When you think you have a great idea, how do you make sure your audience will agree? Story mapping is an excellent tool to narrowing your focus on any idea and ensuring that it is relevant to the people who will be reading your article. When writing about a popular topic, there are many different angles that you can approach the story from. Even if the idea seems too broad, story mapping can help you find out where the real story is. In the example that our group completed (pictured on right), we mapped the topic of Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor. A topic that seemed very broad was easily turned into several different articles that our audience of high school students would be able to relate to.
Every audience wants to read something that directly impacts their own life. By thinking about what aspects of a given topic exist, it allows you to narrow down your ideas to match the obstacles that your audience will be encountering as well. Even people who seem to have larger-than-life problems can become tools to tackle an issue in your reader's own life. As Steve Elliott pointed out with an example story on Brittany Spears, many students will choose topics that don't seem immediately relevant to the school. Our students often want to focus on famous stars, but they have to find out how those stars relate to the life of our audience – our students.
Using story mapping to determine how an idea can be broken into many different parts will let the students find out if they really have a story that can be of import to the students at the school. The most important thing our students can do is understand that they are writing for their audience and turn their ideas into stories that our students will be interested in reading. Almost every person or large issue impacts them in some way; it is simply a matter of narrowing it down so that they can find that impact.
Rebecca Jackson
Douglas County High School
Douglasville, Ga.
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Some of us from the Institute group were talking after this session about a few options to use this in order to be best effective in the classroom.
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2. Have each student do a story map on each of their story ideas before coming to a group story planning session. Some of us thought this could potentially be an overload of work for students burdened with other homework, family, sports, etc., but it could ensure the most focused, interesting articles.
3. Use the story mapping process for doubletrucks/centerspreads. It's a great way to find many angles on one broad issue!
Any way you use it, it's a great resource!
Anna Horton
Highland High School
Gilbert, Ariz.
I'm going to use the story mapping with my students. Hopefully it will get them past the stage they are in now, which is stuck in the broad topic category. It has been difficult to find a good way to get them to narrow the topic and focus on their target (the rest of the students at Murrah.) Our paper has definitely been full of essays passed off as articles.
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