Sometimes commenters to this blog share information that readers probably would like to know about but might miss because comments are a bit obscure on this blog. Others e-mail me with share-worthy information. Here are a few morsels about recent entries:

• Barbara Ann Kipfer, author of 4,000 Questions For Getting To Know Anyone and Everyone, mentioned in yesterday’s entry about prompts and questions for life-story writing notes that she also offers story-prompt questions on her Web site.
• Also in response to that life-story-prompt entry, reader Lisa Rosetti shared with me a few of her favorite story-prompt questions: What’s always been important? What do you bring to the world? What’s next? And this question she credits to Michael Margolis: What’s the one story you have the power to change?
• Bernadette Martin, about whom I wrote back in October reports that her book, I Need to Brand My Story Online and Offline — Now What??? is off to the publisher and should be released soon. She also shared her take on holiday newsletters: “Since my daughter’s birth 12 years ago, [I have] written a newsy letter at Xmas but in my daughter’s voice. As she got older we would together identify what to highlight but I would pen it (obviously not written by a child). However, as she is becoming quite the writer and voracious reader in French and English, this year we made 2 major changes……we ‘canned’ the list of highlights and went for a story that in fact she penned for the most part (I did some fine-tuning).” The resulting story was about the mother’s and daughter’s Christmas Day spent in Paris.
• Another Barbara — Barbara Burke — expanded on Saturday’s entry about her business novel/fable, The Napkin, the Melon, and the Monkey:

Stories are used in two important ways within The Napkin, The Melon & the Monkey

Isabel (the wise woman) offered Olivia (main character) advice in the form of stories that had been passed down in her family from generation to generation. In truth, The 11th Problem, SODA (a metaphor for mindfulness), The Fighting Melons, The Monkey Story have their roots in the Buddhist tradition and are 2,500 years old.

Olivia used a story circle as a team building exercise to help her dysfunctional team work together. Using the story of the Fighting Melons as an example, she asked the team members to sit quietly in a circle and listen as each person told their story of the person in their life who had the most influence on who they are today. It worked. Once her team stopped bickering and started being more compassionate and supportive of each other, they rose to first place in a matter of weeks.

If any of your readers would like to use the book within their organizations for team building or as a tool for leaders to create better employee engagement, I’d be happy to share what I know. I also do speaking about using mindfulness in the workplace.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Robert A. Swanwick recently reported on a storytelling framework that works well for gaining knowledge while evaluating projects. He learned of the framework from a presentation by Nancy Dixon, who in turn, learned of it from Lt Col Karuna Ramanathan.

With 2009 ending in a few days, it occurred to me that individuals could apply this technique to constructing stories about the past year with an eye toward learning from the year’s experiences.

Here’s the framework, called the 2-5-1 framework, along with my adaptations for applying it to it a personal year-end review:

• 2
  • Who you are
  • Summary of your year’s experience

• 5 fingers
  • Little finger – what aspects of your life did not get enough attention?
  • Ring finger – What relationships did you form? What did you learn about relationship building?
  • Middle finger – what did you dislike? What/who frustrated you?
  • Pointer finger – what would you do better next time around? What do you want to tell those who influenced your actions in the last year about what they could do better?
  • Thumb (up) – what went well. What was good?

• 1 – the most important takeaway from the year

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

This weekend, the last before Christmas, is bound to be a big one for holiday shopping. My newspaper said the crowds will be “outrageous,” which I find a little hard to swallow given the economy.

The blogger at Thoughts While Waiting suggests that holiday shopping provides an opportunity for storytelling.

Just yesterday, Randall told me the story of looking for gift-wrap bins at a home-improvement big box and finding only a couple of damaged ones. Then he noticed a bunch more on a shelf too high even for my 6’4” husband. A sales associate happened by but was helping another customer. The associate sent the other customer to the plumbing aisle to wait for him and then helped Randall get the bins down. Happy ending.

Even online shopping results in stories. Yesterday I decided to check the status of a $170 order at a book retailer and was horrified to discover that the order was not scheduled to ship till Epiphany — Jan. 6! I had to cancel the order and go to two other retailers to order the same stuff. This story will have a happy ending when my packages arrive!

Here are some shopping story prompts suggested by The blogger at Thoughts While Waiting:

Before…

• “What are you going to get?”
• “Where are you going to get it?”
• “When are you going to get it?”
• “Why are you getting that?”
  
• “How are you going to get it home?”
  
• “Who are you going with?”

• “What did you get?”
• “Where did you get it?”
• “When did you get it?”
• “Why did you get that?”
  
• “How did you get it home?”
  
• “Who did you go with?”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’m belatedly reading one of the classics of the storytelling world (especially personal storytelling), Storycatcher by fellow Washington resident Christina Baldwin.

Early in the book, she tells this tale:

Attending a conference in California not long ago, I found myself standing in a line waiting to buy fancy coffee. One by one people reached the counter and placed their orders: “skinny latte double-shot tall.” I could see I would in in this a while, so I took a risk. Turning to the person next to me, I asked, “So what’s your earliest memory of coffee?” The man’s face lit up …

Baldwin goes on relate the coffee stories she elicited.

In my other home, Central Florida, I’m about an hour away from Walt Disney World, where waiting in long lines consumes at least half of the theme-park experience. What a great idea it would be to turn to folks in line and ask things like: “What’s your best memory of Disney World?” or “What do you remember about your first visit here?”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

[Thanks to Thaler Pekar for alerting me to this one.]

Did you know that toilets get Tweeted about on Twitter nearly 750 times weekly?

I have bad dreams about this sort of thing, but the “Tell Us Your Best Toilet Story” contest from American Standard is the chance to win the best toilet for the best toilet story. Simply submit a paragraph or two about a memorable toilet experience on this Facebook Fan Page between September 9 and October 9, and members of the page will vote for their favorites through October 12. The grand prize of a Champion 4 toilet, complete with installation and the Champion 4 Slow Close toilet seat will be awarded to the story that receives the highest number of “thumbs up” from readers. Four additional top vote-getters will be awarded a free Champion® 4 Toilet with Champion 4 Slow Close toilet seat.

“Everyone uses toilets, so nearly everyone has a toilet story,” said Jeannette Long, American Standard general manager of e-business. “Tell people you work for a plumbing company, and you hear them all: the one about the overflow during the big party or the one about what the kids have tried to flush.

“We figured the best story deserved the best toilet.”

Members will vote for the story they are most likely to repeat to friends and family. There is no purchase necessary to enter or to join the voting. If not a Facebook account holder, there is no fee or charge to become a registered Facebook member. Contest rules are available on American Standard’s website.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Whether we are storytellers, story practitioners, journalers, writers, bloggers, memoirists, or just folks seeking personal growth and self-actualization, we can always use good story prompts for inspiration. Here are three I liked that I came across recently:

1. Tell the story of the most inspiring, influential storyteller you’ve known. This one comes from the blog, The Sunlit Desk. The blogger, “Sharon,” also offers a List of prompts & exercises.
2. Imagine what your life would be like if one of the most significant events in it had not happened. This prompt springs from an article in Scientific American, What If I’d Never Met My Husband: New research reveals a better way to boost happiness than counting blessings — imagining that the good things never happened, the link to which Stephanie West Allen posted on Lifewriters Forum, and the ensuing discussion about it.

3. Write your life legacy in three lines of 14 characters each. This one, in the ilk of the six-word memoir or the Twitter story (if there really is such a thing), comes from Brickstorming, a PDF template at Creativity Portal (and introduced here). Here’s the actual prompt:

A world museum is creating an exhibit of “wisdom bricks” featuring unique quotes and bits of wisdom from 1,000 people from all over the world. You’ve been chosen as one of the people to participate in this legacy-making exhibit — you get to make your mark! What will you impart to future generations?

The brick engraving company has some parameters: Your message must be contained within 3 lines with 14 characters each (spaces and punctuation count).

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Sometimes when I see art or photography described as great storytelling, I wonder if I’m supposed to see a really obvious story that everyone else sees.

More fruitful, I think, is to imagine one’s own story to go with each image.

There’s plenty of fodder in two sets of photos on the theme “Trouble in Paradise” by Christoph Martin Schmid. One set is labeled “Day,” the other, “Night.”

In fact, one of my favorite storytelling activities is to use an image or set of images as a story prompt. Without considering artistic intent, I like to conjure my own story for each image.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Eric Winick has a dilemma.

He wants to help people tell their stories orally through his company, Yarn Audioworks.

But he’s having difficulty persuading folks to come forward to record their narratives. “I’m just looking for the best incident-based 10-15 minute stories I can find,” he says.

Winick, a full-time marketing director at an off-Broadway theater in New York City, came to storytelling through the medium of theater. “For many years I fancied myself a writer — first of short stories, and then of plays, which is where I found a niche for almost 20 years,” he explains.

In 2005, after becoming a fan of the kinds of stories he heard on public radio, Winick had the idea to record audio pieces myself. “I blew an entire tax refund one year on audio equipment,” he says. “That was the year I started working on my first audio documentary. My model, obviously, is ‘This American Life,’” he says, although Yarn doesn’t follow a particular theme. “

Three of Winick’s pieces have made it to public radio in the last six months, in places as far-flung as Birmingham, AL, and Urbana, IL, he notes.

Winick wants to expand Yarn by recording more stories — his own and those of others in the NYC metro area (or elsewhere for would-be storytellers with the ability to record a .WAV file). He’d like to get some of these stories on the radio.

After Winick wrote to me, I gave him a few suggestions about his Web site and approach. I told him I think the idea of recording stories is much more intimidating than writing stories. That fear factor may explain his difficulty in getting people to speak their tales.

I now throw this dilemma open to readers: How can Winick coax more folks to record their stories?

In the meantime, Winick has a terrific set of story-prompting questions on his site that are not only good for brainstorming stories to record but for all kinds of other uses:

1. What was the most frightening experience you’ve ever had?
2. What was the funniest experience you’ve ever had?
3. What was the funniest and most harrowing experience you’ve ever had?
4. Who was the most influential person you’ve met? What experience with this person typifies the influence he/she had on you?
5. Have you had an experience in which you accomplished something you did not think was possible?
6. Have had ever triumphed over what you felt at the time were the forces of evil?
7. Have you had an encounter with a celebrity/well-known individual that made an impression on you?
8. Have you ever made a complete fool of yourself in front of others?
9. Have you ever done something you wished you could take back?
10. Have you ever had a near-death experience?
11. What was the most ill you’ve ever been? How did it cause you to reflect on your life?
12. What was the happiest you’ve ever been?
13. What was the most trying experience of your life?
14. Have you ever done something for which you did not apologize, but still wish you could?
15. Have you ever had an experience in a foreign country that taught you a lesson about yourself/your culture?
16. Have you ever been arrested?
17. Have you ever been mistaken for someone else?
18. Have you ever carried out a practical joke that either succeeded or failed?
19. Have you ever had an experience while working that made you think about the nature of your work/vocation/yourself as a worker?
20. Have you ever had to make a life-or-death decision for yourself or someone else?
21. What’s the most impulsive thing you’ve ever done on a date?
22. What’s the most impulsive thing you’ve ever done in the name of love?
23. What’s the most impulsive thing you’ve ever done, period?
24. What was your bravest or most courageous moment?
25. What was the worst injury you’ve ever sustained?
26. Have you ever had to make the choice between doing the right thing and the wrong thing?
27. What was the one moment in high school you’ll never forget, for all the right or wrong reasons?
28. Have you ever been so lost you couldn’t find your way back?
29. Have you ever lost or broken something and then not been able to admit it?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.