We often imagine storytelling as a grand act — a sweeping account or treatise of who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve survived, and what we’ve learned. Something cohesive. Something definitive. Something that explains everything.

But that kind of storytelling — the autobiographical, whole-of-life summary — is not only daunting; it’s also rarely where our truth lives.

Most of us don’t think in epics.
Most of us live in moments.

Narrative researchers call these small stories: the tiny, fragmentary, in-the-moment narratives we use every day to make sense of our lives (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). Alexandra Georgakopoulou goes further, showing that these small stories are actually where identity work happens — not in the polished memoir, but in the everyday recounting of the school drop-off disaster, the unexpected kindness from a stranger, the awkwardness of a meeting, the dream we almost forgot we had (Georgakopoulou, 2007).

Small stories don’t summarise a life;
they illuminate it.
They give perspective without demanding perfection.

They are snapshots — not summaries.

And snapshots are powerful precisely because they are partial. A photograph doesn’t pretend to be the whole landscape; it simply tells you something true about what was happening in that slice of time. A small story does the same. It highlights one contour of your experience, one texture of your world.

We don’t fully know our story until we tell it

There’s a lovely irony here: while small stories are humble, the act of telling them is transformative.

Neuroscience helps explain why. When we tell a story, regions across the brain light up at once — language circuits, sensory imagination, emotional centres, even motor planning areas (Martinez-Conde et al., 2019). Storytelling is not just a recounting; it is a reworking of experience. It turns raw memory into structured meaning. It draws coherence out of fragments.

Psychologist Dan McAdams famously argued that we become “storied selves” only through the process of narrating our experience — that identity is not discovered but assembled, piece by piece, through narrative (McAdams, 2013).

Research into our social nature adds another layer: Storytelling is relational. It requires a witness. It is only when we offer a story to someone else — in trust, in conversation, in passing — that new meaning emerges.

As Bouizegarene and colleagues put it, narrative is an active inference tool: a way the mind tests, reshapes, and reorganises experience to make it liveable and understandable (Bouizegarene et al., 2024).

Which is why telling a story often produces the sudden realisation:
“I didn’t actually know that until I heard myself say it.”

The story told becomes the story known.

Why “How are you?” so often fails us

If small stories hold this much potential, why do we so rarely access them?

Partly because we live in a culture addicted to summary questions.

“How are you?”
“How are things?”
“How’s it all going?”

These questions ask for a compressed narrative — a tidy emotional status report on a life that is not tidy. For many people, especially on complex days, “How are you?” is the worst question in the world. It flattens nuance. It pressures us into coherence. It assumes one answer is enough.

But small stories don’t emerge from summary prompts.
They emerge from snapshot prompts.

Try these instead:

• “What kind of day is today?” – or if you want to be more specific – try morning/afternoon/night
• “What’s something you’ve been enjoying recently – reading, watching, listening to or eating?“
• “What’s been a recent win or frustration?”

These don’t demand a summary. They invite a glimpse.

They give people permission to show up as they are — not as an abstraction of how things “should” be going.

The gentle art of asking for a story

One of the most underrated human skills — and one that qualitative researchers rely on — is the ability to ask questions that invite examples rather than overviews.

We never ask an interview participant: “Tell me what it’s like to work in healthcare.”
That question is impossible.

Instead, we ask:
“Can you tell me about a moment that captures what working in healthcare feels like for you?”

Examples open doors that summaries keep shut.
Moments reveal truths that generalisations cannot hold.

Whether in research, relationships, workplaces or leadership, asking for a story — even a small one — helps people be honest without being overwhelmed. It allows meaning to surface through detail, not demand.

Maybe that’s the magic of interviewing:
You don’t gather someone’s whole story.
You gather the pieces that illuminate it.

Storytelling as cultural glue

Across cultures and throughout history, oral storytelling has been the mechanism by which communities preserve identity, coordinate behavior, share wisdom, and make collective sense of change (Bietti, Tilston & Bangerter, 2019; Ong, 1982).

Stories are how societies remember.
Stories are how values travel.
Stories are how worlds stay intact.

Again, those stories were rarely encyclopaedic. Oral traditions rely on pieces: myths, anecdotes, parables, jokes, grief songs, warnings, family memories. Each one is a shard carrying meaning forward. Each one is a pocket with something worth holding.

Small stories are generous

They are manageable.
They are honest.
They don’t require you to choose a single narrative to represent your whole life.

Small stories let us resist the modern pressure to declare our identity in one sweeping arc — to brand ourselves, define ourselves, summarise ourselves. They let us be in process.

They say:
“This is who I was in that moment.”
Not:
“This is who I am forever.”

What happens when we invite stories?

When we ask better questions, when we make room for small stories, we give ourselves and each other something precious:
the ability to be known without being summarised.

We replace performance with perspective.
We replace definition with discovery.
We replace the demand for coherence with the gift of contours.

Because in the end, storytelling isn’t the art of summing up a life.

It is the art of seeing a life — one small story at a time.

Bonus – Story-Inviting Question Bank!

If interested, I’ve developed a question bank that offers a variety of story-inviting questions designed to encourage deeper reflection and richer conversations in various professional and personal settings. By focusing on specific moments and experiences, these questions move beyond superficial responses to unlock valuable insights and foster genuine connection. Click here to access!

Reference List:

• Bamberg, M., & Georgakopoulou, A. (2008). Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and identity analysis. Text & Talk, 28(3), 377–396. https://doi.org/10.1515/TEXT.2008.018
• Bietti, L. M., Tilston, O., & Bangerter, A. (2019). Storytelling as adaptive collective sensemaking. Topics in Cognitive Science, 11(4), 710–732. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12358
• Bouizegarene, N., Chasteen, A. L., Kusec, A. M., & King, A. R. (2024). Narrative as active inference: An integrative account of cognitive and social functions in adaptation. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, Article 1345480. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1345480
• Georgakopoulou, A. (2007). Small stories, interaction and identities. John Benjamins Publishing.
• Martinez-Conde, S., Alexander, R. G., Blum, D., Britton, N., Lipska, B. K., Quirk, G. J., Swiss, J. I., Willems, R. M., & Macknik, S. L. (2019). The storytelling brain: How neuroscience stories help bridge the gap between research and society. The Journal of Neuroscience, 39(42), 8285–8290. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1180-19.2019
• McAdams, D. P. (2013). The psychological self as actor, agent, and author. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(3), 272–295. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612464657
• Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. Methuen.