Oncetold - Tell Your Story

Pick Your Favorites

Pick Your Favorite Stories

Now that you have your 12 themes, it’s time to dig into each of these themes and find four (4) compelling topics and/or stories that build on each other and resonate with you. Your goal is to go through each of your 12 themes and pick 4 of the most interesting, compelling, or thought-provoking stories from your collection.

Some stories may already stand out to you while others may require you to reflect on them for a while. When going through each theme, ask yourself:

Which of the topics and/or stories you have collected appeal to you?
Which ones do you find to be the most interesting?
Which ones stand out?
Which one was unique enough to hold your interest?
Which one would be fun to tell?

When you find a story that interests you, put it into one of the 4 slots. Then repeat the process until all 4 slots are complete. Then move on to the next theme and repeat the process until you have 48 stories total.

Remember that you only need to find four (4) stories for each of your 12 themes. Of course, that’s not a rule. You can find more but for now, focus on finding at least 4 stories worth telling for all 12 themes before moving on.

Emerging Patterns

This is a quick note to tell you that there is no telling what patterns might emerge from your research.

Don’t be surprised that during this point in the process, you suddenly see a pattern emerge from a single theme. This pattern may even convince you to niche down even more and change your entire podcast to focus on that single, resonating theme. The good news is: that’s okay! This is an expected byproduct of research.

They say that scientists call this the Eureka Moment where they see something in their research that no one else has seen and shout, “Eureka!” In reality, what scientists actually say is, “Well. That’s weird.” While shouting Eureka does make a discovery sound more exciting, it’s the weird observation that will draw you in. This is the secret about research nobody will tell you: you never would have seen it if you hadn’t done it!

Now, just when you thought your show was about one thing – pow – it changes! Or not. It’s your call but know that this is a perfect time to get crispy with what your podcast is about.

When finished, you should have 48 stories picked out (4 each from your 12 themes) ready to go.

Picking My Favorites

Let's revisit that good list of sorted and filtered themes we created in the last lesson:

Gear Fails
Lost in the Forest
Lost in the Mountains
Animal Attacks
Rivers
Plane Crash
No Water
No Fire
Blizzard
Avalanche
Naked
Lost in the Desert

This should give me a good list to start with!

Find the Stories

I can now start ranking those stories by deciding on which ones I want to tell first.

I’m going to start with Animal Attacks and see what stories I can find within this bucket. Turns out that all sorts of people have been attacked by animals in the wilderness and survived – which is great! Well, not for the survivors. An animal attack was probably the worst day of their life! However, when it comes to finding stories, there are dozens to choose from.

My job now is to pick which ones I like the most, the stories that really resonate with me! In digging into this topic I find that I enjoy the stories about people who survived attacks from big animals: the bigger the better!

This shortened my list a bit and helped me pick four (4) that stood out to me:

Bears
Cougars/Mountain Lions
Moose (Because come on! It’s in the name!)
Wild Boars

One Story to Rule Them All

Out of the four topics that stood out to me, my task was to now find THE story worth telling. There are lots of bear attack stories but which of them was the most interesting? Which one stood out? Which one was unique enough to hold my interest?

When I found that one story, then I repeated the process until the entire Animal Attacks list, all 4 slots, was complete. Then moved on to the next theme and repeated the process.

When finished, I should have 4 stories picked out for all 12 themes.

In the next lesson, we’ll organize these 48 potential stories into a schedule. Until next time!