How do you write your own story?
Listening to another person’s story, many people can. But writing your own story? Getting it down on paper, and sharing from A to Z all that has happened in your life and who or what has influenced how you have changed?
This is not always easy.
Therefore, in this document, storyteller Hanneke Ooms lays out a roadmap for you: an aspiring storyteller!
Step 1:Start by asking yourself these questions:
Who am I?
The basics:
- What is my name?
- Where was I born?
- What does my family look like?
- How old am I?
What was my childhood like?
Big picture, minute details are not always necessary provided they apply to things that happened later in my life.
What has shaped me in my life?
For example, what events have had a great impact on me?
What role has God & faith had in my life?
Story of “conversion”: how did I come to know God? How have I experienced God and what has He done in my life?
How am I doing now?
Where am I now in my life? What led to this?
If someone were to read my story, what would I want to pass along?
What did I learn? What wisdom/knowledge do I want to impart?
Step 2: Making a well-running story out of it
Now that you have answered all of the above questions, if all goes well, you have much of your story already written down. Now the task is to turn this information into a well-rounded story:
A. Chronology
In a chronological story, you start at the beginning (your childhood, for example) and end at the here and now. You divide the story into the different chapters of your life.
For example, like this:
Youth – High school – Adulthood – Now
B. Themes
Your story may be divisible into several themes. I cite a hypothetical example:
Jans* fled to the Netherlands as a child. Then she was always bullied in high school and became depressed. When she went along to a Christian conference at age 20, she came to know God. From her background, she could not accept Jesus’ love, but slowly but surely she learned more and more about him and could no longer ignore him.
She went on to study theology, and today she is a pastor in a multicultural congregation in Amsterdam.
*Jans is a fictional person
For example, the division into themes for Jans’ story might look like this:
Fleeing – Bullied – Depressed – Conference – Preacher
C. Chronology/Themes.
As you can see, chronology and themes can often be used simultaneously. It’s nice to take the readers of your story into your story from the beginning to now, and hang different themes on it.
Step 3: Overview: what is my message?
After you have asked yourself questions, and put the answers to these questions in a certain order, it is good to look at your message. Reading through your text now, have you said everything you want to say?
Does it translate in its completeness the message and testimony of your life?
Are you missing any things? Then think about what questions you can still answer to make sure your story is complete.
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