Story Skills Workshop (2/2)

Beyond giving gentle feedback, this Story Skills workshop via Story Republic taught me to see story structure separately and simultaneously to story content.

A story, at its root, is a Character, in a Situation, facing Choices. Broken down further, it comprises the 5 C’s: Context. Catalyst. Complication. Change. Consequence.

The brilliance of this workshop is the amazing community it builds, and that it delicately distributes feedback by encouraging folks to comment on participant stories that have fewer comments, and connects people from around the world. For example, my accountability group included 2 folks from Australia, 2 from England, a guy from Chicago and me. Furthermore, I found a ‘storytelling in a healthcare group’ with a couple of pharmacists, a physical therapist, a chiropractor, and an ICU nurse. It is amazing how strongly you can connect online in a short time. Many of us plan to stay in touch.

I thought I was a pretty good storyteller before the workshop. I regularly got nice comments about my funny stories and people would laugh and smile as I told them. As I started writing these down and using the 5 C framework, I began to realize that I was telling Anecdotes (a funny or interesting moment) and not necessarily a Story (where a character faces a choice and is thus changed by it). As Bernadette taught us: a good story entertains, a great story moves us. I wanted to tell Great Stories.

Every part of the 5 C’s were hard for me. It was easy to put my best stories into this framework, but with the feedback from my co-participants, I saw that:

• My Context could be more attention-grabbing. A revised first sentence for one of my stories: ‘The only reason I will participate in your study is because it looks like you are conducting a rigorous analysis, and at the end of the year, YOU WILL KNOW HOW BAD AN IDEA THIS IS.’
• Context also may need to drop hints about where the story will go, while maintaining some mystery: ‘This was my inauspicious beginning in clinical research. Surely, gathering and showing good data would change the minds of my brilliant, scientifically-minded doctor colleagues.’
• The Catalyst is sometimes hard to pinpoint. Can you make that moment come alive? In another story, I’m 20 hours into a DNA extraction in my undergraduate research lab. ‘It was close to midnight, and I worried I might miss the last Orange Line train. I moved to look at the watch on my left wrist. As I did so, the Eppendorf in my left hand inverted and the 20 precious pearlescent drops of DNA extract ran out … onto the floor. I looked down, uncomprehending. ‘nnnnNNNNNNOOOOOOOOO!!!’ I dropped to the floor with my pipette to put my disaster back into the tube. Maybe 6 brown-tinged drops remained.’
• The Complication and Change spiral out from this moment. More on this another time.
• The Consequence was a revelation to me. In many of my stories and anecdotes, I have a Catalyst or at least a funny moment. I don’t often spend the time to understand my audience. This is a mistake for the aspiring storyteller, since knowing your audience and telling the entire story INCLUDING a satisfying, moving ending depends entirely on … who would have thunk it … your audience. Mind blown. And also, Duh.

CMIO’s take? Thank you Seth and Bernadette for a wonderful thing you’ve built. Heck with Reading, wRiting and ‘Rithmetic. We all need this course. 

Author: CT Lin

CMIO, UCHealth (Colorado); Professor, University of Colorado School of Medicine View all posts by CT Lin