Introducing StoryGarden…
… and planting stories in the garden.
Stories are the way that we make sense of things we otherwise can’t understand. Stories connect us, bond us, and communicate the things we care about. Take a look at this video in which the famous actor and director Alan Alda coaches a doctoral student to turn the presentation of her science into a story.
We can see her transformation in real time, as Alda encourages her to make the story more personal. Once she makes the story about her, that’s when we begin to care, because Facts Don’t Change the World. Stories Do.
In May 2018, my Dad Thomas P Seager, PhD, and I went to Columbia to visit a family friend. For almost the entire week that we were there, we talked about stories. We talked about why stories are necessary on a cultural and survival level for humans, and the new ways stories are told now. Both of us are passionate for stories in all forms: film, text, video games, music, cartoons.
I had just completed a Film Production course, and I had met lots of interesting storytellers, and wrote and filmed a short story of my own. Somewhere between Bogota and Pereira, we decided to run an experiment. For the rest of the summer, we would maintain a space where stories and storytellers can be planted and nurtured, so we can see how they grow. We will fertilize, weed, water, and prune the stories so that they can grow into more beautiful works of art.
But not just any story.
The stories we want to focus on are ones that attempt to make sense of the complexities of human existence. They are not stories of good vs. evil, but rather ones that blur moral boundaries and challenge both the writer and the audience to think and experience life in new and different ways.
StoryGarden is now my Dad, myself, Blake Hyman, Ben Creighton and some others. We spend our days developing and sharing stories that are deeply rooted in our own lives and experiences in an attempt to both make sense of them and to share them with others so that they can better understand their own lives.
One of the things that you’ll see in StoryGarden is a mix of different media. Although Medium is still (mostly) organized around writing, the digital channel allows a deeper incorporation of audio, video, and (through the responses) conversation. In StoryGarden, you might see a screenplay, rather than an article. You might see a script read, or a song, or an interview, rather than a transcript. You might see a short film. Maybe some day we’ll get to the point where we can offer games. The point is to offer you stories in every form that allows you to explore new, more complex ways of making sense of your experiences.
There’s lots of room in the StoryGarden for new stories and new storytellers. When you’re ready to submit a story, send an email to:
EWSeager@StoryGarden.co
TPSeager@StoryGarden.co
with a link to your article, your video, or you audio file. If it’s a good StoryGarden story, I’ll add you as a writer so we can work together on crafting better stories.
