How to create: lie.

How do you tell a good story?

Step one, you lie.

All stories in history are just that — stories.

It is impossible to find a 100% true account of everything that happened.

Even if we had a drone there witnessing all the events, X person would tell a different story, Y would claim they saw this, Z would claim they’re watching the wrong thing, and Z2 would write a newsletter about it.

Now, of course theres a deeper, philosophical and psychological argument behind this.

But I’m discussing it on a surface level. We’ll go over the ethics of this in the next email.

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When we are told stories, they go through many filtration systems:

What actually happened

⬇️

Who saw it

⬇️

How they perceive it

⬇️

Their conclusion of it

⬇️

Their prederences and biases

⬇️

Other people, if they told any

⬇️

And finally, you.

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Is this a bad thing?

Well… not really.

While it is imperative to tell the truth and never to make drastic lied about things, sometime it would be better if we add a little ”creativity” to our story.

Rule 5 of Austin Kleon’s book on how to share your creativity, Show Your Work, Austin talks about the importance of telling good stories.

And he recites to us a banger quote:

“‘The cat sat on a mat’ is not a story. ‘The cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is a story.”

— John Le Carre

Nothing changed, but, we fabricated an ever so small, incomprehensible detail of who owned the mat.

And in that, we created one hell of a story.

Why don’t you learn from this?

Now, you’ll be able to create even better stories, using lie- I mean- creative additions…

Best,

Z2