How To Make A Story Out Of Nothing
The best storytellers are not always the best writers and the best writers are not always great storytellers. Writing is 99 percent sweat equity and coming up with a story idea can be as easy as formulating a plan for world peace.
Rather than look at the linear aspect of a topic, how about digging deeper into all the elements that combine to bring the topic to life? Take for example, a cup of coffee.
If you’re not receiving your coffee by courier from an online order, you’re probably purchasing it in a retail environment. Let’s go back to the beginning, to when the coffee was grown. Here are some storytelling elements that stem from a simple cup:
- The history of the family who grew the coffee beans.
- The growing season of the coffee beans.
- How the beans are culled and prepared for transport.
- Who ships the coffee from the country of origin to the manufacturing plant?
- Who are the people who work the distribution chain and what are their stories?
- Who creates the packaging for the coffee beans and what are their stories?
- Once the coffee arrives at the retail warehouse, how is it distributed and what are their stories.
- What do the truckers see when they transport the beans?
- When the coffee arrives at the retail destination, who are the people who unload it and sell it. What are their stories?
- How many industries does a cup of coffee touch? How many products go into its productions? Hint: oil and gas is required for transport; parts and machinery for the trucks, ships, trains, warehouses, and manufacturing floor; metals and plastics; paper and pulp mills for the paper products that make up the packaging and the cups for individual sale at the retail store; textiles for the clothing and aprons for the workers at every leg of a bean’s journey.
So you can see that a cup of coffee isn’t just a perishable product. It is a culmination of all the life stories that combined and worked together to create that cup.
Here are more ideas on how to make a story out of nothing.
Originally published on freelancepublishing.net
