Why Storytelling?

Because we do it all the time. Because it’s powerful. Because even the simplest story of how your coworker Joe Schmoe bumped into your boss and nearly spilled coffee all over the boss’s new tie right before a major presentation transports you from your seat to that break room. That’s why.

I never really understood how people could identify actors and actresses. I am still terrible at determining if a movie has good or bad acting. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact I don’t see the people on a screen as people simply acting out a role. I see them as their characters with their own stories attached to them. So sorry Will Smith, but you’ll always be Agen J to me. Mark Harmon? Oh, you must mean Gibbs. And Michael Rooker, even though the Walking Dead isn’t the first time I have seen you on my screen, your role as Merle Dixon has imprinted on me and so that is who you’ll always be – doesn’t matter if you’re wearing a police uniform or are painted blue. 

I know they all have their own life off camera, filled with their own stories and drama. I mean, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have as many gossip articles as we do now. But I am stuck seeing them as the characters in the stories that had an impact on me. I remember watching Men In Black as a kid with my dad and feeling a little more grown up. NCIS was almost always on at my house, doesn’t matter if it was a new episode or just a rerun. And Walking Dead was the first show I recommended to my family that they actually liked and watched. Yeah these are small things, but they stick with you. 

When I was younger, I started writing by roleplaying with other people on forms. I can honestly say that looking back at what I wrote is simply horrific. But I think what I took away most is learning how to make a character react to a given situation in a setting that I don’t have full control over. 

Eventually I got better and graduated (if you can call it that) on to writing fan fiction. Yet another piece of my early work that I am glad I don’t have copies of. But my writing did improve. I had to think critically about the cannon characters in my work. Would they really do this? Would they say that? With my own characters thrown into the fandom it was easy; I had complete control over who they were so this imaginary figure I had spun up had little to no say in its own destiny or speech. Maybe this is a bit unconventional, possibly a little unorthodox even, but it’s how I wrote my longest piece of work at the time. Twenty-eight pages of some heroine thrusted into an already existing world who had to help solve crimes as she fell in love with one of the cannon characters. Cheesy, I know. But I was so proud of myself for writing that much and sticking to a story that long.

I drifted between roleplaying and fanfiction for years and continuously challenged myself to go further. I went from a few simple sentences strung together that barely formed an idea to loosely formed paragraphs with sentences of different structures to change the pace and feel of a story. Learned and practiced new vocabulary, like did you know the word ludicrous actually means “laughable because of obvious absurdity”? Back then I thought it was just some rapper. I know there are several skills that I still need to work on, but I am getting there. Pobody’s nerfect.

After highschool, I didn’t realize I needed a creative outlet just as much as I needed the logic puzzles I obsessed over. I focused all my energy on STEM classes and forgot the arts. It felt right at the time; I figured I could be creative in my free time. Little did I realize I wouldn’t have much free time in college. It felt like my brain was at odds with itself and I continued to try to oppress my need for art to focus on my studies. I think it could be compared to the design world’s war – the idea of form versus function. You want something that is aesthetically pleasing, but does that matter if the thing you are creating has no real function? It is a challenge to balance the two, much in the same way I should have been trying to balance my creativity and my need for reason and “right” answers. During my time at the university, I thought I had to choose one and just try to carve out time for the other. Key word being try. 

During my final semester, I took a unique class labeled “Writing for Interactive Games and Media”, or as I have affectionately come to think of it as, “How the hell do you write a story people will remember?”, but most of the class just called it “writing stories for games”. I had been bombarded with logic based classes for the last five years so this course felt like a breath of fresh air. I was rusty with the idea of writing, especially since my grammar had been reduced to chicken scratched symbols and simplified “if this, then that” styled statements. Don’t believe me? Check my notes from any culture based class and you’ll find exclamation points (or bangs as my computer science courses called them) instead of simply writing not, or two pipes instead of writing or. 

Regardless of if a class was STEM or not, there would be points in the semester where I dreaded going to class and would rather be anywhere than there for whatever reason. I never felt that way in my storytelling class. Between the captivating material and my professor’s conversational approach to lessons, I actually had fun in the class. Impossible, right? A college class being fun all semester? I must be crazy. 

Interactive Narrative Design, as I came to know it, bridged the gap between creativity and logic. It was my missing piece. It was the first time in maybe seven years that I had used writing as a creative outlet to express what I was thinking and feeling. I can easily say that it was my favorite class, and not just cause our homework included watching movies and playing games.

After graduation I was thrown back into an all-logic-all-the-time kind of world and I spiralled. There was no time for enjoying stories, I was simply moving from one task to another. Two years and one “midlife crisis” later, I am realizing what I am missing: storytelling.

This became evident to me a few weeks ago when I doodled a map that took me back to the days when I used to roleplay Pokemon. Yeah, I was one of those kids. I spent maybe ten minutes staring at the map planning out silly things like what kind of Pokemon would live where. And, without really trying to, this pesky little idea popped into my head: What if this world is just now being colonized? 

Every new Pokemon game has come across as “Hey! Look at this brand new region that we just discovered and yet happens to already have entire cities and pathways everywhere!” But… what if it wasn’t? What if the player (or players?) had to put the work in themselves and had the chance to shape an entire world? One thing led to another, and now, somehow, I am the Dungeon Master of a Pokemon themed Dungeons and Dragons campaign guiding three currently hopeless trainers through my world, Velia. I’m sure I will end up writing more about it later.

So why storytelling? Because after everything I’ve been through, I can’t see my life without it.