How to Create a Story by Liz Warren

Stories are things we make.

Most of us don’t have stories. We have memories and experiences that we shape into stories. It’s similar to how home-made baked goods don’t just spontaneously appear on our kitchen counters. We have to assemble the ingredients, follow a recipe, and bake them ourselves. 

Same with stories.

The questions below are designed to help you think through the process of building a story to tell other people face-to-face, in real time and to make a difference by doing so.

Why are you creating a story? For any of these, is there a theme, a focus, a requirement, a season?

• An assignment?
• A performance?
• A family event?
• A work event?
• Other?

What do you have?

• A memory?
• An emotion?
• A photograph?
• An upheaval?
• A moment of humor or embarrassment?
• An unexpected outcome?
• A pertinent experience?
• A traditional story?
• A children's book?
• Something nagging at the back of your mind?

Whatever you have, begin to examine it.

For personal and family stories:

• Roll it around in your mind.
• What are you feeling?
• Who is there?
• Where are you?
• What happened before the memory that you started with?
• What happened after the memory?
• Is there back story on the moment, the people?
• Why is this moment the one you remember?
• What does this moment have to do with the change the story documents?

 For traditional stories:

• What drew you to the story?
• Why do you want to tell it?
• Is it from your cultural or ancestral heritage?
• If not, how will you prepare yourself to tell the story responsibly?
• What part of your life or experience does the story connect to or reflect?

 For fact-based stories:

• What drew you to the subject?
• Why do you want to tell it?
• Do you have enough information to put the story together?
• Do you have too much information? How will you make it a story instead of a lecture?

Go deeper. For any type of story, what more do you need to know?

• Are there family and friends you might want to talk to about the memory/story?
• Do you need to do additional research on the subject of your story?
• Do you need to do additional research on the cultural tradition of your story?
• Do you need to go deeper with your own memories and emotions?

 Begin telling the story.

• It doesn’t have to be finished, ready, or perfect. Just start talking about it to other people.
• Notice where it flows and where it doesn’t.
• Notice where you feel the energy and where you get stuck.
• Notice where your listeners light up, or where they look confused.
• Ask them what they liked or what they want to know more about.
• Let it start to get its shape through telling rather than writing.

 Do a structure check.

• Stories are narrative forms that document change. Does your story do that? Are things different at the end of the story than they were at the beginning?
• If you are telling a traditional story, the structure is already there, but you may want to “book-end” the story with your own personal experience, or to connect with the audience.
• Use a simple story structure to confirm for yourself that you have all the elements of a story.
  • The Five Ps, The Inverted World, How Something Came to Be, or Challenge/Choice/Outcome.
  • Think through your story with the different structures, as they have different emotional lenses and can help reveal part of your story you may not have thought of.
• Is it a big story? Use the hero’s journey model to think through the elements of a longer story.
• Is the story built around moments in time that listeners can “see?”

 Build the engagement potential of the story.

• Dialogue: Include people speaking to each other instead of reporting speech.
• Senses: How did it look, taste, feel, sound, what was the texture or temperature?
• Vivid imagery: Base the critical incidents of the story in specific moments that you can take your listeners to through your description.
• Beginning and ending: Build them intentionally and know them well.
• Participation: Build in opportunities for listeners to participate with a refrain, a gesture, or a song.
• Need a quick fix for the ending? Can you answer any of these questions for your memory?
  • “After that I always . . .”
  • “After that I never . . .”
  • “That’s how I learned . . .”
  • “From that day on . . .”
• Emotional resolution: Do you know what the story means? Are you ready to tell it?

Adding the “Art” part.

• Universal aesthetic principles such as balance, contrast, rhythm and harmony are as relevant to storytelling and its appreciation as to any other art form.
• How do the parts of your story relate to the whole in terms of duration and structure?
• Is there something symbolic or metaphoric that deepens the story that you can artfully weave throughout it?
• Is there an emotional resonance or tone you want to achieve by incorporating specific language, or color, sound, texture, etc.?
• Is there a line or stanza of poetry that captures something about this story? Can you incorporate it somehow? The beginning or end? Maybe to punctuate the transitions in the story?
• How about a lyric or song?

 Don’t memorize – learn your story – and tell it as often as you can.

• Make a story board.
• Tell it to yourself like a movie in your head to root the images in your consciousness.
• If you need to write, use bullet points, not full text. *See below for more on why.
• Know exactly how you want to begin and end – the middle will usually flow. (Ok, maybe do memorize that part!)
• Tell/practice the story as often as you can with real people.
  • Storytelling is a relational art form – telling it to the mirror doesn’t include the “relating” part.
• Start paying attention to the length of the story. Do you need to add or cut?
• Stand when you tell/practice to let the story get into your whole body. Let the story inform your gestures and facial expressions.
• The goal is to feel comfortable with the story so you can be outer directed (towards your listeners) as opposed to inner-focused (trying to remember the story and/or deal with anxiety).

 Tell the story!

• Commit to enjoying yourself.
• Know as much as you can about the event to prepare yourself: the audience, the setting, the sponsors, the other tellers, the purpose, etc.
• Remember, connecting with your listeners is the goal, not perfection.
• Also remember – it’s a process. Every time you tell your story you will learn something about it and/or yourself. Your story will continue to develop as you tell it over time.

 After telling:

• Wherever you told the story, always try to take time to reflect on the experience.
• If you are in class, take careful note of the affirmations you receive. Don’t discount them. Your listeners are helping you embrace the things you do well. What did you learn from the rest of the feedback that you might want to use to further develop your story?
• Notice what went the way you planned and what didn’t.
• If you left something out, did it really need to be there?
• Did you add something you hadn’t planned? Will you keep that part?
• If you were telling in public, how did it feel? What feedback did you get from the audience?

*Why Develop a Story Orally? As educated people we’ve been trained to rely on reading and writing for our professional and academic tasks. It can be hard to break that pattern when thinking about how to craft a story orally before writing it. One of the drawbacks of writing your story first, is that given our academic training, it’s more likely to come out like an essay with a thesis, supporting points and a conclusion. An essay is a hierarchical form that is meant to inform and in which the speaker is establishing authority. A story is a horizontal form that is meant to engage, and in which the teller is establishing relationships between themselves and the listeners and between the listeners and the story.  When you can, taking the time to develop a story out loud with other people often results in stories that are more rounded and that sound more like you.