Interactive stories are fictional narratives that involve participants in a variety of activities. In one type of interactive stories, the facilitator presents a story and discusses its significance in a debrief. In another type, the facilitator pauses at critical junctures in the middle of a story and invites listeners to play the role of a character and make appropriate decisions. In still another type, the participants themselves create and share stories that illustrate key concepts, principles, or procedures.
This article explores interactive storytelling as a training activity. Here’s the outline of the article:
Instructions for conducting an activity called Arouse.
Analysis of the structure of the Arouse activity
Suggestions for adapting Arouse for other training requirements
Brief summaries of 10 different interactive storytelling activities
1. Instructions for conducting an interactive storytelling activity
Arouse
Most trainers tell stories to emphasize learning points. In this interactive storytelling exercise, we focus on how to arouse emotional outcomes during communication.
Purpose
To modify and tell a story to evoke one of these emotions among the listeners: happiness, anger, sadness, or fear.
Synopsis
Teams of participants select an emotion they want to evoke through a story. They modify the story and select a team member to tell it. The listeners identify the level of intensity of the emotion that the story aroused.
Players
Minimum: 4
Maximum: Any number, organized into groups of 3 to 7 players.
Best: 12 to 30
Time
30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the number of teams.
Supplies and Equipment
Small pieces of paper
Pens
Timer
Whistle
Room Set-up
Arrange seats around tables to permit group discussions.
Flow
Brief the participants. Explain that this activity involves telling a story to evoke one of the four primary emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, or fear. Explain that the participants will work in teams to modify the story and prepare to present it to evoke the selected emotion.
Specify the story. Identify a well-known folk tale and explain that all teams will tell their version of the story. Members of the team may modify their story in any way to invoke an emotion they selected.
Form teams. Organize the participants into teams of 3 to 7 players. Try to form 3 or 4 teams, making sure no team has more than 7 members. It does not matter if a team has one less or one more member than the other teams. Seat each team around a separate table to modify the story and plan for its presentation.
Specify the emotion to be elicited. Identify the four basic emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Invite each team to secretly select one of these emotions to elicit through the presentation of their story.
Prepare for storytelling. Announce a suitable time limit (of 5 to 10 minutes) for the members of each team to suitably doctor their story to arouse their selected emotion among the listeners. Also ask them to come up with suitable storytelling techniques to emphasize the emotion. Allow each team to work on its own.
Select a storyteller. A minute before the end of the time, ask the teams to select one of its members to be the team’s storyteller.
Present the story. At the end of time limit, blow the whistle and select a random team. Ask the storyteller from this team to present the story (without identifying the emotion they want to arouse). Ask all participants from other teams to listen to story.
Conclude the storytelling. At the end of 3 minutes, blow the whistle to stop the presentation even if the story has not concluded. Thank the presenter and their team. Ask the storytelling team to identity the emotion they were attempting to arouse among the listeners.
Poll the listeners. Distribute small pieces of papers to the participants from the other teams. Ask each participant to independently to write between 1 and 5 to indicate how intensely the selected emotion was aroused.
Explain this scale:
1 – not aroused at all
2 – mildly aroused
3 – aroused
4 – clearly aroused
5 – intensely aroused
After a suitable pause, collect the folded pieces of polling numbers.
Continue the storytelling activity. Select different teams, on at a time, to present their version of the story to arouse their selected emotion. Repeat this procedure until all teams have had their chance. Collect the polling numbers at the end of each storytelling episode.
Conclude the activity. Announce the total storytelling poll scores for each team. Congratulate the highest scoring team as the champion storytellers.
2. Analysis of the structure of the Arouse activity
The Structure of Arouse
Arouse can be used as a template for creating other training activities. The following game plan outlines the structure of this activity:
1. Brief the participants.
Facilitator: Explain the format and the objectives of this activity.
Participants: Think about what would happen in the activity.
2. Specify a story.
Facilitator: Identify a commonly known story to be retold to arouse a specific emotion.
Participants: Recall and share details of the story.
3. Form teams.
Facilitator: Organize the participants into teams of 3 to 7 members.
Participants: Sit around a table and introduce yourself to teammates.
4. Specify an emotion.
Facilitator: Explain the basic emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear.
Participants: Select one of the emotions to arouse through the story.
5. Prepare for storytelling.
Facilitator: Give instructions and a time limit.
Participants: Work as a team to modify the story and figure out strategies for arousing a specific emotion.
6. Select the storyteller.
Facilitator: Ask the teams to select its storyteller.
Participants: Select the most suitable team member to be the storyteller
7. Present the story.
Facilitator:Ask the storyteller from a randomly-selected team to tell the story.
Participants: The selected storyteller tells the story, trying to arouse the specified emotion.
8. Conclude the story.
Facilitator: Stop the story after 3 minutes. Identify the emotion that the storyteller was trying to arouse.
Participants: Think about the story and the specified emotion.
9. Poll the listeners.
Facilitator: Ask each listener to give the storyteller a score between 1 and 5.
Participants: What the participants do: Write the score on a piece of paper and give it to the facilitator.
10. Continue the storytelling activity.
Facilitator: Select different teams to tell their story.
Participants: Listen to other teams’ stories and score their performance.
11. Conclude the activity.
Facilitator: Announce the total storytelling scores for each team.
Participants: Congratulate the highest-scoring team.
3. Suggestions for adapting Arouse for other training requirements
Adapting Arouse to Suit Other Training Requirements
You can use the structure of Arouse as template to explore other training topics and objectives. Here are some suggestions for doing this:
Let the participants create their own story? Instead of using your story, permit the teams to come up with their own story.
Assign an emotion? Instead of letting each team select an emotion, assign the same emotion to all teams.
Want a wider choice of emotions? Include additional emotions such as disgust, enjoyment, love, amusement, pride, peace, compassion, or pride.
Want to encourage creative fiction? Instead of assigning one or more stories, let the teams create their own stories to emphasize a specific emotion.
Want to work with business-related topics? Instead of using stories, select common activities from the workplace (such as satisfying customers or marketing a new product.
4. Brief summaries of 10 different interactive storytelling activities
Ten More Interactive Storytelling Activities
In addition to Arouse, there are several other interactive storytelling activities. Here are brief summaries of 10 different interactive storytelling activities:
Appreciative Exchange
Objective: To appreciate positive outcomes in a specific type of encounter and to identify the factors that contribute to such outcome.
Sample Training Topics: Cross-cultural communication, coaching, conducting difficult conversations, motivating employees, selling a product, and problem solving.
Topic for this Game: Suicide Prevention
Activity: Ask the participants to independently create personal anecdotes about achieving success in preventing suicide. Form pairs of participants to exchange their positive stories. Repeat the pairing and sharing procedure. After several rounds of such exchange, form teams of participants. Ask the members of each team to share their insights and identify the factors that contributed to the success of their encounters.
Case Analysis
Objective: To review, analyze, and mitigate one or more critical factors presented in a case.
Sample Training Topics: Teambuilding, critical thinking, creative problem solving, receiving feedback, conducting interviews, and conflict management.
Topic for this Game: Strategic Decision-Making
Activity: Present a case in the form of a story. Also give a list of key questions related to the case. Ask the participants to individually analyze the case and answer the question. Later, form the participants into teams and have them share their answers and arrive at a consensus. Finally, conduct a whole-group discussion to share the perspectives of different teams and individuals.
Multiple Realities
Objective: To empathize the perceptions and feelings of different groups of people to collaborate with them.
Sample Training Topics: Customer satisfaction, multicultural teams, communication, listening skills, coaching, and virtual teams.
Topic for this Game: Empathy
Activity: Tell a story from the point of view of a key character. Ask teams of participants to rewrite the story from the points of view of other characters. Ask the teams to share their stories. Conduct a debriefing discussion to examine alternative perspectives.
Heroes and Villains
Objective: To identify desirable and undesirable qualities of people in leadership roles.
Sample Training Topics: Management, team facilitation, training, thought leaders, politicians, and coaches.
Topic for this Game: Effective Managers
Activity: Discuss the characteristics of managers. Ask teams of participants to create a profile of an effective manager who is a hero. Later, ask the teams to create a profile of an unsavory managers who is a villain. Reorganize the teams and ask the participants to list desirable and undesirable characteristics managers.
Unfinished Story
Objective: To create a logical sequence of predictable events in an unfinished narrative.
Sample Training Topics: Forecasting, investment, planning, coaching, motivating, collecting data, and researching.
Topic for this Game: Team Development
Activity: Explain the four stages in the team development model. Tell a story about the experiences of a team working on a critical project. Include details of what happened during the forming, storming, and norming stages. Ask teams of participants to write the final episode of the story in this team’s development.
Sequel and Prequel
Objective: To connect causes and effects across several occasions.
Sample Training Topics: Career development, mediation, life of a new hire, quitting a job, product development, and retirement.
Topic for this Game: Project Management
Activity: Explain that every action is caused by some previous action. Also, every action causes some future action. After these explanations, present the outline of a story that involves a business project. Ask teams to create a sequel to the story, involving the same characters and settings. Later, return to the original story and ask the participants to create a prequel of the story, by portraying the same characters at an earlier time. Debrief the participants by tracking the connections among the actions in the prequel, the story, and the sequel.
Happy Ending
Objective: To realistically analyze a failure to diminish its impact and to lower the probability of its future occurrence.
Sample Training Topics: Planning, organizational learning, faux pas, data collection, quitting a job, and rejection of your proposal.
Topic for this Game: Downsizing
Activity: Ask teams of participants to write short stories featuring an employee being downsized. Exchange the stories among the teams. And ask each team to rewrite the story with a happy ending: a positive outcome instead of the original failure. Conduct a debriefing discussion about reframing your perception of failures.
Story Prompts
Objective: To collaboratively create and present a story stimulated by random photograph and related to a specific topic.
Sample Training Topics: Visual thinking, graphic prompts, topical exploration, lateral thinking, and communication.
Sample Topic for this Game: Creativity
Activity: Seat a group of participants around a large table. Briefly introduce the training topic. Turn over a random photo card. Invite the first participant to create and narrate the first few sentences of a story related to creativity and based on the photograph. Invite the other participants to take turns to continue narration. Stop the narration after a convenient time period. Comment on aspects of the story related to creativity. Also, correct any misconceptions.
Think on Your Feet
Objective: To rapidly create and present a story that is related to any training topic.
Sample Training Topics: Any training topic.
Topic for this Game: Storytelling
Activity: Organize the participants in triads. Ask one member of the triad to be the judge and announce any training topic. The other two participants think silently for 30 seconds about the topic. At the end of this time, the judge takes one of the other participants away and listens to their story about the topic. After a couple of minutes, they return to listen to the other participant’s story. At the end of this story, the judge decides whose story won this round. This procedure is repeated with each participant playing role of the judge.
Debriefed Story
Objective: To explore the similarities and differences between one’s personal behavior and the behaviors of the characters in a story.
Sample Training Topics: Communication, cultural norms, values, national differences, and emotional responses.
Topic for this Game: Death and dying
Activity: Locate or write a story related to the training topic. (In our session we used a story called “A Death in the Family”, about the death of a mother.) Distribute printed copies of the story to each participant. Assign a suitable time limit for reading the story. Conduct a debriefing discussion will the entire group. Ask questions about the differences between the behavior of people in your culture and the characters in the story.