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# Observe story sharing

On this page you can get a little practice noticing what happens when people share stories (in your community or organization or just in general), then take some notes to capture what you noticed.

## What to do here

Find a few people who don't mind if you take notes or make a recording as you engage in a conversation. Sprinkle a few story-eliciting questions around and see what happens. Later, review your notes. The questions on this page will help you think about what you observed.

## Connections to other pages

The information on this page will appear in the project report. Other than that, this page has no effect on any other page of NarraFirma.

## Frequently-asked questions

### Why should I do this?

When you aim to help people share stories, it's a good idea to spend some time paying attention to how they share stories already. If you've never done this before, it's helpful to watch anybody share stories — just to get more familiar with the flow of it. If you already have a pretty good feeling for how this works in general, you might want to get a better feel for how story sharing plays out in the community or organization you want to focus on.

### Will my project suffer if I don't do this?

Here's a test: pretend you listened to a story-sharing conversation in your project's community or organization. Then look over the questions on this page. Do you think you could answer the questions without having actually listened to such a conversation? If so, you can probably skip this activity. If not, you might want to get out there and listen to a conversation or two. It will create a better foundation for your story listening and facilitation later on in the project.

### Is it better to take notes or make a recording?

That depends on you and on the people you are observing. Taking notes while keeping up with a conversation can be difficult. On the other hand, people usually mind note-taking less than recording. On the third hand, you can hear things in a recording that you didn't notice at the time of the conversation. If you can, try it both ways and see what works better for you and your project.

### What if I listen to a conversation and I still can't answer the questions?

Try listening to a second conversation. Some groups don't share a lot of stories, and you may have to spread a wider net to pick up on story sharing. Another option is to be a bit more explicit in your attempts to get story sharing started. Ask people to help you out in doing some background research for your project.