Sharing a Story From Your Life Workshop

Objective: Participants will learn to identify a simple story to share with a grandchild or young friend. Participants will learn the elements of a good story, be able to pick out an episode from their lives or imaginations and write it in children’s story form. We are not discussing marketing. This is a personal project.

Session One: June 4, 2010

Identifying the Goal

Please use the contact information on the home page for questions. In the future we may link to an interactive site for comments, more information and as a place to share our stories and reflections and offer suggestions. 

What are we talking about here?

v     A single episode from your life, or your collection of experiences, in story form

v     The episode can be fictional or something that really happened

v     The story does more than entertain, it teaches – has takeaway value, or a message

Elements of a story:

v     There is a beginning, a middle, and an end

v     There are sympathetic, active characters who have goals (motivation- desires something), conflicts (a problem to overcome, either from within or because of an outside influence), and a satisfying way of achieving the goal

v     There is a well described setting

v     The audience has a stake in the story – something to identify with or learn, and all senses are engaged

v     The authors uses talk out loud language – read your words out loud; have someone else read them to you

NEXT: How to decide on that single episode