How to Collect Unforgettable Stories from Your Own Life
You want to use storytelling in your venture or start-up, but not sure where to begin? This article gives an overview of tips and tricks to help you collect stories from your own life so you can begin to craft unforgettable stories.
The experience, practice, and findings in this article are part of an ongoing Storytelling in Entrepreneurship program with the RISE BBA class. This article is part of an ongoing partnership between Startup JGU at OP Jindal University and Uncharted Territory Consulting LLC.
You want to use storytelling in your venture or start-up? Great! Where do you start?
In the context of new ventures and entrepreneurship, most of the time you will tell personal stories. Personal storytelling is when you orally tell stories about events and experiences from your own life with others.
Personal stories are the best when they are honest and descriptive, and openly convey experiences from your life. Depending on what you want to convey, you can either tell stories from your experiences in life generally, or you can focus on stories specifically related to your venture.
So, how do you go about finding the stories in your life that you want to tell?
Read on to find out more…
· To start off with, make sure that you set aside time regularly to document events and moments from your life. Every day is the best, however, a few times a week will work as well. When looking at what to document, focus on unique events of your life that stick in your mind. The events that you record don’t need to be the most eventful or dramatic, but definitely should be experiences that illuminate new thoughts and perspectives into your life. Don’t spend time recording the normal, everyday events that happen routinely- like eating, sleeping, or picking up groceries. These daily routine activities are unlikely to become stories in the long run.
· Create your own unique system for recording the moments in your life. Find the system and style that works best for you as an individual. It doesn’t need to be fancy or intricate, the most important thing is to make it functional, easy, and something that you will use! As you record the moments from your life, make sure that you note them down in a way that you will be able to understand what you meant a few weeks or even years down the line. A few ideas of how to create a collection system would be to make an Excel sheet where you note down dates and events. You could also record them on your phone with a voice recorder app. This can also be a journal or sketchbook. You can also collect items that help remind you of certain moments on certain days. Another idea- use an app like One Second a Day to record a video every day of some of the key moments or experiences.
· When recording the unique moments from your life, make sure to note down a few sensory details too. When you work on crafting a story later, those sensory memories are really going to help make your story more engaging and relatable to the audience.
There could be all kinds of sensory information, though here are a few to get you started…
What color was the sky that day? What was the temperature like that day? What did you feel in your body and where? A pit in your stomach or a spring in your step? If it was in relation to food, what did it taste like? Smell like? What small details did you notice?
· Take some time to also reflect on the past events in your life every few weeks. You might also find that once you begin to record your daily life more regularly, memories from the past will pop up more frequently. Take time to also think about how these past memories relate to what is happening in your life today. As soon as a memory from the past pops up in your mind, write it down immediately. You may lose the specific memory or thought otherwise! If you have it written down you can always look back at it when you have more time to reflect and focus. The best time is always now.
· Every few weeks, take a look at your collection system and see which moments or experiences keep on popping out at you. Find a way in your collection system to highlight or note that down. Are there experiences that feel like they might be connected to events that are still developing? Which are the clearest in your mind? The most relevant to what you want to say at the moment? Which moments feel the most important to tell?
The most important tip I can give in relation to collecting stories is to stay dedicated to this process over an extended period of time. This process may even become a lifetime habit!
Especially if you are working on a new venture, try to make the documentation process consistent as possible, as you may never know what experiences pop up that may take on new relevance later as your venture emerges and grows.
