Palm stories are short stories that were created in the palm of your hand. Using nothing more than your palm, and your imagination you can create and populate a unique world. It’s so easy that anyone can do it, which is why we want to introduce the technique to our classrooms.

I could tell you that a PALM story is really an acronym, because we teachers love our acronymns, but it’s not. It’s just referring to your hand. However, if you’d like an acronym for it, try this one:

• P – Precise Plotting (Basic ideation)
• A – Atmospheric Arc (Following the plot graph)
• L – Layered Lives (Multi-layered characterization)
• M – Meaningful Motives (Each step leads to the ending)

If that’s too wordy we can just go with:

• P – Plotting
• A – Arcs;
• L – Layering
• M – Motives

That way you get a fun sentence out of it. What is a PALM story for, your students might ask, well it’s obviously for Plotting Arcs; Layering Motives. Two acronyms for you!

But, why use this approach? Because, ideation is often cited as one of the most challenging aspects of short story writing, but once the ideas are flowing, students often love to engage with the task. I have written about palm stories before, This lesson will be a more succinct way to move through the process, while including free downloadable resources for in-class use.

English Course Pack: Unit Four – Creating Writing and Choose Our Way Tales

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4.03 – Writing a Palm Story

The Assignment and the Slide Deck

This lesson is all about scaffolding the ideation process required for students to write an engaging short story. This task can easily be completed with just the slide deck, or just the assignment sheet. However, the two are designed to complement one another.

The assignment sheet includes all the spoken prompts that you will need to read to students, as well as providing them to read them on their own, if they weren’t in class for the lesson.

The slide deck includes all the relevant visuals that go along with each of the prompts.

Think of the slide deck as something to be playing in the background, as you slowly walk students through each page of the assignment sheet.

What is a Palm Story?

Now that students have made their way through the mini COWtale, it’s time to experience another form of branching path. Quest is a YouTube adventure that allows users to pick their paths. Again, this highlights another tool that students can use to create a multi-media, multi-branching narrative.

I recommend that the full class plays through this story as one, moving from point to point. When you feel students have a strong understanding of how QUEST works, you can share the link of the current video you are on and allow students to plug in headphones and experience the narrative on their own terms.

After ten or twenty minutes, students will be able to explain their experience with Quest. While I have not found a branching story map for QUEST, it does seem there are some very different paths that players / experiencers can take. However, there are some other fixed points that it seems all players move through.

By the end of this experience, hopefully your students have bought into the idea of a gamified narrative, and have a solid foundation of how these texts are both shaped, and work.

Explaining the Slide Deck

There are two main parts of the slide deck. The first part, where it provides a visual aid to the verbal cues and text written on the PALM Story assignment sheet, and the second part where it looks at – and expands upon – the elements of a short story plot graphs.

Part One: Slides 1 – 13

The first part of the slide deck contains visuals that are used when walking students through the assignment sheet. You can use this to reinforce what you speak aloud to the students, or – if you prefer students to engage more through an eyes-closed experience – where visual accompaniment would detract, you can simply avoid these slides altogether. They exist as an option that will aid some versions of this experinece, while detracting from others, based on how you want to scaffold this experience.

It is recommended that you familiarize yourself with these slides, and the assignment sheet to see where the overlaps are. The utilization of these slides is fairly straightforward once that prior learning has been undertaken.

Part Two: Slides 14 -22

The plot graphs on Slides 15 – 17 should be instantly recognizable to anyone who has already experienced 4.01 – Introducing elements of a short story. This serves as a refresher to ensure people remember the basic structures, and allows for a new approach – where students can use it as an opportunity to think-pair-share their own ideas of how movies, tv shows, or video games follow those arcs.

Where new things are introduced is on Slide 18. This slide takes the story that they have already written, and shows how the different moments of the journey act as the introduction (walking along the path), the inciting incident (finding the object), the rising actions (coming to a crossing, overcoming the problem, meeting “the other”), the climax (reaching the location), and then the falling actions (entering the location, coming to terms with their journey), which ends with the denouement (considering what lies ahead).

Once students have an understanding of how their PALM Story fits the plot graph, it’s time to really throw a wrench into things, and explain how short stories can be used to create Choose Our Way Tales.

On Slide 19 there are a number of different branching paths that are created. Different ideas are proposed where “what happens if the protagonist didn’t pick up the object?”, then “What if they don’t talk to ‘the other’?” Or, what if everything carries forward as it did in the original plot graph, until they reach their final location? “What if the protagonist chooses not to enter?” All of these would lead to subtle, or large differences, and create different endings.

While this lesson will not scaffold the skills on how to write COW Tales, it does provide students with an interesting idea to consider: how can the PALM story they just created be used as a foundation for a COW Tale? Surely, they will figure out that is where they are headed next.

The Assignment Sheet: An In-Class Experience

As mentioned, the assignment is created to dovetail with the slide deck. All of the pieces that are highlighted in the slides exists within the assignment. This allows students to prompt themselves, if they were absent from class, or if they want to work on another PALM Story at a later date.

Additionally, you can provide students with the assignment to use as a graphic organizer for their thoughts, to ensure that they are recording all of the required pieces for their short stories.

The assignment begins by stating:

You are travelling down a path.

Let the environment take shape around you. Look to your left. What do you see? And to your right? Now look up, and take in everything that your path has to offer, before finally looking down, and becoming aware of exactly where you are.

Now that you have seen your surroundings…

From here, it continues offering students the prompts they need to visualize their way through the entire experience.

At the very end of the assignment is a space for them to record their 200 – 500 word short story based on the elements that they have constructed.

While students should have an opportunity to share their final creation, they should also have the opportunity to share what they write in their boxes in a number of locations throughout their guided experience.

The Impact

Students have taken everything they need to know about short stories, and used nothing but the palm of their hand to create the foundations for their very own. At this point, students can confidently write something of their own creation to tailor a unique experience that follows a basic plot structure.

More importantly, they will have been provided with a mechanic to simplify the process of ideation. Even though this entire activity can be done without their palm, looking at it will remind them of where they began, and how they can replicate the activity, forming a deep learning connection they may use throughout their creative journies.

Next up? Writing a COWtale using Twine.

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English – Unit Four: Creative Writing & Choose Our Way Tales

English Course Packs: Full Units

Unit One: Literacy Skills
Unit Two: Poetry
Unit Three: Literature Circles
Unit Four: Creative Writing & Choose Our Way Tales (In Progress)
Unit Five: Essay Writing (In Progress)
Unit Six: Culminating Tasks (In Progress)

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