Bernadette Jiwa describes how writers often find their voice when they switch from prose to speaking or video. She points to three things that matter: discovering whether you're stronger on camera or at the mic, knowing exactly who you're talking to and what you're saying, and practicing repeatedly because your story gets better each time.
Chapters
The other thing that was really interesting to me with the workshop is how some people struggled with writing their story, but when, if they were to simply turn on a microphone or a camera and treat it as the audience, they were able to speak their story. And so there's lots of different ways to, you know, lots of different mediums for storytelling. What are some of the the moments that you see in the workshop where people had those kind of breakthroughs just by changing either the way they were telling stories or the medium that they were using?
Yeah, that's a great observation, Scott Perry. Part of it was some people want to— some people are writers when they come and they want to write great prose, but often great prose isn't what connects. If you have to present to an audience or just communicate your idea on the stage. Some people are really comfortable behind the camera. Some people are not so comfortable behind the camera. So it's about working out what your strengths are, number one, working out who your audience is, what the message you want to convey is, and then not giving up on the best medium to reach them. Just practicing. And that's what we found. The more people practiced, the better they got, and the more they discovered about their strengths and the strength of their story and the insight that they had and they wanted to convey to other people.
Yeah, important to remember that the first story we tell is probably not going to be the best story we ever tell, but the, the best one is always just another story away.
