SMART Volunteering-Storytelling Guide

Then, stories can be used to share your experiences of life and work. Thinking about your own story, ask these four questions: • Who is it about? – The protagonist (main character) of your personal stories is you. Here, you can use the hero’s journey as a helpful narrative tool. The concept was developed by Joseph Campbell, an author and teacher who studied comparative mythology. In his seminal book The hero with a thousand faces (1949), Campbell identifies an archetypal pattern in the hero’s journey throughout world mythology. This pattern has been used countless times by scriptwriters, filmmakers, novelists and others. In fact, George Lucas hired Campbell to assist him in structuring the Star Wars film scripts. Essentially, the hero’s journey breaks down into three phases we will see: the call to adventure; the conflict; and the resolution. • What is it about? - Your stories are about your experiences in life and in work (the plot) o What is the challenge ? o What actions did you take? o What is the transformation ? Still on the hero’s theme, the five most common types of conflict are hero vs baddie, hero vs nature, hero vs supernatural, hero vs the collective, hero vs self. Traditionally, heroes encounter three challenges, each increasing in intensity or risk. With each encounter, they learn something more about themselves as well as the world. As the action intensifies, heroes are called up on to resolve the conflict. They must bring about a resolution to the mounting struggle. This is followed by a return to a new status quo in which the hero shares or celebrates his or her new-found knowledge, reward or other benefit with the community. Think of the first row of your storyboard as representing the beginning of the story (call to adventure), the second row as the middle (the conflict), and the third row as your resolution or outcome. • Where is it happening? (the context) o Where have you been on your journey? • Why do we want to tell this story? What message do we want to get across? (the purpose/theme) o Do you want to showcase your skills/ability to overcome challenges? To tell a good story we have to think about these questions. A good story makes you care about the character , has an engaging plot , gives context so the audience does not get lost and should have a purpose or a message you want to communicate through the story. Without all these elements, a story will be incomplete. -4-