Your story as it is
Having attended Robert McKee’s famously intense “Story” seminar, bestselling author Donald Miller learned to summarize the structure of a good story as, “A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it” (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, p. 48). Yes. Short and sweet and true.
Think of yourself in that way as you go through the “Listen to Your Story” process. You are or can be “a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.”
We adopted and adapted that description into the following framework for you brave souls who have just embarked into your own story:
“Your story has a character (who it happens to), a plot (what happens), a desire (what you want), an idea (why you want it), and a conflict (what conspires to keep your desire from being fulfilled).”
Your character
Thinking of yourself in the light of what we’ve said above, introduce yourself to yourself. Think as concretely as possible. Your main task here is to report.
Easy stuff: Full Name? Gender? Age? Family? Family history? Hometown? Address? Education? Occupation? Portfolio? Accent? Appearance? Fashion style? Personality? (How is your character wired?) Hobbies? Favorite past times? Pet peeves? Daily routine? Weekly routine? Monthly routine? Annual routine?
Harder stuff: Important relationships (friends, family, enemies, etc.)? Most common state of mind and emotion? Favorite memories? Least favorite memories? Happiest moments? Unhappiest moments? Best successes? Worst failures? Understanding of human nature? Understanding of the world? Understanding of people like you? Understanding of people unlike you? Highest values?
Hardest stuff: What are you good at? Not good at? Greatest abilities/gifts? Greatest deficiencies? Best choices? Worst choices? Best secrets? Worst secrets? Greatest pleasures? Most painful experiences? Worst nightmares? Most persistent dreams for life? What makes you special?
According to Henri Nouwen in his book In the Name of Jesus, the three main temptations we face in life cause us to see ourselves in the following way:
- “I am what I do,”
- “I am what I control or have power over,” and
- “I am what others say I am.”
Do you identify with any of these statements? Which ones? How do you express them in your life?
Your plot
This is the part where you reflect on what has happened in your life: to you, around you, because of you, in spite of you. This is where you begin to trace the “arc” your story has taken, the trajectory of how your life has turned out so far. You might even begin to see patterns to your life that you’ve never seen before.
Your main task here is to remember.
To help you understand your “plot,” think of your life as a timeline from birth to the present (including childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood, middle age, retirement, where appropriate).
For each stage of your life, answer the following questions:
When and where were you and who were you with? How did you fit into the story of the people around you, including your family, their friends and the larger world? What were the circumstances around you? What was going on in the larger world? What changed because you were there? What did you mostly spend your time doing? What were your most vivid memories? What do you remember fondly? What have you tried to forget? What are the most important highlights and lowlights? What is the most important thing you learned about yourself? Lastly, think of a word, a symbol or a short description to represent each stage of your life.
Here are some supplemental questions to ask about your:
Birth: Tap your family history or living family members to help fill in the blanks between your birth and your first memory.
Childhood: Describe your earliest memory. Where were you? What happened? Who were you with? Where/how did you grow up? What were your family dynamics like?
Young adulthood: Describe your transition from adolescence to “adulthood.”
Adulthood: When was it that you began thinking of yourself as an adult? Why?
Middle age: When and why and how did you realize you had reached middle age?
Retirement: Looking back on your life to this point, did it turn out like you expected? Like you hoped? Why or why not?
Your desire
Having reviewed the character (who you are) and plot (what you’ve done) of your story, you need to sketch what you want from life. To understand your story as it is, you need to understand what it is you are living for, what your reaching for and dreaming about. To help narrow the scope of your potential answers here, we assume your needs and desires for survival, sustenance and stability have been satisfied at a level that enables you to want something beyond them. It could be something tangible like “a six-figure salary” or “a big house with a three-car garage and white picket fence” or something intangible like “security,” “success” or “significance,” or it could be both tangible and intangible.
Your main task here is to reflect.
What, if any, dream guides your life?
Is there an overarching narrative or story that you have been trying to live by? Perhaps the “American Dream” as you understand it? If so, how would you describe that story and what it means to you to “live the Dream”?
Looking back on your life up to this point, what have you been working toward?
Get out your daytimer/smart phone/calendar. Review how you spent your last week. Your last year. Your last year. Using just this resource, try to answer the question, “What is it that I want?”
Look back at your character study and your answer to the questions, “What are you good at? Greatest abilities/gifts?” Do you use those gifts and abilities to get what you “want”? If so, how?
Get out your budget/checkbook. Review your bank account statement, credit card statement and investment portfolio, if you have one. How do you use your financial resources? After you pay essential bills, what do you do with what’s left over? How do your financial choices reflect what you currently want?
Try to summarize your answers by filling in the following blanks:
“What I want most of out life is____________.”
“The way I try to get it is________________.”
“I first started wanting it when/because/after_______________.”
Your idea
The “idea” of your story is why you want what you want. It’s like a foundation that supports the life you’ve built so far. It’s the reason (or at least one of the big reasons) you do what you do and live like you live. You might want a nice big house with a white picket fence, because that’s the picture you’ve always had in your mind and seen on TV, and it represents a happy, successful life. Or you might want “security,” because your dad left when you were four and never came back and you never want to feel that way again.
Your main task here is to reflect.
What do you want to avoid at all costs? Why?
What is your greatest fear?
Think back on what, if any, dream guides your life. Where did it come from? When did you first start trying to pursue it? Why?
Think back on what you’ve been working toward. When did you start working toward it and wanting it? How has your desire influenced the trajectory of your life?
Think back on who you are and what’s happened to you. Why is it that you want what you want so much? What will it get you? How will it help you win, succeed, be safe, achieve significance, avoid the mistakes of others?
I want what I want because_______________________.
Your conflict
Here’s where it gets interesting. By now you should begin to see your story as it is trying to take shape. Conflict keeps it from taking shape or at least taking the shape you’ve wanted for it to take. It keeps your desire from happening for whatever reason, and it is what gives your story power and appeal. Ever heard of a riches-to-riches story? Why not? Going from being rich to being rich has no apparent conflict, no struggle, no obstacle, but a rags-to-riches story has conflict, forcing the determined protagonist (the main character) to overcome countless difficulties, dangers and prejudices to get rich. If your most foundational desire in life is for financial security and a comfortable retirement, your conflict might be the danger of getting laid off, the onset of a major medical problem or the uncertainty produced by a volatile economy.
Your main task here is to evaluate.
What have you overcome in life to get where you are now? It might be helpful to think through your timeline to identify roadblocks life has thrown in your way.
What have you been unable to overcome throughout your life? What are the things that most keep you from achieving your desire in life? What is your biggest threat?
Think big picture. What about your worldview (your way of understanding the world and your part in it) might be contributing to the obstacles in your life?
What obstacles are looming on your horizon?
Summarize your story
Now that you’ve answered all these questions, it’s time to put them together into story form. Remember, a good story has “a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.” Take a day or two to review your character, plot, desire, idea and conflict answers in your journal. Then write a synopsis of your story, integrating all the aspects of a good story that you’ve explored above. Refer to yourself in the third person (he/she/we) to make it seem more like a traditional story. Here’s a very brief example of how a synopsis might read (hopefully yours will be longer and more thorough):
The protagonist is a world-class mountain climber from small-town America who lives in his car (character). Loving the rush and sense of accomplishment of being an elite climber (idea), he has for years put all his money from working as a nurse at an emergency room toward expeditions to attempt the most difficult climbs in the world (plot, desire). During one trip, on his way down from unsuccessfully climbing K2, he gets sick, disoriented and lost (plot, conflict). By accident he ends up in a small, poverty-stricken village where the people take him in and nurse him back to health. Before departing, an elder gives him a tour of the village and to his horror he realizes the children in the village have no school building and no full-time teacher. He promises to return to build the village a school (plot, conflict, desire).
(This is a rough synopsis from memory of the early parts of Greg Mortenson’s story. Mortenson founded the Central Asia Institute and has written the bestsellers Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools.)
So, incorporating all the hard work you (and your group friends or family) have just done, what is the story of your life as it is? Write it out for yourself first, then share it with your group. (Feel free to dictate, draw out or otherwise artistically represent your story with photographs, keepsakes, or even video or movie clips instead.)
The Miller question
In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller tells how some filmmakers asked to make a movie about his life. It was supposed to be based on his earlier successful autobiographical book Blue Like Jazz. When they later told him his real life was too boring to support a screenplay, he began to wonder “…if life could be lived more like a good story in the first place. I wondered whether a persona could plan a story for his life and live it intentionally.” (p. 39) His questions led him to examine his own story and what he had to offer and prompted him to eventually start The Mentoring Project to inspire and equip faith communities to mentor fatherless boys.
We’ve therefore called this next question, “the Miller question” in honor of Miller’s journey to choose to live a better story, to re-write his own story by connecting his fatherless past to the need of today’s fatherless boys for caring mentors and role models.
“If two filmmakers looked at your life as it currently is, would they find enough material for a good script? Why or why not? Would they conclude your life is too boring or uninteresting? Why or why not?”
We don’t ask this final question of Part One to suggest we should all aspire to having our lives portrayed on the big screen. Rather, like Miller, we believe a good life and a good story are synonymous. What we’re saying is we should all aspire to live a good story with our lives. For some of us, that might mean living a better story than the one we’ve chosen for ourselves. For others of us, it might mean re-writing a bit of it. For still others, it might mean being willing to allow our good story to be shared with others.
Share your story
Before you close the proverbial book on Part One of “Listen to Your Story,” we want you to do something that might be difficult for you, even more difficult than answering all those questions. We want you to ask at least two other people—whether close family members, close friends or a trusted mentor—to go through the “Listen to Your Story” process with you in mind, offering their take on your story.
Once they’ve gone through Part One as thoroughly as possible, compare notes with them. Share what you wrote and learned from Part One. (It’s up to you how much you share.) Making the effort to involve others in this process will greatly enhance the value you get from it. It could be that their observations and answers shed light on important areas of your character, plot, desire, idea and conflict that you missed. Plus, it’s always better to go through something like this in community with people who care about you. Invite them to go through “Listen to Your Story” for themselves, too. “Listen to Your Story” can be a great way for members of small groups to get to know each other better and to help encourage each other to live good stories in and through their lives.
While Part One of “Listen to Your Story” focuses on understanding your life story as it is, Part Two focuses on helping you understand your life story as it could be, which makes it even more important.
Click HERE to move on to Part Two of “Listen to Your Story.”
