In workshop we sometimes say that what makes a piece of writing a story is that something happens within it that changes the character forever. (That’s a bit Draconian, but let’s go with it as a starting place.) So, we tell a certain story, starting at one time and ending at another, in order to frame that moment of change. (We don’t tell the story of the week before those three ghosts show up to haunt Scrooge, or Romeo’s tenth-birthday party, or that period in Luke Skywalker’s life when not all that much was going on.)

Aristotle believed there were four primary dramatic plots: Simple Tragic, Simple Fortunate, Complex Tragic, and Complex Fortunate. Robert McKee, the screenwriting guru, lists twenty-five types of stories in his book: the modern epic, the disillusionment plot, and so on. When we finished sorting through a big pile of inspirational stories—a much narrower domain—we came to the conclusion that there are three basic plots: the Challenge plot, the Connection plot, and the Creativity plot.

These three basic plots can be used to classify more than 80 percent of the stories that appear in the original Chicken Soup collection. Perhaps more surprisingly, they can also be used to classify more than 60 percent of the stories published by People magazine about people who aren’t celebrities. If an average person makes it into People, it’s usually because he or she has an inspiring story for the rest of us. If our goal is to energize and inspire others, these three plots are the right place to start. (By the way, if you’re a more jaded type of person who finds the Chicken Soup series treacly rather than inspirational, you’ll still find value in the three plot templates. You can always turn down the volume on the plots a bit.)

What you do for a living shapes who you become. If you spend most of your day in paradigmatic mode, you’re likely to slip into depersonalized habits of thought; you may begin to regard storytelling as non-rigorous or childish, and if you do that, you will constantly misunderstand people. So when I’m in a conversation with someone now, I’m trying to push against that and get us into narrative mode. I’m no longer content to ask, “What do you think about X?” Instead, I ask, “How did you come to believe X?” This is a framing that invites people to tell a story about what events led them to think the way they do. Similarly, I don’t ask people to tell me about their values; I say, “Tell me about the

person who shaped your values most.” That prompts a story. Then there is the habit of taking people back in time: Where’d you grow up? When did you know that you wanted to spend your life this way? I’m not shy about asking people about their childhoods: What did you want to be when you were a kid? What did your parents want you to be? Finally, I try to ask about intentions and goals. When people are talking to you about their intentions, they are implicitly telling you about where they have been and where they hope to go. Recently, for example, my wife and I were sitting around with a brilliant woman who had retired from a job she’d held for many years. We asked her a simple question: How do you hope to spend the years ahead? All sorts of stuff spilled out: How she was coping with losing the identity that her job had given her.

The ability to craft an accurate and coherent life story is yet another vital skill we don’t teach people in school. But coming up with a personal story is centrally important to leading a meaningful life. You can’t know who you are unless you know how to tell your story. You can’t have a stable identity unless you take the inchoate events of your life and

give your life meaning by turning the events into a coherent story. You can know what to do next only if you know what story you are a part of.

There’s one more thing that happens as I listen to life stories. I realize I’m not just listening to other people’s stories; I’m helping them create their stories. Very few of us sit down one day and write out the story of our lives and then go out and recite it when somebody asks. For most of us it’s only when somebody asks us to tell a story about ourselves that we have to step back and organize the events and turn them into a coherent narrative. When you ask somebody to tell part of their story, you’re giving them an occasion to take that step back. You’re giving them an opportunity to construct an account of themselves and maybe see themselves in a new way. None of us can have an identity unless it is affirmed and acknowledged by others. So as you are telling me your story, you’re seeing the ways I affirm you and the ways I do not. You’re sensing the parts of the story that work and those that do not. If you feed me empty slogans about yourself, I withdraw. But if you stand more transparently before me, showing both your warts and your gifts, you feel my respectful and friendly gaze upon you, and that brings forth growth. In every life there is a pattern, a story line running through it all. We find that story when somebody gives an opportunity to tell it.