Create Your Life Story : Helping You Record a Lifetime of Stories

Your Life Story can be anything you want.

Your auto/biography is only relevant if it’s captured and if it’s consumed by others. So the best system is the one that people are most comfortable with using to create and share your Life Story.

A biography is an account of someones life written by someone else.

People think of a biography as a book?

We’re conditioned to think that a biography has to be a book, simply because up until the last few years there hasn’t been any other reasonable way of capturing a persons story if it wasn’t written down. Sure there are a few film, radio and television documentary biographies but you had to be either famous or wealthy to have your story in one of those systems and even so, most people still preferred a written book anyway because it was easy to consume.

Really a biography is just a fancy term for telling a Life Story and if it’s as simple as telling a story there are multiple systems for telling anyone’s life story.

* Written text

* Audio biography

* Private storytelling

* Video biography

* Digital Photographical storytelling

* Oral history recording

* Photo montage

* Various art projects

With these systems available using all the senses to add so much more of a persons personality, it’s such a shame that they aren’t being used in whatever combination suits the individual. Why not blend all these systems and make the most of them?

Why written text is preferred

Not only is text our  first consideration for producing a Life Story but it’s also often the only one. At it’s most basic we can all pick up a pencil and start writing now! So why aren’t we deluged in personal accounts of people’s lives? Because even though we can all write, few of us can write well!

Good quality written storytelling, that is interesting and engaging for others to read, is a skill that takes many authors decades to refine. Sure we can all put a few ideas on paper but few can we actually create an engaging interesting Life Story that others will want to read. This is the reason many people have their biography written by ghost writers.

Writing needs dedication.

As an overview, consider what you need to do to write and publish a biography.

* Gather all the information

* Write the component stories – Many, many hours or work needed here

* Assemble all the stories

* Weave a Life Story from all the different individual stories

* Edit and re-edit the manuscript until it’s an enjoyable read

* Design and style the book content

* Publish

It’s easy to understand why many biographies are started but very few are published when you consider the herculean task of all of these aspects.

Although publishing a Life Story as a book is far easier today using print on demand with the much lower overall cost, the per book price is still high and once published there is no opportunity to add or change any of the story without another print run and associated issues and costs.

Lost Life Stories

For all of human history all but the fortunate few’s Life Stories have been lost to time.

It was the few famous who were written about in antiquity with many more being captured with the advent of popular printing in the 19th and 20th centuries but now in the 21st century we have mechanisms to help capture a Life Story in quick and easy ways.

Pause to create the space and rhythm of a conversation

One of the things that always comes up when you decide to Create Your Life Story is how to deal with the breaks in conversation or the pauses. Sometimes pauses get in the way but often they can scream loud. Do you wait or interrupt, edit them out or leave them in? Are they personal traits or annoyances?

There are many types of pauses in a conversation. Some are silence and some use verbal utterances

* Pause  as we collect our thoughts

* Pauses to consider something emotional

* Verbal pauses to join to the next piece of content and prevent interruption i.e. um, ah, uh & you know

* Repeat the last word to consider what to say i.e. and, and, and.

* Joining words i.e. and, but & so…

Pauses in all their forms are a way of developing cadence and rhythm. To create a melody of the stories being told. It doesn’t matter if you’re telling a story or if you’re listening to someone while recording them, the rhythm of the conversation needs to be respected and allowed to flow. If it’s interrupted the dynamics of your personality changes and the chance for the obvious natural flow of stories will devolve.

The additional pauses that are included consciously or unconsciously during a conversation then create interest by allowing the space to expect something or a chance to reflect on what has just been said.

Power Pause

When asking a question, the use of the power pause after a question creates a space for the other person to fill with information. By remaining silent, they have to fill the space which gives you additional opportunities to listen and gain extra information about them.

If telling a story the fore power pause can create anticipation of what is about to be said and the post power pause can give an opportunity for reflection on the part of the listener.

Pregnant Pause

During a conversation once a point is made, the following pause can make them uncomfortable. It’s too easy to let them off the hook by breaking the silence. Resist this temptation (yes, I know it’s tempting) and wait for an answer. Pauses cause the other person to feel awkward and want to fill the space with additional information. Let the silence and discomfort do their work.

However when they have finished speaking or you’ve made a statement or question that has no possibility of response you’ll be simply creating dead air and awkward silence.

Opportunity Pause

Pauses allows speech to make sense. Obviously, speech would be pure gibberish without some pauses. When they pause you have an opportunity to add some content. This is where it’s imperative to be actively listening so your response is genuine and relevant to what they’ve been saying, to ask them to go deeper into the topic. It’s also a time for adding a non speech utterances like oh or aha, to say, “Yes I’m listening please tell me more”. The opportunity pauses can be the briefest of moments to connect and show you’re still engaged or they can be the space that is the linking connection to the next topic.

Editing

During the editing process we need to consider the purpose of pauses and where they should remain and be removed. Some significant pauses can create great effect while too many of others can be distracting.

Some people can maintain an engaging conversation while in physical connection so that you don’t notice their verbal pauses but when listening to only the audio these verbal pauses can be annoying.

In both cases it’s important to be sensitive to how much remova...

Get the attention you want with some storytelling skills

For all of our lives we tell stories.

Stories to get our message across, to help others and to share some entertaining information. We share stories in all parts of our life, the most common being during the most mundane of conversations. But importantly for us here at Create Your Life Story we share stories in specific conversations about our life.

We are telling stories using storytelling

Storytelling is an art form in it’s own right, using some of the aspects of performance to share the story with a little bit of showmanship to help make it more interesting for the listener.

With your Life Story you too can use some of the aspects of storytelling to help get the information and stories of your life across to those who are listening in both an entertaining and engaging way and keep them enthralled in hearing what you have to say.

Confidence in storytelling help the stories flow

Daryll Bellingham has been performing for decades as a professional storyteller to adults and children. With his corporate work he’s been reminding grown ups that the storytelling aspect of our inner child is still alive and well to help us share our stories if only we allow it’s expression in what we really want to share.

With just a few tips from Daryll on some of the aspects of the storytelling method you will have more confidence to know that you can share your stories with the appropriate impact that you want to get across and engage the listener. By knowing how to tell a good yarn you’ll be prepared to tell the stories that you were hesitant to mention previously.

Practice with normal conversations

Take some of the these ideas that Daryll mentions in this episode and practice in your normal everyday conversations whenever you have a chance.

* Tell stories in first person

* Changing your voice to suit that of the person  you’re quoting

* Developing emotion by using physical movement

* Using stories for give feedback to others

* Tell stories while maintaining integerity

* Understand the benefits of telling someone your life story

Use the narrative story structure

* Who are the characters?

* Where is the setting?

* Explaining the problem, challenge or issue

* How are the issues resolved?

Action:

* Look into the various techniques that Daryll has mentioned

* Use these ideas in your normal conversations

* Think of specific stories to tell that require you to use these methods

* With some attention and maybe a little practice you skills will improve

 

Daryll Bellingham is a storyteller in my local area of West End here in Brisbane. His blog is also at Austories.

The full conversation with Daryll including how he became involved in storytelling and what he’s personally got from it, is available to listen to on my other podcast at Episode 61 of Your Story.

Tell us in the comments about some memorable storytelling experiences that you’ve had.

Interesting Links from this Post

* Echoes of Home

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You’ll never know what surprises there are until you Create Your Life Story!

Here on Create Your Life Story I’m constantly wanting to motivate you to start on your personal Life Story project but I know that there can be several issues with getting underway and we’re all working to resolves those points. What you don’t know though, is what surprises await you once you start and eventually complete the bulk of you Life Story project.

Sometimes things can happen that will amaze you but you’ll never know until you actually get underway with your project.

Amazing results from a Life Story

Today we’re looking at the effects of having completed a Life Story project 12 months ago and some of the wonderfully surprising things that have come from it. Things that could never be expected and lessons that have been learnt along the way.

This is not an episode for me to share with you some tips and ideas of how to produce a Life Story but one for you to listen to someone and the experiences that she’s had from our efforts last year. Today Jane shares with us her original motivations, initial results and eventual surprises that have come from producing a Life Story of her father last year.

Like Jane you’ll be starting on your project with only some ideas of what will come of it but as we find out over the course of a year things that no one could expect have evolved making life better than anyone could have hoped for.

…and the Story Continues

Action:

* Start your own Life Story project

* Know that things will eventuate that you can’t expect

* Have a look at Keith’s site and make comment

* Feel inspired to know that, like Jane, you too can do this

Have you seen results already that have surprised you? Let us know in the comments below.

Interesting Links from this Post

* Keith Papps WordPress site

Jane’s reasons for recording her Dad

* Privacy Survey

* Recording Life Stories e-Book survey

* SoundCloud instruction video

Use some of the ideas in the e-Book Recording Life Stories to help you get underway. Remembering to fill out the initial survey before and then after you read the e-Book. Just sign up for it in the side bar form.

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Genuine listening is the key to their confidence

It’s not what they say but the way you listen, that helps people to share the deepest parts of themselves.

We often think we listen… but do we?

Are we really listening or are we just taking turns to speak?

In a recorded conversation we’re away from the distractions of other things as we’re on task, with a job to do. There are two important parts of any conversation, speaking and listening. When you’re recording someone their role is to speak and your role is to listen. Obvious, yes! But I don’t mean listen I mean – “LISTEN!”

Creating confidence and connection are the first things needed for someone to feel relaxed enough to open up and reveal the more interesting  parts of their Life Story.

When recording someone it’s not our role to speak. Sure, we have a role to engage from time to time, to ask a pertinent question, add a little context to the story or even add some of our self to help the conversation flow but our primary role is to help them express themselves and speak their story. Our roll is to stay attentive and to listen.

Get active – Listen

Unlike speaking which is obviously an active task, listening which appears passive is a very active task, albeit in a different style.

Listening can be a task that requires great effort or it can be a sheer indulgence with no effort. Where you’re simply swept away with the stories being told. Compare for a moment listening to a boring lecture versus an amusing and skillful storyteller. Your active in ways you don’t realise when really listening.

Proving to them and yourself that you’re listening

As a great listener, when someone speaks to you they know you are hearing and understanding them, that you care what is being said and therefore you care about them. What greater compliment can you pay than show that. Once realised,  they start to open up and build on their confidence to express themselves more.  Only then will they share those amazing stories with you. This can’t be faked, you really do have to listen, care and respond genuinely. There are many places during a conversation, due to interruptions where you’ll be caught out if you don’t.

Have you had the experience where you’ve been talking and the conversation has been interrupted?

Then on returning the other person has no interest at all in continuing to hear what you had to say. Possibly they’ve even forgotten what you were saying or even the topic. Doing this to the person your recording, is like saying, “I’m only going through the ropes here and I don’t really care what you have to say.”

To prove to them and yourself, that you’re listening, are you able to remember, quote and recommence a conversation that’s been interrupted, at any time?

What you say in that one act is “I care so much about what you say, that despite the interruption, I remember what you said enough to ask you to continue, as I want to hear more of what you have to say.” Anyone would be complimented by that level of attention and with that sign of interest their confidence increases and they continue to open up.

Attitude to good listening

Even if you’re unsure how to listen well, there are a few guidelines that you should keep in mind.

* Make a conscious choice to find the topic useful and interesting

* Listen with a purpose and expectation of what you hope to hear

* Maintain an open mind

* An enquiring attitude will maintain an interest

* Desire to learn and have fun

The way to become a better listener is to practice “active l...

Loose it and your story ceases to exist

What if you were to loose all those recordings that you’ve worked so hard to produce? All those hours of conversation… gone! As far as future generations are concerned you’d cease to exist. Maybe it’s best to have systems in place so that it doesn’t happen.

Recording your Life Story using any system is better than not recording it at all but lets use the best practice for recording and archiving this important data and get it right first time.

Fortunately we live in the era of cheap, easy to use digital recording equipment, with every reason to use it in a manner so the recording last forever. It’s just a case of using the equipment and the appropriated settings.

Getting the recording is always the first priority and using any equipment is better than none meaning that you may be using, or have old format recordings that are available and should be converted to digital at some stage. Old records, wax cylinders, reel to reel tapes or cassettes can be converted to digital by a professional or accessing an Analogue to Digital Converter (ADC). An ADC processes the analogue audio and converts it to digital data directly before it is imported to your computer and are far more accurate than playing your analogue audio through an audio output on the tape player into the mic in on your computer, or worse, into a microphone where there will be inevitable quality loss.

Most of us will be making fresh recording and utilising digital recorders in the first place so instead of converting the data it’s appropriate to record in the correct format from the get go.

Digital audio is recorded in one of two standards. Uncompressed (lossless) and compressed (lossy)

Digital Recording Formats

Lossy compressed audio formats such as MP3 & OGG are wonderful for transferring and sharing recorded audio but are generally not the best system to use for the initial recording. Some devices such as mobile phones have the ability to record audio but only use MP3 compression.

Lossless audio formats such as WAV & AIFF are uncompressed full dynamic files and the preferred recording format for recording our Life Story projects. All audio recording programmes and digital recorders can record and export in uncompressed file formats and some mobile Apps are available for mobile phones.

Recording Standards

The recognised standard to convert analogue audio to, or archive audio in, is as a WAV file at a minimum of 24kps at 48kHz. It’s perfectly okay to record at a higher standard and finally archive to this standard but if you start at a lower standard you can never recover the missing data even if your programme can format the audio at the higher standard. If the audio is missing it can’t be created in any programme. If in doubt always start at the best standard of recording possible.

Archiving

With some editing and mixing with music and effects the initial recording can be enhanced to be an easy and enjoyable listening experience, then compressed to MP3 for easy sharing but this is not the original that needs to be archived.

Always archive the original recordings as a WAV file, with minimum settings of 24kps 48kHz. This is the original, non edited, full of lumps and bumps recording. It may be ugly before it’s edited but it’s the original that the researchers of the future or you can always return to for additional information. Always make sure you have multiple copies on different devices.

I always make two copies of the original recording immediately after the recording is co...

History is philosophy taught by example.

How many things have you done and lessons learnt that you could share with others. The challenge is in helping them understand the lesson without them having the same experiences. A wiser way for them to learn is from others rather than make the same mistakes in life as you. But how do you get these lessons across?

You have stories to tell

Stories can be told in two ways. Either from a technical or emotional point of view, very much in the way as shown in the old ’60’s television series Star Trek. Would you choose to approach a Life Story like Captain Kirk or maybe Mr Spock. Will you look at everything from an emotional point of view or will you look at things using the cold calculating methods of science and engineering.

Both systems are valid and depending on the topics, times in life and your personality, you may vary your approach from just explaining the facts to expressing the feelings and emotions that you have. Maybe it’ll be an ebb and flow of different styles even within a topic, depending on the points that need to be shared.

Most often it’s important to work with both of these methods. Sometimes there are experiences in life that bring with them emotions that can impact in negative ways if they are rehashed again. In these cases having a cold calculating attitude of “that’s just the way life sometimes is” can enable you to work through the issues and move onto getting the facts out so that others can understand the situation.

Then there are the times when talking of situations without any emotion misses the very essence and importance of those experiences, when all they needed was to include the creative aspects of emotion and description.

Sharing the lessons of life

There are many times in life where we all make mistakes and wish we had known better but that’s the way we’re told life is. We have to learn from our mistakes! But what if we can be told that the stove is hot rather than having to touch it.

Now that you’ve had some experiences in your life and learnt from others, you have the opportunity to share the lessons that you know. The trick is to explain and hopefully enable others to learn from your experiences. But how do you explain in a way they can grasp enough to learn from.

Lessons through the ages

Throughout the ages, myths and legions share the knowledge of how things are and how to live life. Some of these stories are designed to cause you to conform to the social norms, while others are to help you learn lessons from the past. Some are based on real stories, some are fabrications but all are designed to grab your attention and create an emotional response. It’s this emotion that causes you to take notice and hopefully learn from what is being shared.

Remember the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. A story filled with graphic descriptions of a rat plauge, followed by an opportunity to rid the village of the rats by the Pied Piper. If you remember the town folks eventually refuse to pay the piper, so he steals the children away never to be seen again.

That story if told to young children with all the graphic horror of the middle ages would cause an emotional response that would teach them a lesson to pay their dues or else there may be terrible ramifications. Sure, in this day and age it seems cruel to tell stories of stealing children but the power of emotive storytelling, in getting a lesson to be understood is still practiced with all great films, plays and television today. The emotional triggers used today teach you to learn the lessons of everything from drink driving to what toilet cleaner to use. So why not use the same story telling emotional power in sharing the l...

Audio editing is easier than you think!

Unfortunately there is some fear of editing, especially when you first see editing software but it needn’t be so. In this episode of Create Your Life Story we’ll look at some of simple things that you can do to make your recording amazing.

Basic editing with an 80% in improvement of your recording is quite easy to achieve. Sure to get professional results you may need to put in more effort but for most of us, particularly as we’re primarily working with voice  and in a relatively controlled environment, we can achieve quite spectacular results with minimal effort. The biggest effort is the time involved in going through the audio in it’s entirety.

Five Aspects of Editing

Audio editing can include as much or as little as you want to be involved with but it involves a few simple aspects

* Removal of any unwanted recording

* Rearrangement of segments

* Enhancement of quality

* Chapterise into manageable sizes

* Addition of music and sound effects

The most important aspect of editing audio is the removal of all the lumps and bumps of a conversation. When listening back to a conversation the natural interruptions which are tolerated during a face to face conversation because of the non verbal cues will only hinder the listener and it’s much better if the bulk of these are removed. There is no need to be obsessive with this but for some people with stammers and multiple pauses, particularly if brought on by a medical condition, they can be helped with editing out the bulk of these in order to improve the listening experience. The trick is to improve the audio without removing the personality from the audio. Note: Sometimes the pauses say more than the words.

With any long conversation covering as much history as a Life Story, there will be some tendency to rehash items or return and mention something additional that fits elsewhere in the timeline. These items can be removed and rearranged into whatever order is more appropriate.

You could be discussing a topic that needs to have all the audio clips combined together to make sense of that topic or maybe it’s important to maintain the order so as to get the importance of the development of a subject. All these things can be achieved by rearranging the audio. It’s even possible to reuse audio to make a point that was mentioned earlier.

Often the quality of the audio could do with a little enhancement. Maybe removing a little of the background rumble that we normally don’t notice, particularly in cities. This can be done with the equalisation features available in most editing programmes or using compression to bring quiet passages up to the level of the rest of the conversation. Programmes like The Levelator can help with this to bring all the audio to the approximate same level.

Again using the technical aspects of enhancement will only improve the listening experience and is well worth experimenting with to see the results that can be achieved.

Music and sound effects can take an adequate listening experience into the realms of a unique listening experience. Music can add emotion almost like nothing else and I would recommend using it at the beginning and end of a chapter of audio to ease into and out of the conversation. Particularly using music that is classic for the era that’s being discussed can create the feeling of those times.

Effects can add an almost subliminal nature to the conversation, placing you in the time being discussed. Background atmosphere of a summer thunderstorm rolling in while chatting about that big storm many years ago will help to create a feel for the time and events.

Chase a Theme or Flow with the Times

We know a Life Story is about an individual’s life and we want to include certain key points but how do we go about tying all the other elements together, to flush out this life, to understand the points that need to be made?

Primarily a Life Story is made up of two key modalities that we’ll look at in this Episode 37 of Create Your Life Story – Themes and Chronology.

The themes are the events that weave through a person’s life, coming and going depending on the experiences. In the case of some people there could be a theme (service for example), that is the overarching influence within their whole life and throughout their Life Story, we may return time and again to that theme. Or for a period of time there may be a theme that is relevant, which due to some change morphs into some new theme, that is significant for another period of time. This is by far the most common type for most people as our lives change depending on the times.

Chronology is simply the idea of starting at the beginning and working your way through the eras of someone’s life looking at everything that happens as they mature. These are the, let’s start at the beginning and explore your life experience themes, relative to each time, as the years go by. Chronological is the easiest way to grasp and work through a Life Story as it creates the back story to the major events as they come along.

Thematic Storytelling

The advantage of creating a Life Story around a theme is the ability to build interest and manipulate the listener with many of the storytelling techniques. If a person has a single grand experience that everyone knows about there is no advantage of creating mystery in the revelation of that story, it’s already well known but we can start with it and create intrigue in how they happened to end up in that place. Then there is a whole new story of wonder about the journey in how they got to the major event. If there are other lesser known events in their life these can still be evolved towards in the storytelling, slowly allowed to unravel and helping the listen discover the other adventures they had along the way.

The great advantage of thematic storytelling is the creative aspect of jumping from subject to subject amongst different eras or whatever is necessary to create interest in the final revelations.

In Buzz Aldrin’s autobiography, Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon, he starts with sitting on the launch pad about to travel to the moon in July 1969. Immediately we are thrust into the heady experience of travelling to, landing and returning from the moon. The story then evolves through the post landing era weaving in the back stories of his education, family and training ending with a reflective look back on his life and aspirations for the future. We know that Buzz went to the moon so there is no use hiding it, we might as well start with it and capture the reader from the get go and then reveal what makes up the man that could have achieved this main experience of his life.

If however there are lesser known adventures, the story could build from the obvious to reveal the unknown. Say a World War 2 veteran who we know served could reveal the unexpected story of capture and escape that no one had ever heard of before. There are multiple ways of developing thematic story-lines that can add a whole level of creativity to the way you build your Life Story project.

Chronological Storytelling

The most obvious way to tell a story is to start at the beginning. Who were your ancestors and what was it like when you were a kid.

Forget what you learnt at school!

It’s time to record an interview. But first we need to prepare, know the personality and everything about them – Correct?

This is what we’re told. All the professional interviewers say this. University courses say, in order to be able to engage with the interviewee we need to know everything about them, to know what to ask and get maximum advantage over them so we can get something juicy.

So you prepare, read the biographies and papers. Listen to other interviews and do as much research as is possible to find the specific areas where you can dig around and maybe find some interesting angle to ask them, maybe even a little dirt.

This is the method that is mentioned everywhere to help you interview and if you intend to interview a celebrity or someone of note, it may be a valid approach. It’s a way of showing that you have done your research and you respect their field of expertise. What’s actually happening here though, is you’re going into the interview with your agenda to get what You want. You know everything about them and you have a line of questioning that suits you. This is not what we’re doing here with recording a Life Story.

It’s not an interrogation

We don’t want them to feel like it’s an interrogation where we’re drilling them for information as if they’re a British spy caught by the Stasi pre 1989.

Ultimately you want to create enough confidence in them so they feel as if you’re a friend, a very close friend at that. This will enable you to get what you want and they will get someone engaging to talk to. But this will only happen if you help them to feel.

* Comfortable

* Engaged

* Open to tell stories as a conversation

* Free from judgement or opinion

Our priority is to help them to relax and be completely comfortable so they’ll engage with us in casual conversation. This is not about us, this is entirely about them and what they want. If we concentrate on their comfort and care about who they are, with true genuine interest in their story, they will feel that interest and then open up to reveal, through the stories of their life, the things we want to hear. After all, we all want to be heard and one of the greatest gifts we can give them is to listen.

Your attitude is written large

We’ve all had those conversations where someone is pretending to be interested in us but we know, despite what comes out of their mouth, that they really find us tedious. The classic is where they are reading, taking a note or sending a text message while saying “It’s okay I’m still listening please carry on…”

We know when someone is disinterested and so will the person you’re talking to. Our body language will give it away in a flash but so will the way we engage with them.

We show our interest by

* Looking directly at them

* Giving non-verbal responses, like nodding or smiling

* Asking a question relevant specifically to something that was mentioned

* Referencing to previous comments. If several hours ago all the better

* Allowing them to take the conversation where they want to take it

* Noticing when they are becoming tired, bored and uncomfortable

There are rabbit holes that need searching

Having an agenda means it’s about us and what we want to acheive. We have our list of topics and questions and all we want to do is work our way through it to know that we have done our job. That’s all well and good but along the way a subject will come up that will take us down an unexpected and potentially wonderful rabbit hole. To ignore this new direction is to disrespect their interests and express that you don&#...