Slides from TechSoup's Lights, Camera, Take Action! Today’s workshop with StoryCenter is called “Why This Story, Why This Story Now: The Art of Impactful Storytelling” StoryCenter facilitators Rob and Allison will share approaches to helping individuals, communities and organizations uncover the stories that really matter - the stories that they want to share. Featuring creative breakout sessions and opportunities to share, you will practice the use of story prompts, discuss creative solutions, and explore tools to support self-expression, creative practice, and community building.

1. Why This Story. Why This Story Now! The Art of Impactful Storytelling
Robert Kershaw, Director of Public Workshops
Allison Myers, Program Director, Custom Workshop Specialist
Lights, Camera, Take Action • September 30, 2021

2. AGENDA
● Who We Are, What We Do and Why We Do It.
● Why This Story, Why This Story Now!
● Change and Changes – Prompt
● Story Circle
● Writing for Brevity – The Four C’s
● Re-Write
● Sharing
● Final thoughts

3. Story, Power and Faith
Opinions build walls, stories build bridges. - Christine Baldwin, StoryCatcher
Stories [and songs] give us a way to believe.They also give us things to believe, which is a mixed blessing. The
reality of our lives is inseparable from the ways in which we imagine it, and this closeness sometimes produces
conflict and confusion. Every story brings the imagination and reality together in moments of what we might as well
call faith. - Ted Chamberlin If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?
We have many reasons to judge, to assess, to privilege some part of our knowing in communicating with others.
We call this kind of communication - stating our opinion. Sharing opinions in service to others is a useful part of
exchanges between and among people. But stories are something else. In the process of exchanging stories, the
privileged judgmental part of ourselves is reframed as what grows from our experience, not from the our own
perceptions of our authority… our class, our level of education, our relationship to dominant cultural signifiers like
our accent, diction, and style of presentation whether learned from birth, or acquired through effort.
Ultimately stories don’t tell us what to do, how to feel and what to think. They invite us to go
on a journey of discovery with the storyteller where we can find our own meaning.

4. impressive, poignant, stunning, effective, sympathetic,
rousing, moving, affecting, stirring, touching, dynamic,
provoking, motivating, stimulating, inspirational, cogent,
direct, insightful, emotional, authentic...
Impactful... Yes it is a word

7. Making visible what wants to remain invisible, allowing
for silences to speak, is at the heart of storywork.
We succeed when we listen and tell from
the center of our heart.

10. Seven Steps
of Digital Storytelling
• Owning Your Insight
• Owning Your Emotion
• Finding A Moment
• Seeing Your Story
• Hearing Your Story
• Assembling Your Story
• Sharing Your Story

11. Finding your Insight
•What is the story that only YOU can tell?
•What are you trying to say?
•What does your story mean to you?
•Why is this story important now?
Finding the Moment (of change)
•SHOW don’t tell: find a moment that illustrates the insight
•Use your senses- who was there, what was said, what did you see?
What are the details?
•Did something change? When were you aware of it?
•Write the scene from memory, as if you were there living it again.
Owning your Emotions
•What emotions come up for you?
•Can you convey emotions without naming them?
•Can you let yourself be vulnerable, and honest?

14. Chronology - Memory - Story
When we are prompted into a story about a lived experience, we usually jump straight in. This
happened. This happened. This happened.
When we are asked to write down a story, we usually pull back to the establishing
information, the context, the exposition, attempting to make sure our audience can follow
sequence of cause and effect and if we’re really honest to convince ourselves that it’s worth
telling.
Good storytelling is first about putting trust in ourselves and then trusting the audience to
infer the obvious with appropriate hints. Breaking the chronology up often forces our
audience to construct the relationships, to engage in the story.

15. Connect
Jump into Scene: a moment just before something happens, or the introduction of a key character, or you drop
us into a place, somewhere without telling us why. Then leave the scene, unresolved...
Context
Give just enough information for the listener to understand what is happening and why it is important…
Change
Take us through the conclusion of the scene how you or the characters responded…
Closure
Exit the story with an appropriate level of narrative closure or summation
Four C’s Narrative Structure
Digital Storytelling Online Certificate Program Winter/Spring 2021

16. Tell a story about..
a) A time when your life could’ve gone in one of two directions.
b) The best or worst piece of advice you ever gave someone.
c) A time you reached further, for a goal than you normally would.
d) A third place in your life – not your home, not you work – but a third place.
WRITING PROMPTS
• Why did you choose this prompt? Why now?
• What relevance does this story have for you today?
• Who might this story be for?
Consider these questions as you write…

17. 1
7
Story and Approaches To Editing
Looking at the Bones
What is the structure of the information presented?
● More exposition than narrative elements?
● How is Chronology Approached?
● One Theme or More?
● Disjointed or Fragmented? Is the material unprocessed?
Emotional Center
Where is the author/character(s) in the story?
When do the they awaken, descend, crack, or demonstrate passion and connection as
they tell/share their story?
What more might be in those moments?

18. 1
8
Story and Approaches To Editing
Re-structuring story as a series of questions.
● When were you aware that something had changed in your relationship to the details?
● What happened right before?
● What happened right after?
● What best represents the change in something you did or acted upon after that moment?
● Why do you now think this story matters?
Re-Structure the Story

19. Thank You
rob@storycenter.org
allison@storycenter.org