It's Time to Tell Your Story: Action Steps for Getting Your Story on the Page

I remember the day my now-husband and I told my parents of our intentions to get married. We were driving around Pigeon Forge and Cades Cove in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains, looking for wildlife, and enjoying the cooler air with the windows down. Chris held my hand as I got so nervous, even steadying me in the middle of an antique store, so that we could tell my parents the news and make sure we had their blessing as we planned our life together.

After we told them, I held Chris’ hand tighter and we all talked about weddings and marriage and life. Out of the blue, my dad asked me:

“Are you still planning on writing a book?”

Chris answered before I did: “I’m not going to let her not write the book.”

I already knew I was going to marry this boy, but in that moment, I knew that our life together was going to be more than I dared dreamed as I fell in love with him.

This statement followed us through engagement, as Chris migrated my blog to its own URL, helped me redesign it, and edited my 10+ years of posts.

And it echoed on our wedding day, as our pastor described our commitment to our family and friends, and as Chris wrote his own vows to me. We promised to help each other stay vulnerable and share our stories. It still brings tears to my eyes.

As I’ve come to terms with telling my own story over the past few months, he has been there every step of the way. Listening to ideas, designing helpful tools, and encouraging me endlessly.

Consider this post as me reaching out to each of you reading, perhaps wrestling with your own story to tell, to be a listening ear, offering tools, and encouraging you that it’s time to tell your story, too.

Here are some practical ways to begin:

Choose what story you need to tell.

Setting out to write your story from birth to present is not the best idea. It is already too easy to get overwhelmed with the task and discipline it takes to write, don’t add 20+ years of coverage to that. Instead, pick a season or even a singular story that you can tell from multiple angles and perspectives. Pick something you have some distance from, or have processed in multiple ways already (i.e., counseling and/or journaling). If it is a more recent season, start first by telling that story to and for yourself. Process it verbally with friends you trust. Take time with it, before you commit to writing it for others to read.

Map out the story’s timeline.

A story, to be good, must have movement. It must propel the reader forward and towards an end, whether that is a lesson learned or a resolution of some sort of conflict. A good place to find the movement in your story is to map out a timeline. Get a large sheet of paper, and pick multiple colors to use for things like:

• Events

• Themes

• Emotional highs/lows

• Books you were reading at the time that helped you

• Milestone events

• Anything else that stands out to you between the beginning & end of your timeline.

This is also a helpful exercise if you are just beginning to process a season of your life, and will be something you can come back to and draw from when you are ready to write that story down.

Find the theme.

Good stories have movement, great stories pair that movement with a theme, which I’ve read defined as “subject plus movement.” The theme of your story adds a layer over the movement you are drawing your reader into. It adds something for them to think about. It is what moves them from just following you along to joining you, learning from you, and reflecting upon their own experiences. A subject on its own can tell a story, but it is the theme that will inspire.

Make a list of the individual stories that make up the whole.

Go back to your timeline and simply make a list of the stories you want to tell. When I did this exercise a few weeks ago, I found myself trying to fit in every story or to keep it in chronological order—neither of these things are necessary. You just need a starting point, and for most of us, lists work really well. In this, always go back to your theme. Will this one story help weave the theme deeper into the story as a whole, or will it interject a different theme? You may have to whittle the list down as you examine that, or as you start writing, and that’s okay. If you are writing well and keeping the theme moving, people will keep reading the stories.

And just start writing.

This last step is where I’m at with writing my story about living in India for two years, and I can attest that it is the hardest part. It just is.

Something about dreaming, planning, and timeline-ing is exciting and romantic. Writing is just work. But it is the most important work. It is where the rubber meets the road, where your story begins its journey, and where you begin telling the honest & important story that needs to be told.

There is a story waiting to be told of your life. An authenticity to flesh out and to show the world. An identity still growing and moving with your footsteps every day.

Will you seek it out? Map it out? Write down your life’s stories and commit to share them?

I hope you will! I’d love to journey with you. Find me on Instagram and let’s help each other write our stories.

P.S. This whole idea of telling your story feels even more pertinent to me this week. Though these issues aren’t new, we are being freshly encountered with white privilege, racist tendencies, and ways we need to change in order to seek justice in our society. 

So I must ask you: What story do you need to tell in the midst of current events? I’ve been trying to share stories of my own feelings and shame—and how to combat these with actionable steps. Maybe you have a story of white privilege that could help someone else understand their own. Maybe you have a story of how you have been marginalized as a person of color. Tell it. Share it.

Don’t have a platform of your own yet? Reach out to platforms like Windrose or even personal blogs like mine who have a primarily white audience. Let us help share your story and begin to see hearts changing, which have to change first before anything else can.

[Photo by Carli Jeen on Unsplash.]

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