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

It’s more than just a conversation when you tell a story

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Have you ever noticed when you have those very casual conversations that sometimes there is a shift in the way things are mentioned. Instead of it just being a back and forth exchange of thoughts and experiences someone will capture the conversation with a story, there has been a shift in the dynamics. The gathering has moved from a conversation into telling a story but what is going on?

In recording a Life Story, we are not chasing the art of Storytelling but embracing the emotions of Telling Your Story. There are components of storytelling we can utilise and if you have those skills all the better but this is more about remembering, then telling the stories, in your voice, as you know them. Even if you have no storytelling skills the people who want to hear these stories are those who know you and accept that your style is as it is, with or without storytelling skills.

Storytelling ads to a life story

Recording a Life Story is often a conversation with someone involving back and forth comments but from time to time a subject is broached that emotes a response that creates a story. These stories are the gems in a Life Story and any storytelling skill will enrich the experience.

If a question is asked say… “What did you get up to with your friends at school when you were very young?” In a casual conversation this could be dismissed or answered in a very indifferent way but to engage for a Life Story it’s important to go through a quick process to harness the power of the story behind the opportunity of the question.

* Remember an event that represents the point to be made

* Feel all the emotions of this event

* What is the point that sums up this event

* Where does the story start

Often we go though all these points in an instant. Remembering the event that is prompted by the question, which is the point that answers the question and it’s obvious as to where to start the story. We’re almost jumping out of our skin to tell the story. But once we start the story it’s time to follow the rules of storytelling.

What, Where, When, Why and How.

The easiest place to start is by looking at the points of the story you’re considering telling and asking, What, Where, When, Why and How.

* What is the point you want to make? What was going on around you? What were you and others doing?

* Where were you? Where were you going?

* When did this happen, life, times, culture?

* Why were you there? Why was did this happen? Why is it relevant?

* How did you get there? How did this event happen? How did it evolve?

In the previous Episode Nine on Storytelling Skills and Techniques we talked about the structure of telling a story. These are the skills that all great storytellers follow and it’s worth recapping in brief.

* Stay on subject

* Leave the punchline/resolution to be discovered after you have drawn the listener deep into the story

* Use all the emotive tools of description to build the environment and experience.

* Be yourself and natural

We all love listening to stories. Books, radio, television and movies are all storytelling mediums and the original of all of these is personal storytelling as we are doing here. To help you get into the head space of telling the stories of your life, take the time to listen to some others tell of their live stories. Choose topics that you have an interest in then sit back and enjoy. Just by listening you will start to understand some of these points but if from time to time you reflect on the intricies and technique that they have used to weave the stories you will increase your personal storytelling ski...

The prompts of your Life Story are around you.

Prompts, ideas or any of the conversational topics are one of the first things that people seem to struggle with when it comes to recording their biography. What will I mention? I don’t have anything to say… Or maybe, I have so many things to say but I just don’t know where to start. To Create Your Life Story it’s helpful to be reminded of all those wonderful experiences of your life. Some people can list a long timeline of their experiences while others need a gentle poke to remember how it was.

It’s about the conversation

The ideal method of recording a life story is in conversation with someone else. They can ask those leading questions and show the interest that provokes responses and engages. to draw out more information and travel down the memory lanes digging up old experiences. If the Life Story is being recorded by individually it’s necessary to be self disciplined in the storytelling to continue the conversation as if someone was sitting there listening intently to the stories as many people will be when they listen to the recordings long after you’ve completed the production of Your Life Story.

It doesn’t matter if it’s in conversation with someone in person or with the distant listeners off in the future it’s still just a conversation, about topics and experiences of your life. One experience at a time, combined to tell the story of your life in it’s entirety. But where to start?

As mentioned previously in Conversational Interview Technique,  the topics should be in roughly chronological order allowing each topic, as it’s encountered to run it’s course then return to the timeline to pick up where you left off with a new topic. The trick is to have a long list of topics to talk about the tell of your life and engage the listener. We’ll cover the subject of the topics that the listeners are interested in a future episode but lets look at what are the subjects of a life story and how to generate that list of prompts.

Collect prompts for conversations

There are two main ways to drive the generation of prompts and topics for a conversation:

* Chronological contemplation

* Provoked inspiration

Timeline or chronological remembering is where you consider the long list of your life experiences starting with your ancestors and heritage of where they came from and what you know of them that has been passed onto you. Then starting with first memories moving through the experiences of childhood into adulthood and all things that happened on the way. A strategy for working your way through your life chronologically is in Prompts of Your Life Story episode.  This method is particularly good for ensuring that you’ve covered all the topics of your life and haven’t missed anything, however sometimes due to the ordered way of considering all the topics, it may seem a little clinical and dry.

Provoked inspiration is a powerful way of connecting with many of the past experiences by taking you back to not only the memory of the event but particually the emotions at that event and what came of those times that you remember. This is where we use those memory jogs that we all have around us today, sitting on shelves and in drawers ready to remind us of our past.

Remembering a birth date is one memory, seeing the birth photos is an entirely different thing.

Topic reminders are all around you

In our homes and those of our relatives is the paraphinilia of our lives, just waiting to be uncovered or just noticed. A wealth of notes can be generated to remember the stories to tell by look...

Add Giant Squid Lapel microphones and the Zoom H1 is just the recorder for all Your Life Story needs.

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The Zoom H1 Handy Portable Digital Recorder from Samson is the ideal recorder for our application of recording personal audio Life Stories. Recently I mentioned about the pending sale of the Zoom H1 and suggested that this could well be the ideal recorder for our situation or recording stories for our audio biographies.

This Episode 24 of Create Your Life Story has examples of audio recorded in various situation.

* Direct into the built in microphones

* Two person recording using stereo lapel microphones

* Solo recording using stereo and mono lapel microphones

First of all the Zoom H1 is not intended nor is it priced to match the high-end portable recorders like the Zoom H4n (I have the Zoom H4) so direct comparisons with it aren’t fair. The Zoom H1 is designed for a much more simple application of grabbing quality audio without fuss. That is the exact situation we have with recording audio Life Story conversations. We just want something that records and works, this is what the Zoom H1 succeeds at brilliantly.

With the addition of lapel microphones for ease and comfort during the recording we have a powerful, professional quality recording at a modest cost.

From the Samson site the features are:

* Stereo X/Y mic configuration captures perfect stereo images

* Records Broadcast WAV (BWF) at 96kHz/48kHz/44.1kHz at 16-bit or 24-bit

* Records MP3 from 48 to 320kbps for maximum recording time

* Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port

* Built-in reference speaker

* Includes 2GB microSD memory card and one AA battery

* One AA size battery allows 10 hours operation

* Accommodates up to 32GB micro SDHC memory cards

* Track marker function

* Low cut filter

* Built-in tripod mount

* 1/8-inch external mic input

* 1/8-inch stereo line output

* Auto record level

The audio of the Zoom H1 in this episode has no post production adjustment to improve the sound. The quality of the audio for capturing voice is very good through the built in mics and with the addition of some quality external microphones as I suggest from Giant Squid Audio Labs you will have an even better recording and the ideal solution for recording your Life Story Project.

* Buy the Zoom H1 from Amazon on this link here

* If you’re in the US or Canada and are unable to use Amazon as is the issue here in Australia you can access the Zoom H1 at Zzounds.

* Additionally for those outside of the North America who can’t utilise these links, I sourced the Zoom H1 on eBay from a merchant in New Jersey. As this link is to the ever evolving eBay it may not be valid with time and you will need to search eBay to find a similar deal.

Introduction to Create Your Life Story at Tamborine Mt U3A.

The University of the Third Age is an international organisation of individual chapters where seniors can share their lifetime of knowledge with each other about anything of their choosing. It’s all about open sharing of skills that helps to keep seniors active and motivated in learning and teaching.

Recently I was fortunate to share with about 25 people at Tamborine Mountain U3A what we are doing here at Create Your Life Story and open up their minds to the exciting world of possibilities of recording their Life Stories.

If you want to listen to Ian’s presentation press play below.

This is my first use of the new Zoom H1 Handy Portable Digital Recorder. I kept the recorder in my pocket and used a lapel mic to pick up me speaking. If you’re are interested in getting one for yourself please use the links on the services page including the links to Giant Squid Audio Lab for the microphone I used.

What is the Basic Recipe for a Life Story

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If you’ve ever watched one of those celebrity chef cooking style shows, the number one thing that is noticed is the individual styles that they have. Whether it is Jamie Oliver, Stephanie Alexander or Gordon Ramsay they all have their particular personal style that is who they are. It’s this personality that we resonate with. You also need to embrace who you are, not to imitate anyone else but just let your personalities shine through, after all that is what people who care for you will be coming to hear – the real you.

Like all things in life you can choose the ways of doing something to suit your personality from thoughtful and exacting, to spontaneous and carefree, it’s entirely up to you. It’s your style, your personality and your choosing in how you do whatever you want including approaching a Life Story project.

The problem however is, you may be so spontaneous that you don’t get the basic skills that you need to complete the task. That is something that Jamie Oliver is all about, giving people the skills and belief in themselves to start cooking, even if it’s at a very basic level. Or you may be so concerned to create a perfect Life Story that you study diligently perfecting your skills to the exacting standards of Stephanie Alexander but continue to only work the issues and obsess until you get bogged down on details without every getting under way. Then you become overwhelmed with information in order to achieved your unreasonably high standard.

What style of Life Story do you want?

Here on Create Your Life Story you have all the knowledge available to go as deep into a subject as you wish and if you feel the need to go further into a specific topic there is always google and the Internet to take you as deep down the rabbit hole as you can go.

A life story can be as simple as raw audio that has been thoughtfully recorded at a decent standard so the listener can relax and enjoy the stories being told or the audio can be edited, mixed and developed into a radio documentary style production or even blended with accompanying still images and movie footage to create a multimedia life story with an accompanying web site and digital DVD’s to share with family and friends.

The choice is entirely up to you, how much effort and time you want to put in, if you’re prepared to learn and develop the skills and the standard of production that you feel this Life Story deserves. Whichever style you plan on choosing the most importantly thing is the belief that you can achieve this end goal of creating a Life Story.

Too much information can lead to overwhelm.

Often the problem is when someone looks at the overall, entire project and see all the possible combinations that are available to them using equipment, methods and technology with each aspect of recording, editing and then publishing they can become overwhelmed with all this new information.

Don’t look at the big picture, keep it simple and all will be good.

KISS – (Keep It Simple Stupid)

Like many others you can achieve this project of creating a Life Story, all you have to do is follow the recipe of your choosing and make it in your style. And there is really only one recipe for the basic version, which is at the core of  producing a Life Story. The rest are additional ingredients and methods that embellish but take nothing away from the story.

The basic Life Story recipe is:

Ingredients:

* Record

* Copy and Share

Method:

* Sit down and record audio of the life stories in conversation with someone else or by yourself...

Your life means something to me, can I record you?

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The way we perceive ourselves and others has a huge affect on what can come from producing a Life Story. It will be reflected in everything from the initial approach through the recording and the questions asked, eventuating in the way in which the completed project is shared to others. By definition we only know our own life, what others think of us and what others feel we think of them are based on the communications that we have had over the time that we have known each other.

The fact that we want to record someone says a great deal of what we think of them. No longer are we just taking them for granted but by asking, “Can I record your Life Story?”,  what we are saying is that their life means something to us. They are significant, important, special and we care enough to sit and listen while we record them.

* How do you perceive the person you want to record?

* What do you want to know about and why? – Have you told them? – Can you tell them?

* What do others say about them and their interests?

* What are they quietly proud or ashamed of? – How much do you care?

* What are the things that impress & annoy you most about them?

We all take each other for granted

If you’re a parent you know the feeling. You work hard – strive, kick and struggle at a career to provide for you family. Cooking, cleaning and doing all you can so the kids get a great education. Spend hours, days, even years helping them to achieve what they want to do with their childhood activities. Taking great pains to help them through the difficulties of learning to become adults until they are on their way. Then they’re off with a, “Can I have some money or the keys to the car”, never looking back to see how we are.

What about our parents, do we do the same and take them for granted? Have we taken the time to say to them what they mean to us? We care about our parents and we know at some level that our children care about us but do we activily communicate this to each other?

If we don’t have this understanding of what others think of us, how do we feel? How do they feel? What we’re left with is our own concept of what is significant, from our own perspective, based on our life experiences and prejudices but, by definition, not based on theirs.

If you are preparing to record your own Life Story have you considered the real story or do you just think you know it?

* How do you perceive yourself?

* Why do you want to share your story?

* What do people want to hear from you? – Are you sure? – Have you asked?

* What do people ask of you?

* Do you shy away from sharing some things? – Maybe some of these are what they are most interested in?

* Do you have an inflated ego of yourself? – Maybe your real story is not what you may think?

* How would you know what is you most interesting points and stories?

* What would you like to remembered for?

It doesn’t matter if this Life Story is about you or someone else, the affects that producing it will be profound on everyone in ways that vary each every individual. We all learn so much about others, about the way they perceive us and about ourselves.

Creating a Life Story can help everyone know what others think and feel about each other in ways that will amaze all as you discover the reasons for so much of their life and why things happened as they did

Action:

* Take the time to mention to them the significanc...

Ghost Writing an autobiography – The easy way to write your book.

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Your Life Story project need not only be about the audio that you’ve taken the time to record and edit, it could also include using that content in writing a book. But do you have the determination and skills?

Today on Episode 21 of Create Your Life Story we talk about how to write a biography even if you don’t have the ability, or how to finish writing it, now that you’ve started but stalled.

Create Your Life Story is all about recording editing and publishing audio Life Stories. Once the audio is recorded we have the ideal core resource material for publishing that content as a written biography. As mentioned in last weeks episode Record a Life Story then Write a Biography, the audio is a great content source particularly if you’ve gone to the trouble to have it transcribed as a written version of the conversation. This transcript is fine as a searchable document on our personal WordPress.com site but it doesn’t really work as a book. It’s just a series of anecdotes and stories with no real theme running through the Life Story. What we need to do now is knock the text into shape, to write it into a story form so we have a much more entertaining read. But maybe we don’t have the skills.

What we need is someone who can take the audio or transcript and thread these story gems onto a storytelling strand and make the string of pearls that it is. We need someone who is at a little more distant from the story, maybe a co-author or at least an editor… How about a Ghost Writer?

Interview with Michael Collins of Your Ghost Writer.

This episode includes a conversation with Michael Collins of Your Ghost Writer about how the skills of Ghost Writing can be utilised for creating a biography of your Life Story.

Additional to this edited conversation with Michael is the full length conversation on my other podcast at Your Story on Episode 55 : Michael, Ghost Writing Your Story, about how and why he came to become a Ghost Writer, with some fun anecdotes of his life story. You could do a lot worse than to listen and use Michael’s example of a skilled Life Story, storyteller for your own personal Life Story project.

Giving you a voice in text, additional to the recorded audio.

By utilising the skills of a Ghost Writer we’re still the author, it’s still our voice, written in our personal style from our stories, it’s just written by someone else with the skills and the time that we may not have.

A Ghost writer can bring to a Life Story project:

* Expert advice on all aspects of publishing

* Objective approach to the Life Story to see it for what it is

* Create a story from audio recordings and interviews

* Composition and editing from a transcript

* Edit an existing manuscript

* Ability to tie stories together into a complete Life Story theme

Recording your stories is the easiest start to writing your Life Story

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You have an idea to write a biography, of yourself or someone else. You know there are many things to discover, share and get off your chest. Maybe you’ve even written a first draft of this biography but at least you have a stack of mental points to discuss, maybe you just have a long list notes or a few pages written down but then you’ve became distracted.

You know that you have to get on with this project at some stage and that you only have limited time but there is just so many things to do and it’s hard to know how to get going again. It’s starting to seem too hard. Lets look at a simple mechanism that we have all been using our entire life – Conversation!

For some people writing is a gift and the easiest way of capturing a Life Story as a biography. For others writing is a struggle but it’s the only way that they have ever considered recording a Life Story, however if you’re here on Create Your Life Story, you are at least now considered a new possibility. We don’t need to choose between written or recorded but use them hand in hand to gather all the information in one place. Should you write or should you record? Why not both!

It starts as an idea but to be more than that we need to develop a route to success, then eventually we have a Life Story recorded and written. Here is the strategy:

* Write notes, outlines and prompts

* Flush out ideas with individual specific questions and story prompts

* Record audio conversations about each of these stories

* Edit the audio recordings

* Transcribe audio into a rough manuscript

* Edit transcript using original outline as a guide but modifying to suit the changes from the conversations

* Complete editing into a biography

The first two points are the easiest after the initial inspiration. It’s just a long list of ideas to mention based on knowledge. Many people start to build on the notes, developing longer descriptions of the each of these initial notes eventually ending with a pile of roughed subjects or a journal of individual stories.

The commitment is in taking the ideas and notes and developing them further. This is where most people come unstuck as they don’t know how to pull all these individual pieces of information together into one cohesive piece. Here is where recording the conversations of a person comes into play as a powerful tool.

With your notes as a guide sit and record the recollections and stories of this persons life in a conversation. If you are on your own, record yourself using storytelling techniques. Take your time and use all of your resources to create rich dynamic stories of what it was like in these times as you remember them.

Then through audio editing, the extraneous information is removed and the finished audio can be published “as is”, as a personal spoken history of this life in all it’s naturally spoken style.

The finished audio in next transcribed into text to become the perfect raw material for creating a written biography. With the power of word processing on your computer you can cut and past sections adding additional linking explanations and story writing devices such as plot, character and pace to build an emotional thematic reading experience.

We are both, at once students and teachers of life

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When I started Your Story I knew nothing of the internet or how to produce a podcast. I didn’t go to school to do a course. I started looking around the Internet and discovered the resources that I needed. I paid for some instruction from others who knew more than me and I went about learning all that I could, so that I could record the great conversations I have with others and share those stories with the world. I became a student, to add to the skills I already had. From that evolved everything you see here in both Your Story and Create Your Life Story.

I was and still am a student from those who know more than me, of these rapidly changing technologies. But now I have some knowledge that I’m passing onto others. I have become the instructor of what I know to help others learn from my life experiences. I have evolved to being an educator while still being a student.

This is something that we’re always doing. Learning skills and developing talents to become proficient, eventually developing and becoming teachers ourselves to the next generation while we continue to learn the next skills in our life.

You too are a teacher!

What are you expert in? What have you seen? What can you share? And if you doubt that you have anything to share you’re wrong!

The experience of sharing a life story is one of sharing all that has both been experienced but also of what has been learnt. Even if it’s not obvious we all can share wisdom of what we have learnt from our experiences. That’s what sharing our Life Story is all about.

We start our lives as students and we all become teachers through our experiences, all that is additionally required is an attentive student and a desire on our part to communicate our Life Story.

As part of this Episode 19 of Create Your Life Story I would like to ask you to watch this video from Chris Anderson, the curator of the TED talks. In it he explains that no longer are we just consumers of education but we are all students and we are all teachers at the same time by using what he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation. With the ubiquitous use of the internet everyone can share everything in all it’s various forms to ensure that we can all learn and teach, consume and share, in ways that have never been possible before, across boarders and across cultures.

Please take the time to watch this video.

Stay with it to the end… It’s worth seeing how profound this is becoming

You have experiences that no one in human history has ever had and there are people out there who would love to learn from you, if only they had the chance to be taught by you. Stories of Your Life are the first person examples of those things that others can learn from. And even if these lessons aren’t the lessons for greater society, your family will always gain from the knowledge that shows them their heritage and their place in your family, society and culture.

You have learnt the lessons of life. You have the experiences to prove and show as an example, of how you have done it and now it’s your turn to teach to the next generation of students what you know, so they can have the knowledge that you’ve acquired.

The Internet is the perfect environment in which to share your experiences as Your Life Story.

What are your thoughts? What do you want to know from the person you̵...

If it all Goes Away – Saving Your Life Story “Plan B”

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No longer does a biography need to be lost to time, now we can save your Life Story from all the things that can destroy it including time. In Episode 18 of Create Your Life Story we consider the different options and media for archiving our Life Stories and why.

We know why we need to record our Life Story. Initially recording your precious audio is the most important thing you can achieve for yourself and for the whole project of capturing a Life Story but if it’s not maintained and protected from the many forms of deterioration, the effort that you have gone to could be for nothing. We need to protect the audio from being lost over time. To archive it, so as to ensure that if one system fails there are back ups to recover the audio, text, images and video of this Life Story.

The great thing today compared to the past is we have our audio as a digital file and can copy it as many times as we like without the deterioration of the audio quality as was the issue with rerecording audio onto analogue systems such a tape. There is no harm in having multiple copies, in multiple formats scattered around to protect it from unfortunate events. It’s all digital and it’s all identical.

With some items in our lives there can only ever be one copy but that is not the case today with digital data. If it’s recorded or transferred to digital it’s then possible to have an unlimited number of identical copies. No longer do we have to grab the photo album in a crisis situation. If we have a copy off site we simply get it and we’re up and operating again, just like before.

We have to make copies and we have to keep them safe

We have already gone a good long way to having a permanent solution for archiving our digital data with our strategy of using stable, well regarded sites, to hold our data with WordPress.com and Archive.org. These organisations should be around for a long time and if they do decide to shut down we could expect them to give us timely opportunity to recover our data and transfer it to other places. However as we are not in control it’s prudent to make sure we also have our own copies. Additionally we also need to have back up data to reload onto their services if something should go awry with their equipment or if we have

issues with our back ups. The reasons for making multiple copies are:

* Hosting sites shuts down

* Physical disaster

* Original recording media deteriorates

* Playback technology evolves

In order to upload data to a hosting site you needed a copy on your own machine so you already have a personal copy with you to use if you need to update the hosting sites if something goes wrong.

Copy your site

In writing posts directly into WordPress or Archive.org it’s also important to recover a copy of the content.

There are two components of the content on your site. The actual content that we read and the data. Both need to be saved.

Download a copy of your WordPress.com site as it is, not the data of the site but the actual site using website to PDF conversion software like PDF Download. This software downloads a copy of your entire WordPress and Archive sites as a viewable and printable copy. Additional to keeping the PDF file also have a physical printed copy created. Best practice would be to not use your bubble jet printer as the final copy but have it laser printed or one of those