Understanding Starts with Differences
As changemakers and artists we are creating work to create an impact. That might mean to move someone’s emotions towards joy or towards action.
Creators Create
Generally, our first goal is not to tell a story, instead it is to understand what we are doing, what problem we are solving, what creation we want to make. And then we decide to tell people about our discovery. Talking about our work is not our priority, but it is necessary.
But We Need to Tell Our Stories
This week as I have been writing forward with the WeStory book I got stuck in a place that many of us get stuck. I wanted to explain why the process of including our own voices is so powerful. I had a lot to say but it all felt rather hyperbolic.
I was circling around different ideas, trying to convince my imagined audience of the benefit of sharing the personal why behind what it is they do.
That is when I realized I was falling into the trap of wanting to explain something. I was coming from a place of saying, ‘listen to me, this is important.’
So I took a pause and stepped back and asked myself, what won’t they understand and why is this so?
What Our Audience Doesn’t Understand
Once I started thinking about my audience and their assumptions, fears and points of resistance I was able to write forward in a way that addressed each of these concerns. My words felt less hypothetical. I was able to remember examples from my research that could help my audience see these ideas in action.
I’m writing a book about the importance of building a ladder of understanding, and yet, in the middle of the book, chapter 19 of 30, even I got stuck thinking the other way around, starting from telling rather than sharing from the perspective of my audience and where they are at now.
As an editor seeing the material from the perspective of your audience is more clear. Editors are removed from the emotions of our work. As a creator writing about my own work it is easy to slip into over personalizing what I have to say.
The Road to Understanding
If you are writing about your creative work or your ideas and feel stuck, try this. Think about your audience. Imagine what they might be feeling and thinking right now, and embrace their assumptions and misperceptions. Use those assumptions and misperception as stepping stones along the way of telling your story.
In the Hero’s journey, when we are telling a story of a hero striving to get the princess or fight the villain, we see these stuck points as obstacles in the hero’s path. These are the basis of the story, we read or watch to see how the hero manages to overcome these obstacles.
It is the same when we are telling a broader WeStory. The assumptions and misperceptions are the turning points of our story and the reason people read forward. Without them we have no need to tell a story. So embrace them. Go look for them. Be thankful when you find them. These are the places that give you an opportunity to connect with your audience and open up new ways of seeing.
If you want help telling your story, schedule a Virtual Coffee. I have a Brand Story Consulting process that walks you through finding your voice and crafting your story.