I notice a lot of people talking about how much they love the braiding activity; I love it too. That was fascinating and illuminating. For me, it's both a way to ask questions of the story/flesh it out and a way to get into the head of a potential audience.
I think it's pretty clear how it helps us ask questions of/flesh out a story; what has me geeking out is how it might help us explore potential audience viewpoints. This is my (nascent) thought: every image, every character, every setting, every event/pattern in a story is pregnant with all of the potential associations to that thing--whether it be from the listener's life, or from another story they've heard. For example, when the Wolf pops up in Little Red, the listeners might associate, in the back of their heads, to a million other story wolves, from the Big Bad Wolf to Peter and the Wolf. Beyond that, audience members might have their own experiences or feelings associated with wolves. The same thing happens if you bring up a deep, dark wood, or a wicked stepmother, or a tower, or a young person coming-of-age. Every story element can wake associations in the mind of the listener. These associations can be powerful.
So when we free associate like that with a story, it's kind of a way of exploring what potential associations could happen in the mind of the listener. This way, we know exactly what our controls are--what buttons are we potentially pressing in people? Even further, this might help us know which buttons we want to press--we can discover ways to hint at certain associations that invest an image with particular power. For instance, Chris mentioned in his post that certain angles/questions/associations made folk and fairy tales more interesting to him; this seems to me to be a natural way to really juice all of the potential power in these stories.
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