.png)
When telling a story, we may feel that we need to focus on the event, on the catalyst, on the moment when everything changed and how our lives or the lives of others were affected. We go for the moments that have more energy, more impulse, more drama. It’s understandable: we want to move people and involve them emotionally in the story.
If you’re working with social change or human rights, if you’re interested in purpose-driven stories for a better world, there’s always the alternative of broadening the spectrum and looking for the meaningful moments rather than the most dramatic ones.
Have you noticed the black screen with white lettering at the end of some films which tells us what happened following the story shown in the film?
I’ve always thought that this is often the beginning of an even better story. That’s probably why some films have second and even third parts.
By choosing where to start and where to end our story we define what it’s about and who it’s for. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that it’s absolutely fine to choose meaning over drama.