Here’s a neat idea. I’ve come across many summer reading-list suggestions in the last month or so, but the list from Get Storied is the first one to focus on books about story.

Check out the Ultimate Storytelling Reading List for Summer.

Get Storied also offers a full list of suggestions on Amazon, “Storytelling Mojo: An Essential List for Business and Social Change”.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I almost glossed over a recent four-part series by Ozge Karaoglu, 100 Digital Storytelling Tools for Your Digital Selves + Natives (that’s Part 1; I’ve listed links to the other three parts at the end of this post).

I almost glossed over it because “digital” storytelling is not at the top of my list of storytelling applications I most like to cover. That’s likely because I apparently define “digital storytelling” very narrowly — basically as telling stories on video or film. Apparently I’ve been wrong; “digital” is not as narrow as mere video. Most define “digital storytelling” as using digital tools to tell stories.

I was excited to see the four-part series because it lists a number of tools I’m not familiar with and that I plan to add to my page Links to Storytelling Platforms, Prompts, and Tools.

Seeing the great variety of tools also suggests a taxonomy or set of categories for these diverse tools:

• Aggregators that bring multiple tools together
• Animation
• Audio, Voice
• Collaborative storytelling tools
• Comic-book-style media
• Location-based tools
• Online books, stories, ebooks
• Photo, image tools
• Slides and slideshows
• Timelines, storylines
• Video
• Virtual scrapbook tools

Not every tool in Karaoglu’s collection is, in my opinion, a storytelling tool. Nevertheless, it’s a superb collection for everyone looking to experiment with new, technology-assisted ways of telling stories. Here are the other parts in the series:

• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The importance — or lack thereof — of defining what a story is has been an ongoing theme in this blog. See a compilation of views from my Q&A subjects: DefiningStory.pdf.

My own thinking has evolved. I am certainly in favor of a stricter definition of storytelling than I used to be. I still tend to hold a fairly broad perspective on the definition of story. At the same time, I get frustrated to see many people claim “story” status to entities that really do not seem like stories to me.

For those who care about a strict definition of story — or who want to understand the perspective of strict story definers — two new methods have surfaced.

The first is an entire Web site, The Story Test, developed by the folks at Anecdote. The site presents 10 examples and asks the user to choose “yes” (this is a story) or “no” (it isn’t). You don’t get Anecdote’s view of the “correct” answers until you go through all 10 examples. I scored a 7, meaning I’m “on my way and with a little more work, I’ll be spotting stories all over the place.” (I also went through the examples very quickly, skimming them because I wanted to see what would be revealed at the end.)

The examples are all taken from real speeches and pieces of writing, and I’m guessing the authors purported all of them to be stories. If you want to cut to the chase and see both examples and explanations for how they are or are not stories, you can go here.

The other method — or test — comes from Thaler Pekar in a blog post from earlier this week. She writes:

If, upon watching a video on an organization’s web site, your description of the video is, “It’s the story of what they do”, or, “It shows what they do”, you’ve viewed a message, or a description, or lots of information, not a story.

If your response is, “That’s a great story about what the organization accomplishes,” or, “I could really relate to [the protagonist]”, or, later that day, you find yourself sharing what you have seen, now that’s a story.

Here’s another test: did you watch something about people in general, or one particular person? And not simply told by a person, but about a person, and his or her challenges, triumphs, and resolutions?

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.

Amazing how quickly something can become “old news” on the social Web. I learned of Zahmoo, being launched by the folks at Anecdote, early last week but didn’t want to interrupt the Margaret Parkin Q&A to blog about Zahmoo.

So, chances are you’re already heard about this “story bank for family and business stories,” as Anecdote’s Shawn Callahan describes it.

Shawn notes that Zahmoo will have three pricing plans: $5/month for the Family Plan; $149/month for the Business Plan; and $249/month for the Premium Plan.

Shawn says: “The place to get the very latest information and be the first to be invited to use Zahmoo will be those good folk who are following @zahmoo on Twitter.”

The preview video (almost 5 minutes) below demonstrates “how you can store and manage your video, text, audio and picture stories, how to add people to collaborate on stories and the wide range of searching options available to find the stories you want when you need them.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

While poking around my iPad, it occurred to me to search Apple’s App Store for apps related to story and storytelling, so I used those two search terms to see what’s out there. This listing isn’t intended to be comprehensive, and I would certainly love to hear of other great story-related apps.

I focused on iPad rather than iPhone apps because I have an iPad and not an iPhone. Even when not designated as being an iPad app, most iPhone apps, I’ve found, can be used on an iPad; they just aren’t optimized for the size of the iPad’s screen. For example, Eric James Wolf’s Art of Storytelling podcast app is ostensibly available only for iPhone, but it can be used on an iPad if you don’t mind its small screen image floating on the larger iPad screen.

The vast majority of results that come up when searching apps for “story” are stories or storybooks for children. Here are some that are not:

Story-prompt and brainstorming tools:
Storyteller HD helps users write that next story, that next page, or that next sentence, offering “thousands of character ideas, plot suggestions, location ideas and themes. Whether the hero is an insecure bodyguard obsessed with his own mortality or the suspect a vigilante father avenging his daughter’s kidnapping, Storyteller is sure to surprise you with intriguing and original ideas for your stories. There’s no need to ever fear writer’s block again!” $1.99

Story Tiles (sorry, can’t find a link for iPad version) enables users to arrange random word tiles into fun and interesting phrases, providing more than 13,000 random words and millions of phrase possibilities. $2.99

Stories and collections of stories to read:
The Narrative App brings Narrative Magazine to the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch and places the magazine’s entire library at your fingertips, for free. Narrative Magazine, named “the gold standard in online literary magazines,” is the leading publisher of first-rank fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. A nonprofit organization, Narrative is dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age by supporting the finest writing talent and encouraging readership around the world. Read stories from award-winning authors such as Sherman Alexie, Rick Bass, Ann Beattie, T. C. Boyle, Robert Olen Butler, E. L. Doctorow, Gail Godwin, Jim Harrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, Joyce Carol Oates, and James Salter.” Free.

SpiritRenew provides content for spiritual development and growth. Content includes short stories and inspirational articles.

301+ Short Stories for iPad offers 315 stories by more than 90 authors (with more on the way)

 in these and more genres: adventure
, humor
, ghost stories, horror, mystery
, westerns
, fantasy
, romance and love
, and sketches of life
. 99 cents.

Created to keep literature vital in the digital age, Electric Lit features video-enhanced stories by great contemporary authors like Michael Cunningham (The Hours), Rick Moody (The Ice Storm), MacArthur “Genius” Grant winners Colson Whitehead and Lydia Davis, Jim Shepard, Aimee Bender, and many more. Free.

Moving Tales: “The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross”: is the first in a series of Moving Tales’ Classic World Tales. Inspired by the age-old tale of a man who becomes rich through a dream, “The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross” describes the journey of a poor pedlar woman who, guided by the shifting line between the real and the unreal, discovers a surprising and wonderful treasure. The app’s dynamic typographic layouts can be animated using the iPad’s accelerometer, and randomly selected alternative perspectives are incorporated to ensure that no two viewings are alike. Other features include Cover Flow-like navigation, the choice to hear and display the story in Spanish as well as English and compelling, poetic voice-over narratives. $4.99.

Touching Stories: Enables the user to experience four interactive stories designed specifically for the iPad. “By touching, shaking, and turning your iPad, you can navigate, unlock and reveal unexpected variations in each of these stories. Shot by 5 different directors, these interactive, live-action, short stories evolve storytelling in ways that haven’t been done before on the iPad.” Free.

Blog-like story news:
Post Ad. Story Worldwide, a marketing agency that “connect brands to customers by telling engaging and entertaining stories that audiences actually want to hear” believes “the Interruption Age — the time for traditional ads — is over. The Post-Advertising Age is what’s now and next: Great content driving deep consumer engagement; less and less money wasted on expensive traditional media (like TV) as free media take over. It’s inevitable, it’s a good thing, and it’s already upon us…as this app aims to prove.” Free.

Tools for writers/creators of stories (and other genres):
Story Tracker helps writers keep track of stories, novels, poems, scripts, and articles submitted to publishers. “Many magazines, journals, or other markets for your work don’t allow simultaneous submissions,” the app’s description says. “When you’re juggling dozens or even hundreds of stories, it’s easy to make an embarrassing mistake. Keeping track of it all can soon become a nightmare.” $9.99

StoryPages is “for anyone that wants to create illustrated stories or guides of any kind and deliver them quickly and easily. StoryPages lets you create storyboard style pages with your drawing in a top panel and typed text in a bottom panel like a storyboard used during movie production. Draw in fullscreen (landscape or portrait) and optionally add a background to set the scene or use as a tracing template with transparency control. StoryPages can be used for sketching movie scenes, animations, and comics. Use it for keeping a record of your product ideas, visual instructions (for hardware, electronics, contractors and landscapers), help files, construction and restoration projects, teacher curriculum, travelogues, hobbies, dream recording and more.” $2.99

Successful Novel Plotting is described as a productivity app, but it seems more like a book to me. From the description: “This authoritative guide will help steer new writers through the minefield of the writing process. Using examples from her own work, and that of other top authors, [author] Jean [Saunders] explains how to create memorable characters, generate cliffhangers and keep up a pace that will hook readers. And when you’ve done that, she even gives advice on how to work with publishers and editors to make your novel a best seller.”

This site offers a collection of apps for digital storytelling on the iPad.

Shelly Terrell offers 17 Digital Storytelling & Literacy Apps/Resources, some of which are targeted at children, but others of which work for general audiences.

Lots of diary and journal apps also are available. Search for “diary” and “journal” at the App Store to see them.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

It’s probably no secret that those of us who report on and curate content about storytelling follow the #storytelling Twitter hashtag as one way of keeping up.

Yesterday, I saw that the #storytelling hashtag had been transformed into an online “daily newspaper,” The #storytelling Daily. (I can’t tell who created it; if you’re the creator, feel free to claim credit.)

I decided to similarly create a daily paper from the Twitter list I created of storytelling practitioners. So, the authors of the content in this daily paper are people I consider to be storytelling practitioners. They often tweet about storytelling but tweet about other topics, as well. The daily presents the same content — in a different format — as the “Permanent Entry” widget that always runs as an entry on this page.

Paper.li enables users to create a daily newspaper from the Twitter stream of a given user and the people who follow him or her, a Twitter hashtag, or a Twitter list.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Since the early days of this blog, I’ve been fascinated by the concept of the “business novel” or fable and have blogged about every one I’ve come across.

At the end of this entry, I’ve listed all the biz novels (I think) that I’ve ever featured in this space, with links to the original posting about each.

I’m also adding a new one to the roster: The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea, by Bob Burg and John David Mann. Here’s a description:

In 2008 a “little story about a powerful business idea” took the business world by storm with its message: that shifting our focus from getting to giving is the simplest, most fulfilling and most effective path to success in business and in life.

Rapidly going from national bestseller to global phenomenon, The Go-Giver soon gained a devoted following in its original English and in more than sixteen foreign-language editions. From schools, churches and hospitals to law firms and information technology companies, individuals and groups around the world have applied the book’s Five Laws of Stratospheric Success to their organizations and businesses, relationships and personal lives.

The Go-Giver tells the story of an ambitious young man named Joe who yearns for success. Joe is a true go-getter, though sometimes he feels as if the harder and faster he works, the further away his goals seem to be. And so one day, desperate to land a key sale at the end of a bad quarter, he seeks advice from the enigmatic Pindar, a legendary consultant referred to by his many devotees simply as the Chairman.

Excerpt from the book:

Pindar smiled. “Please don’t misunderstand me. There’s nothing wrong with making money. Lots of it, in fact. It’s just not a goal that will make you successful.” Reading the bewilderment on Joe’s face, he nodded and put his hand up to signal that he would explain.

“You see,” Pindar continued, “the majority of people operate with a mindset that says to the fireplace, ‘First give me some heat, then I’ll throw on some logs.’ Or that says to the bank, ‘Give me interest on my money, then I’ll make a deposit.’ And of course, it just doesn’t work that way.” Joe frowned, trying to parse the logic of Pindar’s examples.

“You see? You can’t go in two directions at once. Trying to be successful with making money as your goal is like trying to travel a superhighway at seventy miles an hour with your eyes glued to the rearview mirror.”

This year, the authors published a follow-up book, Go-Givers Sell More. “The new book is not a parable or story,” the authors write, “that is, not exactly a sequel to The Go-Giver. (A “real” sequel to the story is also in the works, but that’s going to be a surprise for 2011.) Instead, this book is more like a Go-Giver Companion, a set of short, essay-like chapters about applying the Go-Giver principles to real-world situations, especially in the context of sales and selling. The book is also punctuated by several dozen real-life stories of people we know who live these principles.”

By the way, the authors offer downloadable and other goodies here.

Business novels and fables previously featured on A Storied Career:

• The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey, by Barbara Burke
• EDGE! A Leadership Story, co-authored by Corey Blake
• Navigating the Growth Curve: 9 Fundamentals that Build a Profit-Driven, People-Centered, Growth-Smart Company, by James Fischer
• There’s More to Life Than the Corner Office, by Lamar Smith and Tammy Kling
• Recognizing Richard Rabbit, by Peter Weddle
• Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling by Stephen Denning
• The Imperfect Board Member, by Jim Brown

Barbara Fillip of Knowledge for Development, LLC, is also fascinated with business novels and compiled a helpful list of examples. I posted an entry with her a link to her list, but her posting has a new address since I first posted in 2008.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

When I first mentioned stories based on Google searches, I didn’t realize that Google had created a mashup application using Google searches and YouTube (which Google owns). One of my Facebook friends turned me on to Google Search Stories Video Creator, described this way:

Every search is a quest. Every quest is a story. Use this handy tool to bring your Search Story to life. Simply type in your searches, choose the music, and watch as your narrative unfolds on screen.

The tool is a technological marvel and very fun and easy to play with, but I’m not sure the results are really stories. The first criterion, in my opinion, for the story quality in these videos is that, like Parisian Love, the search video I cited in my previous entry, the video needs no explanation beyond what you see on the screen; the viewer grasps the story without additional information.

The quick-and-dirty search video I created to test this application doesn’t meet that criterion. I’m sure I could create a better story if I gave it more thought and put more planning into it. But the process of creating it made me realize that Google Search Stories Video Creator is a good tool for helping the user think about story structure. I had to think about how I could integrate classic story elements — setting the scene, introducing conflict, and presenting resolution.

My search video, Misadvententures in Moving (embedded below) attempts to tell the story of what happened this week when the moving van we’d hired to move our possessions from Florida to Washington arrived. Since the story does require some setup, here it is: Randall thoroughly researched movers to find one with a high rating for our move to Kettle Falls. The pickup of our stuff in Florida wasn’t perfect, but we had no major problems. The movers arrived here in Kettle Falls on Wednesday. Because of the steep elevation of our driveway, the movers couldn’t get their truck up to our house and had to park it nearby and shuttle everything in smaller loads. The area U-Haul outlets were all out of trucks, so the shuttling took place in a pickup truck — many trips over a day and a half. The movers wanted another $900 for the shuttling. We discovered we had already paid this $900 on the other end, as though there had been similar conditions in Florida (which there weren’t, Florida being quite flat). Many phone calls by Randall to the movers’ corporate offices and a long delay ensued. We got out of paying the extra charges for now, but the company is “investigating.” The happy ending — or beginning of the next chapter/story — is that we are here on our beloved homesite, which we call “Empowering Retreat.”

How could I have made my search story better?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

…. Well, with Facebook anyway. I’ve written about many forms of Twitter storytelling, but Snipisode is the first storytelling app I’ve come across for Facebook. Snipisode, developed Agency Zen, lets you type or paste in a whole story and then with a click of a button snip up the story either by line or by punctuation — periods, question marks, or exclamation points. Then you choose a frequency for snips of the story to appear as status updates — daily or every two days.

The story then unfolds on your status line. Visitors can click the Full Story link by the status to see all your status posts for the story, including comments, on one page.

In an 8:41 video (below), inventor Dan Zen describes Snipisode and tells how to install and use the app. (I wish he sounded more enthusiastic.)

What personal, business, and creative applications can you think of for Snipisode? Maybe a new-product launch that tells the product’s story as a series of snips/status updates … A resume or bio broken into snips … A fictional story told episodically?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.