A Somewhat Belated Introduction

I remember being five years old, standing in the middle of the living room atop the ottoman, and telling anyone who would listen whatever story I’d just come up with. It probably involved trucks.

Now it’s a few years later and I’m nowhere near as outgoing as when I was five. The desire to tell stories hasn’t changed, though the medium has. Standing atop the ottoman just isn’t as arresting as it was. I’m probably not as cute as I used to be. So I’ve worked on telling stories as scripts, or as film, or as prose. Or even slightly more unusual means of telling stories, like wargame campaigns or role playing games. What it always comes back to, for me, is the joy of a tale well told. So here are the top five things that I think drive me to tell stories.

I read a lot, and very fast. My theory is that all the words have to go somewhere, and once my wetware has stored all the verbiage it can hold, it has to come out in some kind of creative expression. Quite a lot of this output is literary - writing novel manuscripts, story drafts, or the endless worldbuilding. Other times I channel the data into other kinds of creativity - 3d printing, which is kind of telling stories with objects (these 3d printed fantasy models will be part of a band of down-on-their luck mercenary adventurers!) or artwork like maps or other creative sketching, or occasionally actually telling stories made up on the fly. (Want a good creative challenge? Make up a story on the spot and tell it to a child. No preplanning, just tell it as fast as it comes to you.)

Next I think is inspiration from other great stories. I watch or read something excellent, and think ‘I should try something like that, only different.’

Third is perverse inspiration - watching a bad, weak, or poorly executed story and thinking ‘Well I can do better than that.’ OK, fine - if you can, self, then do so. The world awaits your genius, Shakespeare.

Fourth, and this, I think, is the deepest drive - is family. It’s a core value that drives me to do all manner of crazy things, as well as being a consistent theme that I return to over and over again in all kinds of work. Ultimately, I feel like telling stories creates a funny kind of bond between the teller and the listener; a kind of family of the story, and I have a real soft spot for ‘families of choice’ that kind of pull themselves together into a bond. So there’s that.

And finally … I can’t stop writing. There have been a few times in my life where I’ve been completely free to do whatever I wanted for a window of time … and I’ve wound up having a narrative zinging around in my brain, demanding to be written down and fully explored and expressed. So, here we are.