Storytelling

By Brendan Thomas

“Stories are for joining the past to the future…. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”

- Tim O’Brien

As writers, we are often asked, “Why are you a writer?” It’s not just an important question, it is a valuable one. It is a chance to reflect on who we are as a writer, what we want our writing to stand for, and what we want to leave behind by the time we are done. So, why am I a writer?

I am a writer because of tradition. Storytelling is one of humankind’s oldest traditions, and most certainly its greatest. From the cave paintings of our ancestors, to your favourite author’s latest novel, we have been telling stories since the very beginning. There are many ways to tell a story. Some are told through dance, others are told through poetry, and some are told on the spot down the pub with friends who are just up for tall tales and a laugh. If I could make music, I’d be a musician. If I could paint, I’d be a painter. But I write, so I am a writer.

Okay, so that’s probably the daftest, tritest way of putting it, but writing is my way of connecting with those who told their stories before me. It’s as simple as that.

I think of all the stories I have read in my time, stories of magic and wonder, and tales of monsters and heroes, epic adventures across time and space, and obsessions on the high seas. And in all the years since Homer wrote The Iliad, our passion to find brand new stories to tell and to be amazed by has never diminished. I think of all those stories because I am bound to them, they are as much a part of my identity as a writer as my own creations.

My creative mind is the collective result of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Banjo Paterson’s The Man From Snowy River, Terry Pratchett’s pretty much everything he’s ever written, and most recently, John Green. And believe me, if this wasn’t a blog with a word limit, I could list all my other influences like a phone book, and still miss most of them.

Storytelling has this amazing superpower (or magic if that’s more your bag) in that the more of it we create and share, the more unique our own creative voices become, not just individually but collectively. Every story ever told changes the collective for us all, because every story you’ve ever read or heard came from countless stories you haven’t, stories that meant something to another storyteller, that added to how they think about storytelling.

How many of you have become even more excited about stories as your own writing grew and changed? Since I started really getting into my writing four years ago, I have discovered new authors and new stories as a direct result of my writing, and every new story in turn changes the way I think about storytelling. Patrick Ness’s More Than This gave me a fresh way of considering portal (dystopian) fantasies, Chris Hammer’s Scarsden/Lucic novels made me think I’d like to give present tense narrative a try, maybe I’ll ultimately decide those choices aren’t for me, but just having learned about them has already changed the way I think about writing.

Storytelling reminds us of where we came from, and shows us where we want to go, it informs us, inspires us, and entertains us. Stories can lift us up, they can break us, they can humble us, and they can make us stronger. But what storytelling does better than perhaps any other human endeavour is connect us all to each other. Creating and sharing stories has made incredible bridges across cultures, geography, and time.

Every story grows in the retelling because every reader, every listener brings with them a new point of view, which changes how they interpret other stories, and every new storyteller throws another stone in the great story river that waters the fields of our creativity. Generation after generation of new storytellers are discovering for the first time Stephen King, Shakespeare, Tolkien, and pantheon after pantheon of mythologies from all the cultures of the world. Michael Crichton drew inspiration from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard, and the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Two of those authors sit on my shelf alongside my copy of Jurassic Park. I’d bet folding money Michael Crichton did not draw strong inspiration from Australian bush poetry, and I’d bet my teeth Jurassic Park inspired many writers who’ve never directly cared for the classics.

So this is who I am as a writer, as a storyteller, inspired by a library of storytellers who did it before me. A few of them I’ve been lucky enough to shake hands with, others came and went long before I was born. But before they passed, they created something that outlasted them, something that changed the world forever. And I gotta tell you, that’s the kind of storyteller I want to be. And it does not matter which stories made a little splash or a big one; it doesn’t even matter which stories have been lost to us. I don’t care if I’m not remembered in two hundred years; I don’t care if I make a big splash or a little splash. I just want to leave something behind, something that wasn’t there when I started. For myself first and foremost, but also if I can, to light the way for the storytellers who come after me. Because if just one storyteller picks up my work and finds something in it that inspires them to tell their own story, I will have taken my proud and humble place in the immortal tradition of storytelling.