Story Laundering, or How to Get Out of Your Own Head to Tell Better Stories

I usually hate breakout rooms in workshops, but today one led to an epiphany for me.

Today at lunch, I went to the 2nd roundtable meetup of Design Mind community, where the subject was storytelling: telling stories of product design and user experience design — about users and customers, about products or brands themselves, and perhaps most interestingly about doing the work of design itself. Journeys of creation, trial and triumph, trial and failure, experimentation, empathy (yep), advocacy, invention.

We talked about classic story shapes, e.g. cautionary tale, person in a hole, no easy way, etc, and other formats such as improv’s “story spine.” (Once upon a time… Every day… But, one day… Because of that…Because of that…Because of that… Until, finally… And, ever since then…).

Toward the end, we split out into 2-person rooms, with the task to hear the other’s story, summarize and then present the partner’s story to the larger group. For 10 minutes, Joey and I traded stories and then silently wrote 3-sentence versions to surprise the other one with.

Back in the larger group, I told her story and she told mine. I found myself delighted and stunned by her interpretation of my story. I’d never thought of it that way before! She framed it and used language to tell it that had never occurred to me.

How often do we tell and retell stories of our lives, our experiences, or our work? In the same ways and in the same words, again and again? Etching our neural pathways deeper and deeper along the same well-worn grooves?

We often hear of things getting lost in translation, or the “game of telephone” that is famous for hilariously mangling and distorting messages and stories. But… what if sometimes… parsing or processing your story outside of yourself — *by* someone else — instead leads to its distillation and crystallization?

I’m now energized by the potential of what I’m thinking of as “story laundering” and eager to try it as an exchange again soon. It feels like something powerful.