First and Foremost
First and foremost, you are a storyteller.
People will ask you soooo many questions.
What is your genre?
What are the tropes?
What are the comps?
What is your tagline?
What is your blurb?
Can I have your bio?
Those are marketing tools. They aren’t unimportant. But they aren’t the story. Those are things used to sell the story.
You are a storyteller.
Author. Playwright. Filmmaker. Content creator. Doesn’t matter the medium. Doesn’t matter the title or the format or the process. They are all the same. If you are a storyteller, you will be able to move effortlessly between them.
Stop asking the marketing questions when you begin. Start asking something else.
What is the story?
You are a storyteller. You create the map forward. You build the world around it. You populate it with all sorts of characters. You give them secrets and passions and tragedy. You dig the road on which they will walk and stumble.
It’s like you made it all up.
Yes. Yes, I did.
Tell the story.
The questions should be this.
What is my secret? What do I fear the most? What do I desire the most? Who do I hate?
Then break it all. Or give it all. Take it all.
Stretch the boundaries. Don’t make it good. Make it great. Stretch it as far as it will go without breaking and tumbling to the ground. Or maybe that’s what it needs to do.
Don’t be afraid to break it and put it back together again. I promise it will be better if you take the chance. Break it.
Step away from it for a while. Act it out. Walk in their shoes. Go to the place you are describing.
Research. Research. Research. And mold that into something else full of rich details. Details that have meaning or metaphors or memory.
Be a storyteller.
Don’t let them spoil that. Don’t hold onto it too hard. It’s okay to step back. Savor that success. Don’t let fear let it rush past you. Celebrate the win.
First and foremost, you are a teller of stories. Remember that.
Shall we begin?…
