How to use writing prompts & story prompts with your storytellers

This article explores the power of storytelling and how it can be used to share a legacy. Storytelling is a powerful way to connect generations, share experiences, and bring history to life. Through the use of stories, we can explore the past, learn lessons, and uncover the truths that often remain hidden. By utilizing the power of storytelling, we can capture the essence of a legacy and preserve it for generations to come.

Writing Prompts and Storytelling

Everywhere you look you are probably going to find ways to tell your own story. For a really long time that is how you could work with the Legacy Recorder. What you will see around the internet are writing prompts, story ideas, and detailed instructions on how to tell your own story. You'll also find beautiful journals, well-executed programs and beautifully designed systems to do this for yourself. 

Somewhere along the way, I realized that there were already people and companies doing an incredible job of supporting families and individuals with their storytelling adventures. About that time I started thinking about and deciding exactly what I loved about the work I did.  What I found was that I really enjoyed helping people learn how to do something new or how to do a “thing” better. That “thing” was storytelling, having conversations and facilitating incredible experiences that impacted many. 

You may not know this, but while I was talking about how to talk to your mom or grandmother, I was also teaching, training and supporting volunteers, staff, and residents in their storytelling adventures. 

Through that experience, I discovered a lot of things. One thing I discovered was how to utilize the prompts I created and apply them in a storyteller/facilitator situation. What I want you to know is that any resource, tool, or platform that is out there for individuals and families can be adapted to be used in a facility, care situation, or other instance where there is a patient/staff relationship.

This is one of the core components of Legacy and the process I walk staff, volunteers, educators, and facilities through.

If you would like more info or want to chat, send me a message! You can get your own story prompts here.

Happy Writing,

Gael

Transcription of Audio

So when you look around the internet, you will find a ton of resources for people to use with their families, for people to send to their grandparents, for people to use those individuals on how to tell their own personal story. And most of the questions are framed in the first person or asking what that individual was excited about.

There are not a lot of resources, in my opinion and in my research, for people who are in the facilitator role, so a facilitator is anyone, by my definition is anyone who is a volunteer, you're a caregiver, you're a staff person and a facility years, helping in hospice, you work in hospice, anytime that you are engaging with someone on a personal level, and you're involved in their care you're involved in, how their life goes, their quality of life, their quality of life. You have the opportunity to be a story facilitator. 

So what does that have to do with storytelling and any of these other things I was just talking about? 

One of the things that I have found is that when we can take what is already available as a resource and be able to apply it to what we're doing in our daily work and whatnot, that that is a faster path to success than trying to recreate the wheel. 

To that end, one of the core components of legacy and the legacy recorder and what I'm trying to accomplish and offering as support and offering is different things is that we can take resources that are already available and how you can integrate them into your existing systems in your existing process. 

One of the things that I came up with that many, many people are using is five minutes, storytelling So it's five minutes, storytelling says, you have, let's say you have five minutes or less with a person every day. Or there's a couple of moments during the day. And how can you make that a storytelling conversation? And then what does that look like? In each instance? What does that look like for someone who doesn't remember what happened in the morning, and you wasn't going to remember when you ask them at noon, what they had for breakfast?

That is an entirely different storytelling conversation than someone who's going to remember what they had for breakfast, what they did, and then what happened to them as a kid. So that is what legacy covers. That's what we cover, is how to integrate storytelling with people at every level, regardless if they remember things if they don't remember things. If they're literally on their deathbed, what does that storytelling conversation look like? And that's what we do together.

If that's something that you want more help with, please, please, please, please get a hold of me. You can leave a message on anchor, you can leave a message just about anywhere and I will see it, send me a message on Facebook, email me You can message me through the website. That is what I am working towards is having solutions at the ready for people to be able to deploy, implement, execute easily and seamlessly into their existing processes and systems. 

One particular one is called family narrative project. And I just did an interview with them. That episode will drop. I think it'll drop next week, we'll see. Um, and yeah, so they're pretty, they're one specific option. So there's lots of different ways that individuals can tell their stories. There are really pretty platforms. There are companies that are putting gorgeous books together. And how you can use those as a facilitator. And someone on the other side is connecting the families with that resource, letting them know that it's available, giving a couple of suggestions on how they can use it, which is where I come in.

And those are the things that I am providing is, you know, pre-done easy for you to show easy for us ways to use platforms and tools that are already out there. Because we don't need to recreate something that is already beautiful and gorgeous. And Family Narrative Project is doing an incredible job with what they're working on. 

Storytelling prompts specifically, those can be reframed in the five minutes storytelling conversations. So that's what I've done with the five minutes storytelling scripts is they're just reframed prompts of how you can ask a person and start a storytelling conversation. So check those out. There is a link to them in the description. If it's not go to www.TheLegacyrecorder.com and type in “five minutes” and it will come up because everything's tagged. 

If you have any questions about how to use writing prompts and sorry prompts with your storytellers, please feel free to send me a message, put them in a comment, and I will circle back around and get to those.