A TED talk given by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The danger of a single story, is on my mind. There isn’t one story to tell, but thousands of different narratives that need to be told.
What is crucial to the storytelling craft, is becoming aware of what isn’t known, and how that needs to be told.
I find information and think about what I have noticed; it simmers, like broth, and I write what comes to my mind, bits and pieces that aren’t necessarily pieced together when I write them down. These are like cooking ingredients. It’s an experiment to see what compliments, what contrasts—but works—what feels right and what tastes good, and what looks right, or doesn’t.
Later those pieces are linked together to form a whole, very much like a recipe comes together to create a meal.
It’s preparing the meal, giving a presentation, and watching your guests devour your creation, which is feeding material to your soul.
It doesn’t matter if it is with food, with writing, with photography, painting, sculpting, knitting, science, math, it’s is still an experiment of exploration, of discovery, and to innovation.
That’s what telling a story is about: finding the voice, the image that is deliciously told, and hopefully you’ll get to see the expressions of what you created in the hands, or eyes, of the beholder.
Create the story that people want to read, which doesn’t yet exist.
That’s the story that needs to be told.