Story Setup
Choose a Title about Your Family of Origin
Family Relationships
Here's an example for inspiration
Make a visual story of how you relate to your family of origin today. These title ideas can help you tell stories about relationships you have with family members and your place in the family now, to better understand where you've come from. Below, you'll find some ideas for titles of your story. You can use one of these, or be inspired to make your own.
Title Ideas:
- Me In My Family of Origin
A Timeline of a Good Day As a Child
A Timeline of a Bad Day As a Child
Who My Parents Were
Who I am Outside of Me as an Adult Child
A Timeline of a Conflict With My Family
A Timeline of a Day in the Life in Our Family
My Vision for my Family Relationships
How I Want to Get Past My Family History
A Mosaic of Me as a Troubled Child
Helping My Troubled Inner Child
My Family Dynamic
A Timeline of a Time I Felt Like a Good Son/Daughter
A Timeline of a Time I Felt Like a Bad Son/Daughter
A Timeline of a Significant Moment
A Timeline of What Happened
Ways I'm Good Enough
The Message From My Family
A Mosaic of the Feelings In My Childhood Home
A Timeline of a Moment I Felt Different From My Family
A Timeline of a Joyous Moment
A Comparison: Other Families and Ours
A Timeline of Conflict
What Love Felt Like in My Family
A Comparison: My Family and How I Wish it Was
What I Learned From My Family
If/Then: Choices and Different Paths
A Lifeline of the Course of My Childhood
I'm Not That Child
A Comparison: How They See Me vs Who I Am
STEP 2
Story Setup and Structure
If you have a BioGraffs Mag Plus, you are ready for Step 2!
Or head back to the Virtual Tool to make your BioGraff online.
If you have a Mini, each person needs some plain paper and a pen.
Your story deserves a sturdy support. Consider putting a hardcover book or cutting board behind it, in case you want to move it around, which you might. Draw a frame around the edge of your paper.
Write the title you chose at the top.
This is the canvas for your visual story.
Think of the parts of this story and list them somewhere under the title. These parts can be thoughts, feelings, events, actions, objects, desires, circumstances... anything you need them to be. You don't need to use a lot of words - just enough so that you know what you mean. Think of it as a placeholder for a big concept.
It's natural to want to write the whole story on the page. Challenge yourself to stay with the visual. And don't worry: you can tell more of what each cube means when you tell your BioGraff story later.
Assign each one a color.
It might look something like this:
STEP 3
Build Your BioGraff
Now you are ready to tell your visual story. Look through the BioGraff Storyboard Style cards for examples of how to do that.
Every story has a structure - think about how a movie sometimes shows you one scene, then goes back in time to tell how the protagonist got into that mess. Or a story is from one particular person's point of view, and then switches to another point of view.
A visual story has a structure too. Even a single image.
BioGraffs started out as an interactive art installation. Over the course of two years, we asked over a thousand people to tell a visual story using cubes to stand for parts of the story. Common strategies emerged. These eight cards represent the strategies we observed people using, and might help you think through how you want to represent your own story.
One of these styles might work for the story you want to tell, or you might have a style of your own in mind.
Build your BioGraff however makes the most sense to you. Once you've decided what the colors mean, you are done with words. Let your instinct guide how you lay out the cubes. Let metaphor take over and express meaning in the cubes' relationships to one another.
As you become more experience building these visual stories, you will begin to see new ways to express your internal stories in a visual way.
STEP 4
Sharing Your Story
Talking about your BioGraff creation is the BioGraff Superpower!
The BioGraffs Mag Plus comes with 2 magnetic whiteboards so you can do this activity with a partner or friend, and share your creations. Conversation becomes storytelling time and you each get to share your story completely.
Feel more heard. SEE what each other means.
Use the two storytelling cards to keep focused on your role, whether you are the listener, or the storyteller
Using BioGraffs on your own.
You'll want your camera once again to take a picture of your BioGraff.
You might want to share your BioGraff story with a significant person, or with your therapist. Your creation now becomes a visual aid that anchors your story. Tell the story it represents; say more about what each cube means, and why you laid them out the way you did.
The visual gives you a way to zero in on details, but easily return to the big picture. It invites curiosity from the person you are sharing
your story with.
It gives you a way to tell the whole story.
You might want to make another BioGraff, or even another one with the same title and a different Style Card. See what else can be revealed.