You have chosen the picture, it is about a person, place or thing. The story in your mind is about the meaning of these people/places/things in your life, how great they are, and what you have learned from them. Great start.

But a testamonial (or making a list of qualities or highlights) is not a story, and if it does not present a the story in the context of real events and experience, giving us an expectation of where we are going, and a good payoff at the end, we will not get as rich a picture of the unique qualities of the subject.

How do you identify a desire that initiates your story? In our lives, many moments are decisive moments, points at which we can say our life moved in one direction or another. These moments make good points to either begin, or end, a story. In retrospect, we can look back and say that a given desire came out of, or led to, these decisive moments.

For example, a picture of a young baby, your baby, your grandchild, your neice, your sister. Any baby is a begining of a story, what desires she demonstrated as a child (curiosity, intelligence, wonder), and who she became (a doctor, artist, athelete). Any baby is also the conclusion of a story, a story of romance, a story of challenge and reward, a story of completion.

The storyline is determined by what you consider the initiating moment, where does it make sense to indicate that the desire began, or at least . This moment and the desire in turn suggests and leads to the description of a scene or scenes to illustrate where the desire took the baby (to her becoming a young navigator, a swimmer, or an engineer) , giving us a good idea of how the subject of your story is specifically approaching this desire, and the obstacles she faced in having her desire met.

And in choosing the point to conclude the story, you are providing the realization that you had about the particular journey of the desire line of the story.

Another example, you have a picture of you and your friends standing on the slopes near Banff, and the idea of story about snowboarding versus skiing. When did you discover this issue, can you tell about the circumstances of that discovery and what created your desire to explore the issue further. Where did your investigation take you, and at what point can you describe the circumstances of reaching a resolution around the issue? Give us the details of context that shaped the opinions, not just the opinions themselves.