# Narrative Templates

> Use these templates to choose the right narrative shape for the material.
> Keep the subject's actual language and details. Do not copy the examples as
> stock prose.

## Contents

- Template 1: The story of an object
- Template 2: The story of a relationship
- Template 3: The story of an era
- Template 4: The story of a craft or skill

## General Rules

- Start with a concrete image instead of a summary statement.
- Build context through lived details, not exposition alone.
- Let reflection emerge late.
- End in a way that returns the story to a person, place, object, or repeated
  gesture.

## Template 1: The Story of an Object

Best for items that carried daily life, status, work, travel, ritual, or
memory over time.

### Core arc

1. Open with the object's sound, weight, texture, or first appearance
2. Place it in the home, workplace, or journey where it mattered
3. Show how it connected people, labor, or routine
4. Reflect on what it came to represent
5. End by showing how it still echoes in memory

### Good source material

- tools
- radios
- bicycles
- sewing machines
- trunks
- kitchen objects
- letters, tickets, or uniforms

### Example opening move

Instead of: "This object was very important in my life."

Use: "What returns first is the clicking sound it made every evening near the
window."

### Watch for

- Over-symbolizing an ordinary object
- Describing appearance without showing use

## Template 2: The Story of a Relationship

Best for parents, siblings, partners, neighbors, teachers, comrades, mentors,
or long-term care relationships.

### Core arc

1. Open with a phrase, habit, look, or recurring action
2. Establish the family or social situation around the bond
3. Show the relationship through repeated acts rather than explanation
4. Name the emotional realization only after the pattern is visible
5. End with a quiet image or remembered gesture

### Good source material

- care shown through work rather than speech
- household routines
- conflict that softened over time
- separations, reunions, or acts of loyalty

### Example opening move

Instead of: "My mother loved me deeply."

Use: "She rarely said much, but every cold morning the warmest coat appeared at
the foot of my bed before I woke."

### Watch for

- Turning the subject into a heroic stereotype
- Explaining the feeling before showing the pattern

## Template 3: The Story of an Era

Best for memories where a time period, public atmosphere, or shared social
condition shapes daily life.

### Core arc

1. Open with an era-specific sound, object, routine, or public scene
2. Ground the reader in daily conditions rather than abstract history
3. Show how people adapted, cooperated, or made meaning inside those conditions
4. Reflect on what that period left behind in the subject
5. Close with a sensory cue that still pulls the era back into the present

### Good source material

- school years
- factory life
- rationing or scarcity
- migration
- broadcast culture
- collective labor
- neighborhood routines

### Example opening move

Instead of: "Those were difficult times."

Use: "Before dawn, the loudspeaker came alive and the whole lane seemed to wake
at once."

### Watch for

- Writing a history lesson instead of a lived story
- Reducing the era to hardship alone

## Template 4: The Story of a Craft or Skill

Best for cooking, tailoring, carpentry, farming, bookkeeping, teaching,
repairing, music, weaving, or any learned practice tied to identity.

### Core arc

1. Open with the first lesson or most familiar hand motion
2. Explain who taught it, why it mattered, and where it was learned
3. Show mistakes, repetition, rhythm, and improvement
4. Reflect on the discipline, values, or self-respect the skill carried
5. End with how the skill still lives in the person's habits or character

### Good source material

- apprenticeships
- domestic work
- trade learning
- repeated manual practice
- family techniques passed across generations

### Example opening move

Instead of: "I became very skilled at this work."

Use: "At first my hands moved too fast, then too slow, until the rhythm finally
settled into me."

### Watch for

- Skipping the learning process and jumping straight to mastery
- Treating the skill as abstract virtue instead of lived practice

## Choosing the Best Template

Choose the template by asking what carries the narrative weight:

- If the memory keeps returning to one thing, use the object structure.
- If the center is a bond between people, use the relationship structure.
- If daily life is inseparable from a social period, use the era structure.
- If identity is shaped by repeated practice, use the craft structure.

When a transcript contains several of these, pick one as the main frame and let
the others support it.