If you have not laughed, cried, cussed, or just gotten plain mad…then you need to check yourself at the door. Storytelling is about believing in something…standing up and allowing the emotions, the passion of the story to dominate your ability to articulate.
To bear the burden of an emotion…the emotion of crafting a story…you must take a position. You must advocate and see the life of the prose through the eyes of the story.
It must stretch you, make you shift in your seat, keep you up at night, and help you question why you chose to explain this reality.
When we craft…we share…we share something inside that is dying to escape.
We advocate…because we believe the words we write, the images we capture, the sounds we produce…they will help those feel the inner advocate we strive to share.
When we find, craft, and tell stories…we are advocates for a theme that needs an audience.
It needs to make those who receive *this* message share the same reaction when you were struggling to bring voice to that very story. We want our audience to get mad, happy, cuss…shift in their seats, stay up at night…so they can continue the mission we set out to achieve…to advocate.
Good stories creates powerful advocacy…stories of sharing. That is powerful word-of-mouth. That is powerful storytelling.