Narrative

Choices

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Six (6) critical thinking tools for deconstructing and creating narratives

by Maya Alam

Fiction and Creative Writing

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Your Own Life Stories

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Cultural & Ideological Stories

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A Movie You Love

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A Movie You Hate

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Fiction and Creative Writing • Your Own Life Stories • Cultural & Ideological Stories • A Movie You Love • A Movie You Hate •

Use these question prompts on any narrative:

Every narrative is the result of a million choices.*

*1,000,000 

What to include, what to leave out? What words to use to describe it? Whether or not to tell it, who to tell it to, and where? Why tell this particular story in the first place?

When we understand the choices storytellers make, we can look critically at a story and see it with dimension beyond what we’ve been told. We can see what other stories could have been – or can still be. 

And maybe most crucially, we can look at our own choices in telling a story – whether it’s a creative piece, a personal life story, or our take on the world. Hopefully we can cultivate telling stories in a way that serves our truest goals and aligns with values we clearly and consciously choose.

If there is a story you’re hearing, or one you want to tell, or one you’ve been telling for a while, ask yourself these questions and see what you find out. Maybe you’ll understand the story differently, or with more dimension, and see something new about it that you’ll change in future tellings.

1

Choice #1

Which story?

  • • Why tell this story in particular?

    • What is the story’s significance to the author(s) or the audience(s)?

    • What does telling this story do?

    • How does telling this story serve the author(s) or the audience(s)?

    • Who does this story help or hurt?

    • What is the biggest goal for the story’s impact?

    • Would you choose to tell this story? Why or why not?

2

Choice #2

Include/Exclude

  • • Who is the story’s writer? What identities, knowledge, and values do they have?

    • Who is included among the writers? Who isn’t?

    • Is there someone you think should be included among the writers? Is there someone you think should not be? Why?

    • Has anyone contributed to the story’s creation, publication, release, or popularization? Has anyone acted against it? How?

    • Who is the story’s intended audience? Who is not? How do you know?

    • Are there similarities or differences between the story’s author(s) and audience(s)?

    • Who has access to the story, based on its format, language, platform, or medium? Who doesn’t?

    • Who do you think needs to hear this story?

    • Who or what is included in the story?

    • Who or what is left out of the story?

    • What background information do we get, and not get?

    • Whose history or backstory is included? Excluded?

    • What never makes its way into the story?

    • What time frames before or after are left out of the story?

    • What places are left out of the story?

    • What left out piece do you think the story needs to include?

3

Choice #3

Centering

  • • Who or what is the most important, crucial piece of the story?

    • Who is the main character?

    • Whose point of view does the story show? Whose thoughts does it voice?

    • Who is given dimension? Who is flattened or simplified?

    • Whose backstory or life story do we get? Whose don’t we get? How does this end up centering or peripheralizing?

    • What else could the story center or focus on? What would that change?

    • What would you choose to center the story on? Could there be more than one center?

4

Choice #4

Assigning
Good & Bad

  • • If there is a conflict, whose side is the story on? How do you know?

    • What evidence of goodness or badness does the story give? In what ways is this a choice?

    • What does the story’s inclusion, exclusion, and centering tell us about who or what is assigned good or bad? For example, is the story on the side of a good character that is included and centered? 

    • Whose interests or what values does the story reflect in assigning good and bad the way it does? How does this relate to the author(s) and the audience(s)?

    • How does assigning good and bad relate to the first question: Why tell this story?

    • Who is comforted by the story, affirmed?

    • Who is vilified by the story, alienated?

    • What other stories does this assigning of good and bad relate to or remind you of?

    • Does the story assign good and bad along the same lines that mass culture does? Does it flip them? Does it assign good and bad the same way a subculture does? 

    • Does it assign good and bad in a way that is unique, new, or subversive?

    • How would you assign good and bad in this story? Would you assign it at all?

5

Choice #5

Framing an Angle

  • • How does the framing help create the story’s meaning?

    • How does the framing affect the story’s impact?

    • Who does the framing serve?

    • Does this framing do harm? To who? And how?

    • How does the framing relate to ideologies and values? Does it uphold, challenge, or a combination?

    • Have you seen this framing before? Where?

    • What framing have you seen a million times? What does encountering the same framing over and over do?

    • What framing have you never seen, never tried?

    • How would you seek out, try out, subvert, or create new ways of framing?

    • What framing would change the story’s meaning?

    • What framing would make the story meaningless?

    • What framing would change the story’s impact?

    • How would you choose to frame the story? What would the impact be?

This is a cumulative look at the previous choices combined. It’s saying:

“This is the story we’re telling, centering this in particular, which we think is good, and is threatened by this which we think is bad.”

or

“This is the story we’re telling, centering this in particular, which we think is bad, and is challenged by this which we think is good.” 

or

“This is the story we are telling, to these people in particular, about this which we think is important.”

There are many ways you could combine the pieces and frame an angle. These examples are some of the most common, formulaic ones.

6

Choice #6

The Story’s Truth

  • • What is true in the world of the story?

    • What is the story’s overall message?

    • Does the story provide a moral, lesson, or teaching? Does it come to a meaningful conclusion?

    • What new perspective or way of thinking does the story give you?

    • What does the story make you believe? What does it make you reconsider?

    • How do the story’s truths relate to ideologies and values in the world?

Find this useful? Let me know!

Please share your thoughts. I’m very interested to hear how this piece impacts you and how you might implement these suggestions and framework. Thanks!