Story of the Day

Being asked the right questions until you remember more than you saw

Turn experience into memory, and teach a group the specific skill of listening in a way that makes someone else a better observer.

Most debriefs ask “how was it?” and receive “good”. This is the alternative, and it takes about three evenings before a group gets good at it.

How it runs

One person tells where they went today and what happened. Two minutes. They will finish quickly and think they are done.
The group asks questions. Not opinions, not “have you considered”, not their own story. Only questions, and the good ones are almost always sensory and specific:
- What time was it? Where was the sun?
- What did the ground feel like there?
- What did you hear just before that?
- Which way was the wind?
- What was the last thing you noticed before the bird flew?
- What did you not look at?
Keep going past the point where it seems finished. The teller starts answering with things they did not know they had noticed. That moment is the whole point.
Next person. Two or three tellers in an evening is plenty.

Model it first, taking the teller’s role yourself and letting the group question you badly. Then name what would have helped.
The commonest failure is questions that are advice wearing a question mark. Name it gently and move on.
Around a fire, at dusk, after a solo or a sit spot. The wheel puts this in the north-west for a reason: it is the hour for stories, not for analysis.