Finding stories
We’ve all been there: a situation where someone is telling a story that somehow misses the mark, and you wonder why they chose to tell it at that moment. Maybe it happened that morning and they had to blurt it out to someone, or perhaps they were just filling an awkward silence.
When we are writing, we have more time to think about what to include, so we shouldn’t include stories that aren’t relevant to the purpose of the piece we’re writing. So how do we find good stories, and how do we use them to make our point?
Almost all inspirational stories come down to three basic story plots: challenge, connection, and creativity.1
Basic story plots
The challenge plot is an underdog or rags-to-riches story. It’s when someone’s sheer willpower overcomes daunting obstacles. David and Goliath is a classic challenge plot. Many Christian testimonies fall into this category, though of course they aren’t “triumph of will” but rather “triumph of the Holy Spirit.”
The connection plot is about relationships with other people. It’s a story about people who overcome a gap (e.g., racial, class, ethnic, demographic). A biblical example is the Good Samaritan story.
The creativity plot is when someone makes a mental breakthrough or tackles a problem in a creative way. Jesus did miracles to solve many problems the people around him couldn’t fix. The story about Mary asking Jesus to solve the wine shortage at the wedding feast is a creativity plot.
Keeping these three basic story plots in mind will help us find stories we can tell that will engage our readers’ attention.
An example
Let’s consider writing about a family gathering I participated in on Christmas Day last year in Australia. I could describe the food, the table decorations, even list the various things we did through the day. But I would grab your attention better if I talked about the connection between my young adult sons and their cousin’s two preschool-aged sons (whom they’d never met before). Visualise my strong sons “flying” these young boys around the room on beanbags. The little boys couldn’t get enough of it (a connection plot).
Our gathering included people from ages 3 to 74 with diverse backgrounds, incomes, and beliefs. I could tell you about the creative game my sister-in-law used to engage everyone in present-giving and receiving after Christmas dinner (this is also a connection plot but with elements of the creativity plot). If I were writing about our Christmas in Australia, either of these snapshots would provide more interesting reading than a list of foods we ate, although a northern hemisphere audience might be entertained by our summer Christmas menu (the unexpected element that is also good in a story)!
What is a story?
A story, at the basic level, is when something is done by someone (or more than one character) at a certain time and place and usually for some reason. It can be about something that has happened or something that might happen.
There are four main features to look out for if you are seeking to identify a story, which are the same features to include in your telling of it:
- Time marker: This is something that gives you a sense of when this happened, for example, a year, a season, a day (last Tuesday), or even “when I last saw my mum.”
- Place marker: Stories will usually give you some location marker, which can be as concrete as “in my kitchen” or less concrete as “on our way to a conference in Nagoya.”
- Characters: People do stuff in stories. It helps your reader if characters have names, even if they are pseudonyms to preserve anonymity in a prayer letter.
- Events: This is a series of connected things that happen in stories, either over a short time or a much longer period. A good story often has something surprising or unexpected happen.
So in the example above, you will note there is a
- time marker: Christmas Day;
- place marker: Australia;
- characters: my sons, their cousin’s sons, my sister-in-law, and various other relatives; and
- events: interactive play, a game, eating.
Make a point
A story needs a point and one that fits with your purpose. I recently heard a sermon by an elderly pastor that had a couple of good stories in it that he failed to connect to the rest of the sermon. Afterwards, I was left wondering why he told the stories.
Collect stories, but also keep focused on what your core idea is: What do you want to communicate? If you have been noticing the stories around you (even the ones you read), you’ll have stories to draw on when you are writing. Connect your core idea to one or more story and go from there.
1. Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (London UK: Arrow Books, 2008), 226–231.