Have you ever had a morning where your mind is fully awake and your body is saying, “I am not ready to get up”?
Well that is the kind of morning I had this past Saturday and after I had made all kinds of lists in my mind while I lay in bed very still, I realized that I did not have a story to run through in my head. It’s like the feeling you get the morning after final exams. Don’t get me wrong. While I love crafting and telling stories it was a relief to have a break.
Most mornings I will wake up and have a part of a story that I am working on, running through my head. It may be a part that I am not happy with and am still working out. Or it may be a part that I have crafted and really like the choice of words and want to make sure I remember to say it just that way. Sometimes it is seeing if there is a repetition that can be structured. And sometimes it may be more than one story depending on what events are coming up. But on Saturday morning when I woke up there was nothing.
I had ideas for two stories but had not started my story cycle yet. When I work on a story it starts with the thought, “I want to tell this story” and most times at that initial stage I don’t know the “why”. But over the years I have learned that if a story wants to be told I need to listen and start preparing for it.
Research: My process for folktales, myth/legends and fact-based stories starts with research. Are there other versions of the story? What details do I want to include in my version? For fact-based stories the research is more intense and time consuming. Personal stories don’t need the traditional way of doing research but research may be needed to support or give context to a detail in the story. Growing up when I was told the story of how I was named the information given was that I got really sick a few days after I was born and had to be taken to the hospital. I asked a friend of mine, who is a pediatrician, what the “really sick” may have looked like given the circumstances of my birth so I could add that detail in my story.
Craft and Learn: For me these two steps go hand in hand. Once I have a fair amount of material I start crating the story. Depending on the type of story I will use a story structure that fits. I will confess that the String of Pearls structure is my favorite structure to use for personal stories. As I am crafting it I start learning the story organically. I like to storyboard the story drawing each scene on a separate piece of paper. This helps me to change the order of events, if I need to, as I am crafting the story. I also learn the story by saying parts of it to myself on my walk. Especially the parts I am struggling with and more often than not I will find the word/phrase or what to move in the story before I get home. This is a never-ending process and could be a loop in itself.
Tell: Finally, it is time to tell the story to an audience. But this is not the end of the process. Based on the feedback and questions the process starts again with doing the research to find the answer to the question(s), seeing where that would best fit into the story, learning the piece and then retelling the story.
And the cycle starts again.
So now you can understand why I was relieved when my mind was blank and there wasn’t a story running through my head while I lay in bed Saturday morning!
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