I decided it was high time that I set up my own online programme. Taking the 12 tools of my Story Practice, I created a 2-hour workshop for each of them and called these ‘micro-modules’. Each of them then fitted together to form one online course; ‘Step by Step - The Journey into Storytelling and Story Practice’.

How thrilling it was that old friends and contacts appeared from out of the woodwork to sign up. Some I had not seen for some 20 years! And there was a real mix of backgrounds - from sales to education to training to writing. With participants based in North America, Europe and Asia. All learning together and making friends.

I put a lot of thinking into the design of the programme, to make it useful and flexible. As time went on many people became interested in my set-up, including the business model I had created.

Firstly, each micro-module was repeated at the same time for 4 weeks per month, Then the following month that micro-module would be moved to a new day and time, while the former timeslot would be taken up by the next micro-module in the series.

Payments for each micro-module would be made only once by a participant, but they could attend that micro-module as many times as they liked, whenever it was on offer. This meant that I didn't lose out if anyone had to withdraw their attendance at the last minute, and they were welcome to attend when the next opportunity arose (either the following week or at a new time in the following month). But also there was the other option that participants could re-sit any micro-module they had earlier paid for, so as to revise the techniques at no extra cost. This actually worked very well for me, because I would now have participants in the sessions who could share with the others their real experiences in applying the learning.

Everyone who came online was very pleased, both with the flexibility and the range of practical tools they experienced, whether they were to apply them to storytelling itself (in all its forms) or the use of stories in teaching, training and presenting.

The success of ‘Step by Step’ inspired me to create two shorter programmes which focused more specifically on telling stories. Named, ‘POSTMARK - Marking the Path in Practice of Storytelling’, one series showed how to tell a good story to an audience (children or adults), whilst the other was more specific to telling stories within the business world. Again, the participants were from a diversity of backgrounds and countries, but all had in common the desire to tell stories well.

I must confess that I did have an ulterior motive for setting up these programmes.

Having been asked so many times whether I’ve yet published a book on Story Practice, I needed to find a way to arrange all my ideas into some logical order. The discipline of creating a programme forced me to produce user notes for each micro-module, and so these could now form the basis of the book.

That was the plan…so look out. Further news on the Story Practice book will be coming soon.

In the meantime, other programmes sprung up out of this experience as I was asked to bring various aspects of Step by Step and POSTMARK to other clients and their specific settings…