Identity Storytelling — A Masterclass with Tim Paschke

The practice

Ten years, folded small.

This masterclass began as a conversation at a mentor’s workshop in 2016 — what if a person’s identity could be crafted with the same care a studio gives a brand? A decade of prototypes followed: booklets made for mystics, for mothers, for friends who needed their own words read back to them before they could believe them.

Every version taught the process something — which questions open people up, which page has to come last, how a single cut turns loose paper into a bound book. What’s left is the distillation: four questions, eight panels, one sheet.

Your sitting takes an afternoon because the ten years are already in it.

A hand-drawn identity storytelling sketch from an actual sitting

A sketch from an actual sitting — yours will be your own.

The oldest part of the process isn’t the paper — it’s the listening. Most people have never once had their story heard all the way through.
A deeper read: on being witnessed →

The artifact

Eight panels. Eight chapters of you.

You’ll tell your story out loud, shape it with a working editor across four questions, and set it into an eight-page booklet you draw, fold, and cut yourself. The pages run from the self everyone meets to the self almost no one does — the reader unfolds their way in.

01Coverhello, my name is — and your epithets
02Backgroundwhere the story starts
03Civilianthe everyday you
04Identitythe name you didn’t know you had
05Likeswhat you love, on the record
06Futurewhere this is all going
07Beliefswhat you stand on
08Erotic Storytellingthe back cover — the page you earn

About that last page: erotic here means what Esther Perel means by it — eros as aliveness, not explicitness. The page about what you still want, and nothing on it needs to be racier than a sailboat.
A deeper read: on the word erotic →

The fold

No staples. No glue. One cut.

An ordinary letter sheet becomes a bound book with real pages. Every leaf ends up two layers thick, so the paper suddenly feels like card stock — and every page you turn to has something on it.

Pages 2 – 3

Background ↔ Civilian

Where you come from, facing who you are on an ordinary Tuesday. The two halves of the origin story.

Pages 4 – 5

Identity ↔ Likes

The name you carry, next to the things you love. Who you are, and the evidence.

Pages 6 – 7

Future ↔ Beliefs

Where you’re going, resting on what you stand on. The fold pairs them — on purpose.

Why draw it by hand at all? Because a document that arrives finished is something you received — and the hand remembers what it made.
A deeper read: on the fold →

How it works

You talk. We shape. You make.

01 — You talk

Four questions, answered out loud

Background. Beliefs. Likes. Future. Warm, open questions — the kind you already know the answers to, once someone actually asks.

02 — We shape

Your words, tightened — never replaced

Your answers get mined for the good ore: the epithets, the through-lines, the one-liners hiding in your own sentences. Identity isn’t a question on the list — it’s what surfaces.

03 — You make

Draw, fold, cut, done

Grid the sheet, letter your panels, make the fold and the single cut. You walk out with a bound booklet of your own story, made by your own hands, the same day.

The name on your cover is derived, never declared — epithets have always been given by someone who saw the thing and said it out loud.
A deeper read: on epithets →

From the course

Three ways it takes shape.

Same four questions, same eight panels — no two sittings come out looking or reading alike. Real pages from three graduates, first names only.

David

Pencil, not software

David hadn’t drawn since grade school. Pencil, a shaky circle, a mountain with a sun over it — the wobble is the point. His actual pages: the front panel where his answers live, and the flat sheet, fold marks and all.

David's front panel with his Background, Beliefs, and Likes answers — The front

David's flat sheet with pencil sketches and fold marks — The fold

Kevin

Myth, not résumé

Kevin’s epithet: “corporate technology geek transforms into mystic with dragons.” Every panel got its own commissioned image next to the words — the myth did more work than a biography ever could.

Kevin's front page with his four commissioned images and Background, Beliefs, and Likes text — The front

Kevin's back cover, a full-bleed dragon illustration — The back

Katerina

The dimensional fold

Katerina cared as much about the object as the words — how the panels fan, which face meets the light first. Her case study became the clearest picture we have of the fold itself, epithets and all.

Katerina's booklet cover and fanned front and back panels in three dimensions — Cover & fold

Katerina's Background, Beliefs, Likes, and Academy panels — The words

Before you sit down

How your story sets you free.*

The sitting goes better when you show up a little loosened up, not performance-ready. Four ways to warm up beforehand:

01

Find the artifact

Before we talk, find one object in your house that means more than it should. Bring it to the call — it’ll answer the Beliefs panel better than you will.

02

Interview a stranger

Skip “tell me about yourself.” Ask: what’s the last thing you did that surprised you? Write whatever comes first, unedited.

03

Steal your epithet

What would a myth call you? Not your job title — the thing people say about you when you’re not in the room.

04

Skip the highlight reel

The panel that makes you flinch a little to answer honestly is usually the one worth keeping.

* Borrowed, with thanks, from the book of the same name.

I run a creative agency — brand work, mostly, plus short films and a digital team that figures out how to actually get a story seen once it’s made. SHLTR is one of our own projects: a print magazine about architecture, design, and the life inside houses. This masterclass runs the same process, just pointed at one person instead of a brand — you.

Subscribing to SHLTR is free, and it’s the easiest way to stay close to what we’re making.