want to stand out from the crowd and be remembered. Most of the questions relate to personal rather than professional life, but a few of them could also generate stories that might come up in a job interview:

• Have you ever done anything really hard (run a marathon, complete a triathlon, read all the classics)
• What can you do unusually well (artist, chef, writer, chess, crossword puzzle)
• Do you have an engaging hobby (re-building cars, growing flowers, interior design)?
• What is your best quality?
• Have you ever written a novel, an ebook of poetry or a song?
• Have you had to overcome a challenge in your life?
• What one work accomplishment will you be remembered for?
• What are you passionate about?
• What have you always been known for?

The more personal questions could also be used as journaling or memoir prompts.

Whatever your preferred use for it, it’s a very nice list.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I came across a concept today, “the Total Life List,” proposed by Bruce Rosenstein in his book Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. In an interview with Vern Burckhart on Idea Connection, Rosenstein describes the concept:

at the end of each chapter … readers are guided to list current activities and future goals in a variety of work and non-work areas, and also to list the people involved in those areas, such as family, friends, colleagues, and associates.

The idea seems to be akin to a bucket list, except that listing and appraising current activities appears to be a way to live a more balanced life:

The Total Life List, which I mentioned earlier, is a great device … [for] deal[ing] with Drucker’s systematic abandonment question for many areas of your life: ‘If we did not do this already, would we, knowing what we now know, go into it?’

It occurred to me that a Total Life List is both a way to analyze one’s life story to date and construct a future story.

In his blog WritePlace, Web Moore shows know evidence of knowing about Rosenstein’s Total Life List concept (and it probably would have been impossible for him to know of the concept since Moore’s post was written in 2008, and Rosenstein’s book came out in 2009); yet, he offers a blog post with that name that equally seems to lend itself to analyzing the story to date and constructing the future story. Some sample items:

• Conquer the world!
• Visit all 50 U.S. states
• Participate in the Antarctica Marathon (safer than the Ice Marathon)
• Which may lead to a desire to become part of the Seven Continents Club
• Visit all 7 continents
• Advance oneself with integrity: never seek to advance at the misfortune of others
• Learn to read music and play the piano comfortably (getting closer…)
• Always remember that life is short; make the most of each day
• Travel to Everest Base Camp via either Tibet or Nepal
• Write a book
• Continue to learn, grow and push oneself forward; be bold
• Maintain creativity: inspire and be inspired
• Participate in a triathlon
• Visit the Great Pyramids, Great Wall of China, Denali, Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu in Peru, Petra in Jordan, Angkor in Cambodia, Acropolis of Athens in Greece, Old City of Jerusalem and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe (and maybe swim in the Devil’s Pool).

Looking at Moore’s list of completed items in the same post reinforces that idea that he apparently leads an adventurously storied life. Too bad it appears he stopped blogging in 2010.

What do you want your story to have been in five years? 10 years? 25 years? At the end of your life? Start making a list.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’m in the mood to bring you a list of recently discovered prompts, tools, and platforms instead of merely listing them on the inside page dedicated to that topic:

• Saikat Basu on MakeUseOf.com shares 7 Collaborative Storytelling Websites to Weave Your Own Digital Stories, some of which I’ve listed/written about before and some that are new to me. I’ve written previously about One Million Monkeys Typing. Folding Story, a game in which players write one line of a story, fold the paper, and pass it to the next person, is listed in the inside page, but it holds a special place in my heart because my cousins and sisters and I played this game as kids. We played three variations: In “Boy-Girl-Where-They-Met,” everyone would write a boy’s name in the first round, fold the paper, and pass it to the next person. The same process was repeated for the girl’s name, where they met, what the boy said, what the girl said, and the consequences. This variation was by far our favorite and is really the only variation that results in a story. In “Love Letters,” the first round is the salutation, the next the body of the letter, and the final round, the closing. In “Funny Pictures,” round one is the head; round two the body; and round three, the legs and feet. Other sites in Basu’s article are Ficly, where stories are limited to 1,024 characters and anyone can pick up a narrative thread and weave a prequel or sequel; Fabulate, a crowdsourced book with submissions limited to 500 words; WikiStory, a site for writing short stories collaboratively or alone and sharing it with and receiving feedback from others; StoryMash, a creative writing community for authors, amateur writers, readers and anyone interested in collaborative fiction and collaborative creative writing; and Novlet, a Web application designed to support collaborative writing of non-linear stories.
• The Brainstormer, pictured above right, is a cool, pinwheel-shaped Web app (and also iPhone app) in which you click on a button called “Random” and get a random set of words phrases consisting of an object or person, an adjective, and a story structure. Great as a story prompt.
• broadcastr, in beta at this writing, is a social-media platform for location-based stories. It enables the recording, indexing, listening, and sharing of audio content.

• Dipity is a free digital-timeline website. Users can create, share, embed and collaborate on interactive, visually engaging timelines (such as the one pictured) that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location and timestamps.
• The Story Quest/Challenge is a story activity offered by Heidi Dahlsveen on the blog Historiefortelling (which, I believe is Norwegian). The idea is to create a short story based on an image and a specific story structure. The blog post provides both instructions and a sample story.

• I’ve written many times about the Six-Word Memoirs published on SMITH Magazine (story purists dispute that these are stories); the Six-Word Memoirs Card Game is coming this fall. SMITH Mag founder Larry Smith does say much in his post about what the game will be like, but he tells an interesting story of choosing a gamemaker.
• Guts on the Table is a story exercise designed by Puanani Burgess for community-building and the conflict-transformation process. Participants sit in a circle and are given these three instructions:
  1. Tell the story of your names, all of your names.
  2. Tell the story of your community, however, each participant defines “community.”
  3. Tell the story of your gift(s)
  Burgess says she’s participated in more than 1,008 circles. This exercise sounds wonderful to me; I encourage you to read Burgess’s post to grasp the full scope of the exercise.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Came across a couple of unusual and creative ways to look at storytelling and tell stories:

On Inner Ear Ltd., Dougal Perman suggests storytelling with playlists. Noting that playlisting is “an interactive, nonlinear approach to storytelling,” Perman cites “great potential to explore this style of storytelling further using social media services and playlists.” He gives the following “example plan for telling a story with crowd sourced content:”

• Choose a theme for a playlist
• Announce the theme via your blog, Facebook page and Twitter
• Invite people to add tunes (or videos, photos or other media) to a collaborative Spotify playlist
• Hold discussions on your blog or Facebook page about the best way to order the items
• Share the playlist and promote it as a story
• Inspire others to do the same, or create complimentary artwork to accompany it

I would like to learn more about the “promote it as a story” item. What’s the best way to do that?

The other approach I observed also allows for nonlinear storytelling. Trailmeme, which bills itself as “a way to tell stories with Web content,” reminds me a lot of the more buzz-generating Storify, the tagline of which is “create stories using social media.”

A “trail,” according Trailmeme “is a (partially) sequenced collection of digital objects, such as webpages. A trail can be a straight sequence of pages or contain branches and other interesting features that allow you to construct more complex patterns and stories, such as organizing a tutorial into two branches for ‘beginner’ and ‘advanced’ material.”

Mouseover the little camera icon at left to see a sample nonlinear “trailmap.” You can also see a video about Trailmeme below. Seems to me that the Trailmeme site emphasized storytelling more the first time I visited than it does now; the “story” concept seems more toned down.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Not too long ago, I came across the “36 Dramatic Situations that may be found in many stories,” developed, according to ChangingMinds.com, by 19th century French writer Georges Polti, in turn, based, Polti said, on the list identified by Goethe who said it was originated by Italian Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806).

The first thing you’ll notice is the dated feel to many of these situations. I don’t even get some of them; what, for example is an “involuntary crime of love?”

The ChangingMinds site notes that some folks have taken the list of 36 as definitive. Although “Polti initially said there was ‘exactly 36 dramatic situations … and therein we have all the savour of existence,’” based on books like Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots, it seems likely that the 36 situations could edited and condensed. Vengeance is vengeance, and self-sacrifice is self-sacrifice, so their underlying motivations seem superfluous.

How would you edit and modernize the list?

Antiquated though the list may be, it’s worth pondering. The situations could be used as story prompts. Over 36 days, you could each day choose one and write a story about it. You could analyze books and movies based on how these situations fit.

Can you think of any contemporary plot situations that aren’t covered by the list, perhaps because of the way the world has changed since the 19th century?

1. Supplication
2. Deliverance
3. Vengeance of a crime
4. Vengeance taken for kindred upon kindred
5. Pursuit
6. Disaster
7. Falling prey to cruelty or misfortune
8. Revolt
9. Daring enterprise
10. Abduction
11. Enigma
12. Obtaining
13. Enmity of kinsmen
14. Rivalry of kinsmen
15. Murderous adultery
16. Madness
17. Fatal imprudence
18. Involuntary crimes of love
19. Slaying of a kinsman unrecognized
20. Self-sacrificing for an ideal
21. Self-sacrifice for kindred
22. All sacrificed for a passion
23. Necessity of sacrificing loved ones
24. Rivalry of superior and inferior
25. Adultery
26. Crimes of love
27. Discovery of the dishonor of a loved one
28. Obstacles to love
29. An enemy loved
30. Ambition
31. Conflict with a god
32. Mistaken jealousy
33. Erroneous judgment
34. Remorse
35. Recovery of a lost one
36. Loss of loved ones

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

OK, I know story purists reject the idea that six-word stories are really stories. And the theme of a new contest collaboration between SMITH Magazine and WNYC may not lend itself to storied responses. But I think it’s a neat idea, so I’m posting about it:

The Tea Party and the shellacking. Heathcare and the economy. The iPad and ebooks. The BP Gulf disaster and the Chilean miners. Tiger Woods and Lady Gaga. Quite a year. Can you sum it up in six words? That’s the challenge from SMITH and New York Public Radio’s WNYC. Submit your “six on 2010” on WNYC’s blog—we’ll read them all and invite some of you to share your six words (and more) live on The Leonard Lopate Show on Dec. 29.

Post your submission to WNYC by Monday, December 27th, at 3 pm to be considered for the show.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

What kinds of stories do inanimate objects tell, and what stories can we tell about them? Two projects I recently learned of look at the story possibilities behind two, perhaps unlikely, sets of objects — clothing and the contents of junk drawers:

Maria Popova writes on her blog Brain Pickings: “You can tell a lot about a person by their most invaluable possession — those quirky trinkets and sentimental keepsakes we all keep in a box or drawer somewhere, a timecapsule of all we’ve ever romanticized and treasured.” Indeed, you may be able to tell someone’s story by viewing those contents. The subject of Popova’s post, Brittny Badger makes this story prompt possible by “photograph[ing] … these trinket timecapsules she calls Junk Drawers [one is pictured below], capturing indirect portraits of their owners though the tchotchkes they’ve accumulated over the years.” (By the way, Brain Pickings is a very cool find courtesy of Michael Margolis.)

Worn Stories is a collection of stories [by various authors] about clothing and memory. It is updated every week or so and edited by Emily Spivack. Here’s Spivak’s explanation of why she started the site:

In my sock drawer, I’ve got a pair of peach socks that my mom bought me in sixth grade. I sported them during my first concert — Milli Vanilli. Every day I wear a ring that was my grandmother’s. She used to slip it off her finger when we would bake together. And the black Doc Martens I wore as an angsty teen are now front and center in my closet. I’m not overly sentimental. Nor am I a hoarder. I just feel a strong connection to the memories that accompany clothing. Which is why I started Worn Stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Quite by accident, I stumbled across the Improv Encycolpedia, “the largest collection of resources for improvisation theater on the web.” When the site says, “Here you will find tons of stuff related to improvisation theatre,” you’d better believe it.

I believe I found the site because a storytelling game came up in one of my Google alerts. That prompted me to search the site using the term “story.” I got 124 results — all sorts of interesting story-related games and prompts, such as Story Spine, Word at a Time Story, Story Story Die, Three Sentence Story, Word at a Time Story, Sung Story Die, Automatic Storytelling, Never-ending Story, and Object Narrative. Truly a superb collection.

Another story game/prompt idea comes from Family Tree Magazine: Memoir Mad LIbs, memory-jogging prompts “to start your memoirs.” Sample prompts:

1. I’ll never forget the time [person] misbehaved at [event] …
2. A(n) [adjective] thing that happened at [place] was …
3. Nobody ever talks about [person]’s …
4. I wish I could do [event] all over again …
5. [person] really surprised me when …
6. A favorite memory of [place] is …
7. [person] was so [adjective] when …
8. [person] made [event] memorable when …
9. I laughed so hard the time [person] …
10. One of my favorite childhood places was [place] because …
11. I felt [adjective] at [event] because …

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In a blog entry back in the spring, Tony Hirst suggested some interesting story prompts that spring from data.

For example, map-based journey: “Given a trail, what can you tell about the journey that was taken and what happened on that journey?” Hirst asks.

This notion happened to resonate with me because I had recently wanted to express to my social-media friends the challenge of a particular bike ride Randall and I like to do. It’s a very steep hill with several switchbacks, but I didn’t feel I successfully conveyed the elevation and challenge of this ride. Photographs failed to communicate how high up we were. I used a Google satellite map that showed the switchbacks, but I still think I missed the mark.

Hirst suggested MapMyRide for telling the story of the ride. I’ve used the site before, but this time I fiddled with it for about a half hour and could not figure out how to show the route I wanted to show. Same for Hirst’s other suggestion, EveryTrail, which seems to work best with a GPS device. (However, if you look at the images in Hirst’s entry, you can get a sense of what I might be able to show of our ride if I weren’t a dunce using these sites.) Interestingly, “Tell a Story” is one of the tabs for constructing an EveryTrail route. So, given my ineptitude with these two apps, the best I could manage was a terrain map of the route (right), showing that we bike to an elevation of 2,000 feet.

But the twist Hirst suggests for these journey-related is to look up routes mapped by others and speculate on the story of the trip. He discusses the site GarminConnect, “where folks share all kinds of personal data:”

Running a Google search for site:http://connect.garmin.com/activity/ should turn up all sorts of results pages, which leads to one possible data driven storytelling assignment — given a Garmin connect data journey, what happened to that person on their journey?

Similarly, Hirst suggests Daytum, a personal data-logging site. In finding someone’s Daytum information, “what story can we tell about a day in the life of this person, inspired by what they spend their time doing?” Just as he suggests searching for the journeys of others to prompt stories about them, Hirst proposes performing the search site:http://daytum.com/ to “turn up a random selection of public data profiles around which we can ask: what’s this person’s story? (Or we may go one further: pull down two random profiles, and tell a story about their life together, how they met, etc etc.)”

Hirst shares a few data-driven story ideas from others:

• Tell the story of where you grew up using maps and Google Street View photos. See the bottom of this post for a street view of the house in which I spent my first five years in what was then Haddonfield, NJ, and is now Cherry Hill, NJ. I remember rolling down the small hill in front of the house and throwing up on the front lawn on my birthday after eating a tuna sandwich and Kool-Aid way too fast.
• Map your memories.
• Create a neighborhood “digital story using Google Street View and Jing, or any other screencasting tool”
• Tell a story with a timeline or graph, such as this annotated line chart of a day in the life of hashtag that went bad… #cashgordon. (Hirst recommends CrappyGraphs). I should add that X Timeline is a good timeline tool; here’s my life timeline, which needs a bit of updating.

Another way to integrate Google Maps and your childhood home into a story-like experience is with the recent viral video project, The Wilderness Downtown, featuring the song “We Used to Wait” by Arcade Fire (“The lyrics of the song refer back to the days before instant communications when we used to write letters and the anticipation of waiting for them to be delivered,” notes the the blog for the company Delvinia). Other bloggers have suggested that readers view the video before reading more about it, so if you haven’t experienced it yet, you may want to try that before reading further. (Supposedly, the video needs to be viewed on Safari or Chrome; when I tried it on Safari, it was still only 97 percent loaded after 4 hours — yes, you would think I would have given up sooner — but loaded in about a minute on Chrome). NPR and Delvinia describe the experience:

As the video plays, browser windows open and close, sending a flock of birds scattering to the movement of your mouse. You’re invited to interact with the video, writing postcards to your younger self and sprouting vines from your cursor. [Delvinia: “After drawing the message with your cursor, the animated birds fly in to roost on the type before flying off into another one of the panes.”] … Type in the address of your childhood home, and Google Street View personalizes the video for you [“a Google Maps satellite view and rotating Street View images appear based on the address chosen,” notes Delvinia]. … As the music swells, a browser window opens, showing a young man running down the street. It closes and reopens throughout the video. [Delvinia: “The song climaxes with animated trees exploding into view on the paved streets within the Street View image captures. The experience continues by ‘Sending your Postcard Downtown’. The digital postcard has a unique URL that the user is asked to bookmark, this is where they will receive digital postcards from other users. The postcards will also be used as live concert visuals during Arcade Fire’s tour. Some postcards will be made into printed cards on special paper that contains birch tree seeds and distributed at concerts. Plant the cards and a tree grows.”

Delvinia states: “The term ‘transmedia’ has been adopted to describe these experiences, as stories are presented across a number of media platforms with multiple paths, entry and exit points available to the viewer.” I’m not sure The Wilderness Downtown is quite at the transmedia level, but it is certainly an interesting, high-tech storied use of data.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.