Something that I found incredibly helpful when performing my story, was scripting my words and my narrative. So Say We All had different workshops throughout the process, and this last one was incredibly helpful. Scripting is when you write in emphasis for words, actions, inflictions, cues and pauses. These would not be read out when reading our narrative, they would be like key-notes for ourselves when reading them out loud. This would help us to map out our exact performance and how we want the audience to listen to our narrative.

When I scripted my story, I started in the beginning, with reading it out loud. When I couldn't do that, or I didn't feel comftorable doing that, I read it in my head, and I tried to put as much emotion as I could write reading it in my head. This way, as I was reading it, I would be writing in my cues at the same time and realizing where I needed a pause, a different slide change, or a different tone for a phrase or a word.

After this, I would practice with my first scripting draft, and have a pen in my hand for while I'm reading out loud to myself. If I would catch a certain word or phrase that I knew I wanted to emphasize on, I would underline or circle the word/phrase so I could look back and my notes and quickly type them in, making the changes I needed.

These were the main notes that I used:

Italics = slow down
Bold = emphasize
Underline = look up / eye contact
{CUE IMAGE} = slide change
[BREATHE] = taking a pause / break

Here is my scripted draft and my slideshow: