Step Out of Your Story Writing Exercises to Reframe and Transform Your Life

Every day we relate stories about our highs and lows, relationships and jobs, heartaches and joys. But do we ever consider the choices we make about how to tell our story? In this groundbreaking book, Kim Schneiderman shows us that by choosing a different version we can redirect our energy and narrative toward our desires and goals. She presents character development workouts and life-affirming, liberating exercises for retelling our stories to find redemptive silver linings and reshape our lives.

As both a therapist and a writer, Schneiderman knows the power of story. By employing the storytelling techniques she offers, you’ll learn to view your life as a work in progress and understand big-picture story lines in ways that allow you to easily steer your actions and relationships toward redefined — and realistic — “happy endings.”

Kim Schneiderman, LCSW, MSW, is a psychotherapist, adjunct professor, workshop facilitator, former journalist, and spiritual essayist who lives and works in New York City. She writes a psychological advice column for the New York, Boston, and Philadelphia Metro daily newspapers (http://www.metro.us/newyork), which have an aggregate circulation of roughly 1,000,000 readers. She counsels adults through her private psychotherapy practice and facilitates therapeutic writing groups at the 92nd Street Y, the JCC in Manhattan, FEGS Health and Human Services, the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services (JBFCS), the Association of Spirituality and Psychotherapy (ASP), Art Studio NY, Limmud New York, and various other venues. She has worked as an adjunct professor for the Long Island University’s School of Social Work and served as a Guest Lecturer for NYU’s Post-Graduate Social Work and Spiritual Care certificate program.

Ms. Schneiderman has written dozens of freelance articles, including cover stories, for major Jewish newspapers, including The Jewish Week, Baltimore Jewish Times,Northern California Jewish Bulletin, and Aish.com. Her blog, “The Novel Perspective,” is popular on the Psychology Today website: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-novel-perspective

Ms. Schneiderman is a member of the UJA-Federation of New York’s Spiritual Care Task Force, the National Association of Social Workers, and the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy.

PART I: Who’s Writing Your Script?

Chapter 1: Your Life as a Work in Progress
Telling Our Stories
What is a Script?

Chapter 2: Reclaiming Your Personal Narrative
Tuning into our Inner Narrator
Writing in the Third Person

Chapter 3: What’s In a Story?
The Elements of a Story

Chapter 4: How to Use These Exercises

PART II: What’s This Chapter About?

Chapter 5: The Chapters of Our Lives

Chapter 6: The Present Chapter as a Starting Point

Chapter 7: The Protagonist
Who is the Protagonist?
Identifying the Protagonists’ Core Strengths
Identifying Areas of Potential Growth

Chapter 8: Conflict
Conflict as Integral to the Plot
Four Different Kinds of Conflicts
The Role of the Antagonist
Character Development
Playing With Scripts

Chapter 9: Crisis and Climax

Chapter 10: Resolution

Chapter 11: Theme

Chapter 12: Epilogue

PART III: What’s the Bigger Story?

Chapter 13: Your Personal Table of Contents

Chapter 14: Working Through Unresolved Chapters