Improving storytelling: From Workshops to Feedback

Last year, Marion Estelle Brown sent Stories of Life a thank you card and her newly published book ‘Tell Them I’m Alive‘. She thanked Dr Mark Worthing for his encouraging words regarding her story ‘Hello Gorgeous’ which was published in our first Stories of Life anthology in 2016. Her story was about God’s loving rescuing of women in the Women’s Refuge where she and her daughter were sheltering. Marion went on to work in faraway places with women in need. Friends urged her to put her accounts into a book. While writing the book, she tuned in to a Stories of Life workshop on writing which she found very helpful.

Past Stories of Life writing workshops are still available under Resources. (Scroll all the way to the bottom for workshop videos from 2017.) We no longer run workshops today, but provide feedback on story drafts. We have found this to be an effective way of helping people improve their writing. Experienced editors from the Tabor Creative Writing Program give their time to read and make suggestions on every draft that we receive. Feedback Month opens on the 1 June and you will be able to upload your drafts on this website (one draft per category per writer). We may not be able to publish every story we receive, but we can give feedback on every draft sent to us. In this way, we hope that we will be able to help people of faith tell their stories well.

The 2022 Stories of Life team. L-R: Claire Bell, Dr Mark Worthing, Dr James Cooper, Dr Pete Court, May-Kuan Lim. (Ben Morton was unable to join us that day.)

Feature photo of Dr Mark Worthing taken from a 2017 workshop on What to do (and what to avoid) when writing your Story of Life.