It’s in the slogan. But why?
I’m trained in theatre. I got a college degree in directing, the craft and planning of stories. I also write: plays, short fiction, adventures, campaigns. Stories.
My wallet (a gift from my wife) has a quote on the back from Dr Who: “We are all stories in the end.” And I agree with that. Storytelling is an essential human activity.
When we meet someone we ask where they came from. When a child can’t get to sleep we sing them songs and tell them stories. We make up a wild variety of tales to comfort them. I would argue that myths and religions and science share a goal: to explain our world in a way that makes sense to us.
Even non-fiction is storytelling. If we strip out all the opinion and just report, we are still relating the story: who was there, when did it happen, why does it matter? It’s increasingly difficult to find the line between fact and fiction, between reality and and fantasy, when everyone is pushing a narrative. But it’s because we need our story out there, to sway hearts and minds.
We look for stories in random generation, be it rolling for characters or the stock market. We peer into history to isolate the moments that lead inexorably to now because we are the culmination of history. And all predictions that come true mean we were able to anticipate where the story was going.
It’s against these contexts that I chose the Nerdhaus slogan: Find Your Story. I can start it for you, or I can give you the pieces to build it. I can provide a world and let you fill in the details. And I invite you to change it in the telling, to heighten the parts that work for you and your audience. After all, it’s your story.