Working with Stories

WWS is expanding!

Click the More tab to read about the transformation of Working with Stories into a four-volume set, including a "picture book" simplified version, a sourcebook with questions and case studies, and the long-awaited book-o-many-details. You can read draft versions of (some of) the new books now.

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Fundamentals
Intro to PNI / Planning
Collection
Catalysis
Sensemaking
Intervention
Return

The form of a story is its communicative structure and meaning. The function of a story is its utility to thought, decision, and action. The phenomenon of a story is its life history as it moves through time and society.

Stories are like seeds. They condense complex understandings and perspectives into packages that can be transmitted and stored, then retrieved from storage, planted, and germinated again in the fertile soil of receptive minds. Stories can be studied and supported to help societies become more resilient in times of crisis.

Every time a person experiences something, a new story enters the narrative cycle of telling, hearing, remembering, and recalling. Purposeful storytelling adds “buds” of purpose and need to the natural cycle of story flow.

The abstract of a conversational story is a prelude in which the storyteller asks the audience for permission to tell a story. Statements of evaluation are direct lines of communication from storyteller to audience. In a story’s coda, the storyteller closes the circle of narrated events and ends the narrative event.

I have noticed that people veer off into one or more of three predictable trajectories at the mention of the word “story.” I’ve been amazed by the consistency in the responses I’ve seen. People even use the same words even though they have never heard other people use them.

If you were to create a list of stories that any randomly chosen member of your community or organization could be expected to know, stories that are common knowledge, how easy would your task be?
PNI is built from large portions of narrative inquiry and participatory action research; smaller yet substantial amounts of mixed-methods research and oral history; and flavorings drawn from participatory theatre, narrative therapy, complexity theory, decision support, folklore studies, and anthropology.

In the Collection phase of a PNI project, people share stories around a topic of concern, and those stories are collected in some way. In the Sensemaking phase, people negotiate meaning by working with collected stories. In the Return phase, what has been gathered and produced is returned to collective discourse.

In the optional Planning phase of a PNI project, elements such as questions, group sessions, and exercises are chosen or designed. Catalysis can support sensemaking by using mixed methods to discover patterns in collected stories and interpretations. Intervention can support the return of stories to the community, sparking positive change.

To plan your project, tell yourself stories. For example: If you could observe any situation or event, what would it be, and why? An example story might begin, “I was a fly on the wall when people were finding courage they didn’t know they had in terrible circumstances, because I wanted to help other people do that too.”

Your most precious resource is the time and attention of the people you want to hear from. Get to know them before you ask them to participate. For example: Will they view you as a friendly helper or a hostile force? Asking people to interview each other, or asking outsiders to conduct interviews or run group sessions, can help people open up and talk about you when you are the problem they are upset about.

If you cannot answer these planning questions, you are not done with your project planning. After you have answered the questions, take some time to talk about them. Are you happy with your answers? Are they complete? Are they realistic?
While a group interviewer engages with the group in conversation, a group story session facilitator provides tasks for groups to complete. The momentum of the session comes from the participants, not the facilitator.

When you want to collect stories, don’t ask for stories, and don’t tell stories. Don't command or constrain. Ask questions whose answers are stories.

Why build a menu of diverse questions? To match the diversity of your participants. You can build in questions that give reluctant speakers a safe way to reveal only a little about the topic, and balance those with questions that give other people an excuse to “spill the beans” as fits their enthusiasm.

Asking questions about stories is not anything new or unnatural; it’s only what people have always done. If you listen to anyone tell a story in person, they will almost always surround it with some metadata about why they are telling the story, where they heard it, why you should listen to it, and so on.

I recommend using a very simple technique to get people to tell stories in groups. Tell them that when people talk in groups like the one they are in right now, stories naturally arise: and they will.

Group exercises for story gathering dig deeper than unstructured conversation. They help people bring out feelings that are difficult to articulate or deep below the surface, and they generate diversity in situations where it is lacking.
Narrative catalysis creates food for thought that enhances group sensemaking about collected stories. Catalysis highlights trends and patterns not easily visible to the naked eye.

The principles of narrative catalysis help you maximize the extent to which you help people make use of collected stories and other data. At the same time, these principles help you minimize the extent to which you damage the sensemaking process by inserting your own bias or exerting your own control.

When people encounter one interpretation, you can see them taking sides: do I agree or don’t I? Their attention is on the interpretation, not on their own experiences. In contrast, when you give people two or more competing interpretations of the same pattern, they turn their attention away from attacking or defending the interpretations and toward exploring their own experiences.

Exploring interpretations in narrative catalysis is like walking in a garden of forking paths. The point is not to prove one point or another, but to explore what you have gathered. When you do this, you can provide others with ample food for thought and discussion.

The number one iron-clad rule of presenting multiple interpretations is: it should be impossible to guess which interpretation is your own. Nobody should ever be able to find you in the interpretations you provide.

When you are preparing a catalysis report, always include excerpts and stories that illustrate the meaning of each pattern well. Bring some stories to the surface. This helps people understand the patterns much better than they can by simply looking at them.
Sensemaking is what people do when they think about situations as they face challenges and dilemmas. Narrative sensemaking is the same thing, only paying particular attention to the roles of storytelling and listening in the process. Narrative sensemaking in PNI can be natural and unaided; and it can be organized and facilitated.

During sensemaking, interactions should take place between the people, the stories, and the project. Call it exposure, interface, proximity, communication: stories need to rub up against people and against the reason the stories were collected.

Three categories of story tend to come up often when people and stories are converging together. Pivot stories "keep coming up" beause they capture essential elements of the project. Voice stories beg to be retold. Discovery stories surprise and inform.

In a landscapes sensemaking exercise, people define a two-dimensional space with meaningful dimensions, then populate the space with previously collected stories. As the stories fill the space, a landscape of features comes into view. People describe these features, discuss them, and tell stories about them.

In a composite stories exercise, groups use collected stories as source material to build a purposeful story, fictional or semi-fictional, which they tell to other groups. As they build and tell stories, people discuss the juxtapositions of meaning created.

Things always happen in the after-party, useful things, things nobody could have predicted. Someone will come out with an observation that nobody has ever made before, or people will suddenly arrive at a perfect motto that sticks for years afterward, or some other crystal of contemplation will emerge.
This diagram shows how much time and energy I think different types of narrative intervention require from the organization or community as a whole and from its individual members. Items in white have to do with listening to stories; items in light gray have to do with getting stories to where they need to go; items in dark gray have to do with helping people work with stories.

Many communities and organizations have suggestion boxes, but few use them to give people permission to talk about what has happened to them. Making just that small change to the way in which suggestions and complaints are collected is a valid intervention in the flow of stories.

Narrative simulation is especially called for when you have found a dangerous excess of confidence around existing skills, meaning that people think they know how to do something but don’t, in a way that creates danger for themselves and others.

In sensemaking sessions, there are always a few people who find the process fascinating and want to know more about it. That little glowing seed of fascination with story work is an opportunity for your community or organization.

By discovering neglected stories and bringing them into greater prominence, re-authoring conversations invite people to compose new stories with new themes. Eventually this new composite story can replace the original composite, providing people with the strength to face problems.

After a forum theatre play has been performed, there is a short period of discussion. Then the play begins all over again; but this time, anyone watching the play can shout “stop.” When the drama resumes, the new “spect-actor” acts out their own solution to the problems and dilemmas faced by the character they have replaced.
There is a danger when completing projects of believing you know what happened in them. You don’t. You need to ground truth your project as it winds down. If you don’t, you run the risk of creating a rift between perception and reality that will cause you to make errors of misalignment in future projects.

Find a place where people congregate, like a community room or lunch room or library. Display some of the things generated in the project there, like quotes from important stories, sensemaking constructions, bits of transcripts from sensemaking sessions. Then listen to people as they notice the display and talk to each other about it.

You’ve experienced some stories in this project. What have you learned from them? What in them surprised you? Is your definition of story different now than it was then? Pull out some stories that taught you things. What did they teach you, and how can you use that going forward?

Why not consider your presentation to your project funders one more sensemaking session? You might be able to get your committee to do a few simple exercises with the stories and patterns you have collected. “Powers that be” are often pleasantly surprised to be included in, and not just informed about, participatory projects.

Some people will want to do more than just talk to you after the main part of your project is over. They might want to brainstorm with you about designs for future projects; they might want to participate in quick story collections or sensemaking sessions; they might want to help you collect stories; they might want to catalogue or organize collected stories.

When people stop and linger where edges are inviting, one of the things they do there is share stories. So it follows that the more inviting edges you have in your organization or community, and the more inviting they are, the more story sharing will go on.

Reader quotes

From emails

"I wanted to say thanks for making Working with Stories available. It's an amazing piece of work, so simple (not the ideas, but the presentation) and unintimidating."

"Your detailed description of [the sensemaking] process is so useful and helpful. It makes seasoned facilitators like me yearn to try out the ideas."

"Over the past few months I have been reading, reflecting, and feasting on your experiences working with stories. I am really excited to have found Working With Stories because it seems like a rich set of options for our needs."

"Your terminology and explanation of participatory narrative inquiry have helped me greatly in understanding what I want from my practice and what I might be capable of achieving in social change."

"I have been returning to Working With Stories time and again over the past six months to help support a community project, and my printed copy is underlined, noted and dog-eared."

Bibliographic citation

Kurtz, C. 2014. Working with Stories in Your Community or Organization: Participatory Narrative Inquiry. Third Edition. New York: Kurtz-Fernhout Publishing.

Like the book? Take the course!

The PNI Practicum is a series of online, project-based courses that help you carry out your first PNI project with expert guidance and peer support.

Like the book? Try the software!

NarraFirma is companion software to Working with Stories. The book describes the use of NarraCat, but I've since moved on to develop something even better. Many of the questions and recommendations you can find in NarraFirma come straight out of Working with Stories. So if you're looking for practical help carrying out Participatory Narrative Inquiry projects, look no further.

My second book is about working with complexity in your community or organization.

Confluence is about working with complexity as it truly exists in human lives and societies: intermingled with intentional actions. The book lays out seven thinking tools designed to help individuals and groups make sense of situations, think about how things got to be the way they are, weigh options, consider risks and opportunities, and understand differing points of view.

The group exercise described in Confluence can be used - with the stories you collect - in the sensemaking phase of a participatory narrative project. It can help you think together about organized plans and self-organized patterns as they flow together through your community or organization.

About me

Hi. I'm Cynthia Kurtz. I wrote the first edition of Working with Stories in 2008 and the second edition in 2009. I finished the greatly expanded third edition in 2014. I estimate that I have put about 2.5 person-years into all three editions of the book. Crazy? Maybe.

I am a researcher, consultant, writer, and software developer. I have been helping communities and organizations work with their stories since 1999. I have consulted on more than 100 narrative projects for a variety of government agencies and for-profit and non-profit corporations. Working with a series of collaborators, I developed participatory narrative inquiry, an approach to story work that helps communities and organizations make better, more grounded decisions by making sense of their own stories.

You can read more about my professional history on my web site at cfkurtz.com. (Click on "Bio" in the menu for the full story.)

Working with Stories
in Your Community or Organization

Participatory Narrative Inquiry