Much of my shaping as a journalist traces back 25 years, when I covered a deadly fire in Sweden. But it wasn’t until I returned to the scene a quarter-century later that I realized how the original story lingers in my mind — and in my body.

* * *

The rocky hulk of Ramberget rises 282 feet (87 meters) from the island of Hisingen in Sweden, providing a stunning view of the town of Gothenburg below. On a September day in 2023 I was seated on a bench atop Ramberget, doing an interview. It was a chilly, windy day; the drizzle smeared my notes. But I hardly noticed. Nor did the man sitting next to me.

Rozbeh Aslanian was 44 when we talked last fall. But in the story he told, he was 19. That’s when he survived a devastating fire at a teenage disco in Gothenburg, only a mile from where we were sitting. Four hundred young people were at the party, and 63 of them died in the fire. One of them was Aslanian’s best friend.

All these years later, Aslanian remained tormented by survivor’s guilt. Only minutes before the dance floor exploded in flames, his friend had said he wanted to leave — but Rozbeh convinced him to stay. “It was my secret,” he told me. “But it became a poison eating me up from within.”

After years of trying to drown his guilt in alcohol, women and work, Rozbeh Asalanian decided to end his life. First, he had to do one last thing: Tell his best friends’ parents the truth about that night.

Now he described how he was standing in the parents’ kitchen, telling them that he was responsible for their son’s death. He braced for shouts and screams in response. Instead, the mother embraced him and whispered in his ear: You didn’t start the fire. Remember that. You didn’t start the fire. It wasn’t you who killed him. You didn’t start the fire.

As Aslanian remembered that moment, he broke down. So did I. For a while I just held his hand. We sat, crying, in silence. Then he gathered himself and told the rest of his story.

‘… not about you.’

I have been a reporter for decades, and this is the first time I cried during an interview. Crying is something I always tell younger reporters not to do, reminding them: It is about the story, not about you. You can cry when you get home. Or after the interview when you transcribe your notes. It’s not that I don’t get moved by the stories I hear and the people I meet. But I pride myself on acting professionally, which always had meant keeping my own emotions in check.

Not this time. The tears ran down my cheeks and kept coming. I felt ashamed and apologized. But Aslanian just said, “I understand. You were there, too.”

He was right. Because 25 years ago I was there — not inside the gutted disco, but right outside.

It was the fall of 1998, I was an intern at the Danish national newspaper Berlingske. Late one night I was jolted awake by a phone call from a senior editor: “Get on a plane to Göteborg in Sweden, immediately.” I was told to report directly from the site. A few hours later I stood in front of the still-smoking building. The lights of firetrucks and police cars flashed around me. Dead bodies were piling up and distraught teens were gathering at the edge of the parking lot, trying to find out if their friends were dead or alive. I watched the ambulances leaving, some with survivors and some with dead bodies. The scent of the fire lingered in my hair for days.

The investigation determined that the fire was set by four teenage boys who hadn’t been admitted to the party. The young offenders were sentenced to three, six and eight years in prison. Four months later, I returned to Gothenberg and spoke with families, friends and first responders, interviews I captured in a longform narrative that families, a community and a country still smoldering with grief.

Exposure to trauma

In many ways the event set the path to my work as a journalist. I learned how important it is to report not only on tragic events, but also on the aftermath — on the human anguish and sometimes clarity that arise as people work through unthinkable levels of pain. Returning to the epicenter of tragedy gives one the opportunity to tell stories crucial both to victims and readers.

Fast forward to last summer, when I was lucky to be appointed as an Ochberg Fellow at The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University. Each summer The Dart Center brings together a group of journalists for an intensive fellowship about how to report on traumatic events.

Many of us may think that only journalists in the field to cover war or major natural disasters are exposed to trauma. But research by Elena Newman, Ph.D. and professor of Psychology at University of Tulsa and Research Director of The Dart Center, suggest, that between 80 and 100% of journalists have been exposed to trauma through their work.

In my own career, I have immersed myself in stories about death and dying; I have witnessed a homicide autopsy, written a book about femicide and talked to people about suicide, rape and terminal diseases. Yet I never thought of myself as journalist who covered trauma, and certainly not as one who was affected by it.

At The Dart Center, I came to a much broader understanding of the field and learned a long list of new tools about approaching and interviewing sources who experienced trauma. I also came away with important knowledge about taking care of myself, before, during and after such reporting. I learned that self-care is a necessary part of your daily routine if you want to do this work without burning out.

Listening to and caring for yourself

After my fellowship, I returned to Sweden where I reconnected with some of the people I had met 25 years earlier: a mother who lost her daughter, a priest who opened his church to the grieving public, a fireman who tried to rescue youngsters from the fire — and the survivor, Rozbeh Aslanian. This time, I applied the lessons I had learned at Dart. The resulting story was published in Politiken on October 29, 2023 – exactly 25 years after the fire broke out. It is an immersion into how those involved dealt with the trauma back then, and how it has shaped their lives since. (Editor’s note: The link is to an English translation.)

It also taught me to pay attention to my own emotions. Bearing witness to catastrophe, fear, pain and loss lingers in your body. And after my experience with Rozbeh Asalanian, breaking down in tears at the top of that mountain above Gothenburg, I remembered the words of one of the professionals teaching at the fellowship. Dr. Kate Porterfield is a consulting psychologist at the Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture. She told us how our body is wired to respond physically, psychologically and socially when we are under threat. And she also told us to stop and listen to it: “Your body will communicate with you. It will tell you what you need or needed to survive.”

So I listened to my body. And I realized that my reaction when interviewing Aslanian was not unprofessional or humiliating. I cried because I felt empathy with him for having carried a quarter-century of guilt. And for finally letting it go. But because, for once, I was part of the story. I was there that night, and the experience was lodged in my body.

I wish the same self-care for you. Here are some take-aways from my time at The Dart Center:

• Trauma journalism is not limited to wars and natural disaster. Being a journalist involves being exposed to numerous traumatic events, even on a daily beat covering local news: interviewing people who have lost relatives, covering a shooting or a car crash and talking to victims of violent assault. Journalists are craftsmen and trauma is part of the raw material we work with.
• Stop and listen. If you react during or after covering something traumatic or listening to account of trauma, pay attention and attend to it. Your body keeps a score, as the psychologist and author Dr. Bessel van der Kolk puts it. Reactions to reporting a difficult story can be physical, psychological and social. Notice whether you feel unusually tired, forgetful, irritable, are avoiding working on your story or avoiding the company of others.
• Don’t try to toughen up. The hardliner reporter who possesses a special psychological immunity is a cliché. We are human; exposure to trauma has an impact. Research shows that we undergo many of the same working conditions as other first responders: Doctors, emergency workers, police and firefighters. We should treat ourselves accordingly and learn from them.
• Practice self-care. After covering a stressful event you might feel like winding down with Netflix, comfort food and a glass of wine. But you may also consider other types of self-care on a daily basis that will help you keep you fit for the next event. List of suggestions: Yoga, mindfulness, climbing, running, biking or any other kind of physical activity; keeping an appreciation diary; spending time in nature, spending time with friends and family, or simply just taking time off after difficult assignments.
• There is no fixed guideline. Alhough there is research to lead the way, no fixed map shows you exactly how to report and react when covering trauma. We are all human and all different; our experiences and boundaries differ, too.

* * *

Line Vaaben is a writer and editor for Politiken, the largest newspaper in Denmark. Her work has been published in several Danish textbooks, and she teaches narrative and longform journalism to students and professionals.

The post How an old story taught new lessons about reporting trauma appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

To tell this story of craft, I must share something which might ruin your first-time viewing of the short documentary film “Victoria,” by Eloisa Diez. So if you haven’t already watched it and don’t like spoilers, here is a piece of advice: Watch the film first, and then get back to what I learned in a conversation with Diez.

“Victoria” was showed at several film festivals around the world, then was featured as part of The New York Times Op-Doc project, which features award-winning short documentaries by independent filmmakers. In the opening scene, we  meet Alex Reyes de Anda. He lives in Jalisco, Mexico, a traditional town centered around the Catholic church. He works as a biochemist at the local hospital, sings in the church choir and talks with his partner, Fernanda, about having a family. The film conveys a quotidian life, told through quiet scenes of singing, family meals and conversations about mundane matters.

But soon it stars unwrapping surprises that are offered like small gifts to the viewer: Alex, who was born female, is well into the process of realizing his lifelong dream of being male. He has taken hormone treatments, had top surgery, sports a beard and speaks in a mild, mid register.

As the movie unspools over 23 minutes, so do the reveals that shape Alex’s life. Before his transition, Alex was helping parent his then-partner’s daughter; soon after he began his transition, the woman left and and denied him contact with the toddler. We start to hear his gentle dreams of creating a new family. And then we learn that Alex is receiving fertility treatments. He gets pregnant and gives birth by C-section to a girl, Victoria. The infant is cleaned, swaddled and placed in his waiting arms with a nurse’s coo: “Say hello to your father.” Alex’s voiceover cuts in: “She is a victory over the impossible.”

Reconsidering stereotypical approaches to stories

Because of the story’s structure — like a flower opening from bud to blossom — we don’t know immediately that Alex is a trans man. There are occasional references to fertility treatments, but it’s not immediately clear that they are about Alex’s desire to give birth. It isn’t until the last third of the film that we learn that Alex is pregnant — and even then it’s a gentle reveal.

As someone who has written intimate stories about transgender issues, I was curious about Diez’s approach to “Victoria.” We spoke by Zoom from my home in Copenhagen and hers in in Mexico City; our conversation was helped by an interpreter and Google translate.

“I wanted the viewer to get to know Alex, before I told his story,” Diez told me.

While working on the film, she had several conversations with Kani Arkada, a trans filmmaker and close friend. He urged her to consider her own heteronormative thinking and stereotypes about how trans identities are often portrayed. It was from those conversations that Diez decided to introduce the norms of Alex’s life before revealing that he is a trans man.

“The intention was to delay the moment, to get to know the person before the labels,” she said.

Diez is one of the founders of the working collective La Sandía Digital, a feminist collaborative of audiovisual production, training and communication that works with grassroots movements and civil society organizations in Mexico to tell stories of gender justice and humans rights.

”We try to tell stories about minority groups that are not so often portrayed in the media,” Diez said.

Determined to tell the story from Alex’s point of view, Diez continued to confront her own prejudices and ignorance: “For one, I was surprised to find that Alex has such a rich and strong network – an entire social fabric of family and friends around him. … The media and the few films about the subject tend to show us isolated trans identities, often absolutely rejected.”

Diez met Alex Reyes de Anda in 2016 after a screening of a short film she directed about families fighting to get custody over their children. At first she wanted to tell the story about the injustice Alex was experiencing as transgender. At the same time, Mexico was dealing with a rash of pushbacks against human rights’ activists.

“It was a time of great pessimism,” Diez said. “There was a sense that no matter how much we tried to picture things like forced disappearances and femicides through videos and documentaries, nothing changed.”

A more mature approach to narrative

She began questioning whether the story she was working on about Alex was the right one to tell: ”In the work on human rights, we often follow formulas that have to do with denouncing human rights’ violations. But that narrative doesn’t allow us to see the resistance and strength of people. Even with the best intentions, it treats people as victims. When I met Alex, I realized that I couldn’t continue down that path, and facing this crisis made me mature in my way of telling stories.”

The story of Alex challenged not only how Diez saw trans identities, but also how she saw her work as a storyteller.

“That’s when I learned about ‘narrative practices,’” she said, “where I found a way of rethinking my storytelling.”

So in the middle of filming, Diez took a one-year diploma course in Narrative Practices,  where she was introduced to the work of Australian Michael White around “narrative therapy,” originally developed as a way to help people deal with negative challenges or perceptions through narrative. The idea at core: We give meaning to our lives based on the stories we tell, and we can change the meaning of our experience though storytelling.

As Diez explained it, the stories we build about our experiences shape or constitute the worlds we inhabit. “It’s not a tool, but a way of thinking,” she said. “If we transform those stories, we can give new meaning to our own experience. A story that victimizes us, and then turns into our identity, builds very small worlds. But through story we can rebuild worlds that we can inhabit in a more dignified and stronger way.”

So instead of recounting the violence and injustice that Alex had experienced during his transition, Diez went looking for the victories in his life.

“They were not necessarily public victories with public recognition, but smaller and more intimate,” she said. “It made a huge difference in my focus and way of telling his story.”

Patient reporting and a well-paced structure

Filming the short doc took several years; Alex lived seven hours drive away from Diez, and her other work as a sound producer limited her availability to travel. But the slow pace of making the documentary became an advantage as it allowed Diez was to witness Alex’s pregnancy and delivery.

“If I had finished much earlier, the story would end with Alex in a depression, unable to reconnect with his first daughter,” she said. “Over the years, Alex overcame that struggle, reformulated his life based on music, formed a relationship with Fernanda and decided to bear his second daughter.”

Diez mapped out the story structure to identify the main topics and the path of the story, which was key to determining what to include and what to leave out.

“It helped me not to get lost,” she said, showing me her notebooks, several maps, drawings and charts, all organized with colorful sticky notes. “I was building a map with all the themes, to later make decisions about which ones were going to be present. It was a slow process, because there were so many topics.”

Among those topics:

• Identity
• Gender
• Promises
• Memory
• Oblivion
• Transition
• Body
• Sacrifice
• Hate
• Church

And not least: Music. Alex and his partner Fernanda both sang in the choir, and music plays an important part in the film.

“Music is a character within the story, since music allows Alex to express sadness and at the same time helps him reposition himself within his society brings him closer to his new partner,” Diez explained.

Songs for the score of the film were chosen from the repertoire of the choir: “I didn’t want anything instrumental, and the music was recorded specifically with the choir to underline the narrative. Music has an emotional function of the story, but is also an extra protagonist.”

The film premiered at a film festival in 2021 and has since been screened more than 100 times at festivals, cultural institutes and schools, and included in The New York Times Op-Docs.

When Alex had a chance to watch the first edit of the film, he was worried about how people in his family and community would react, and he requested a few changes. But on the whole, he accepted the film as a genuine representation of his life, and is very proud of it, Diez said: “He calls it our film.”

* * *

Line Vaaben is a writer and editor for Politiken, the largest newspaper in Denmark. Her work has been published in several Danish textbooks, and she teaches narrative and longform journalism to students and professionals.

* * *

Alex seen through knowing eyes

Through immersive journalism, I reported and wrote “He Should Have Been A Boy,” a story published in 2020 about Daniel Valter Jensen who finally gets top surgery (breast removal) after waiting for years. After “Victoria” was released, I asked Daniel what he thought of it from a transgender point of view.

“I’m both a man and a woman,” he said. “My expression is fundamentally masculine, but I have feminine features. And I am at peace with that — something I recognize in the story of Alex.”

But the film brought conflicted emotions. He spent most of his youth struggling with his identity; when he finally transitioned, he was too old to give birth. His ex-partner, with whom he spent many years, has children, but he lost contact after the relationship ended.

“I cried when I watched the film,” he said. “As a middle aged, 50-year-old trans man, I feel a deep sadness, because I never managed to build a family of my own. Like Alex, I had to leave a person behind; I couldn’t be Linda anymore — I just couldn’t. And as he says in the film, transition comes at a price.”

Daniel knows two trans fathers who lost their children when the biological mothers left; the men had no custodial rights.

“I just so very much hope that Alex’s partner, Fernanda, stays with him,” Daniel said. “I really admire his courage and calmness during his pregnancy. It must have been hard.”

And he loves that Alex names his daughter Victoria: “The price for being a rebel is high. But it’s worth it.”

~ Line Vaaben ~

The post A doc film that gently unspools surprises appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

I’ve heard that most writers struggle with structure. But when you’re alone, surrounded by a mountain of notes and staring at a blank computer screen, it can feel like you’re the only one who hasn’t figured out the secret formula. I often work on long projects for months or even years, gathering a million bits and pieces: facts, journals, reports, scenes, details and quotes. It can be overwhelming.

Then about 10 years ago, at a workshop through the Poynter Institute, I was introduced to the power of a one-word story theme. (Thank you, Lane DeGregory and Tom French!) It was an eye-opener for me, but I felt I needed more to my process. That’s when I began using Post-it notes so I can visualize the story laid out in front of me and move parts around easily if I have to.

Here’s how it works:

1. I keep my notes in files with titles, stacked on the left side of my desk. Before writing, I stick my story together on Post-its. It transports my reporting from the notebooks to the desk, and lays the story parts out in front of me.
2. Before I start the actual writing, I read through all my notes, underlining the best bits. I then decide on a one-word theme. It’s a very basic and effective method, where I boil the whole story down to only one word and organize my story from there. The word tends to have a universal resonance — things like SURVIVAL, NORMALITY, GREED, LONELINESS. It is not an angle or structure, but an overarching theme that provides a cohesive center and guides me to make good choices with my material. It is what is called a “red thread” in some cultures, including mine in Scandinavia — a term we use to describe the “throughline” that holds the larger story together and helps it make sense.
3. I write my one-word on a Post-it note and stick it in front of me. It helps me choose what to highlight in a story and what to leave out. I very rarely change my one-word theme as I work forward.
4. I then go through my notes again, picking out scenes, facts and quotes, all the time paying attention to my one word. There has to be correspondence: The prominent scenes, quote and notes have to support or serve the theme. (Contrary information or need-to-know context can’t be left out if it undermines the credibility of a piece, but detours have to be essential and short.) I write those chosen bits in brief keywords on Post-its. Sometimes I use different colors: Scene, details and juicy stuff in red; background, facts and quotes in black. When the notes are piled up on my right, I start to organize and group them in sub-themes.
5. That’s when I zero in on my structure. Is this a straightforward chronological story? A braided plot with more than one character? Or a typical scene-background-scene story, which is often called a broken or woven narrative? Sometimes I write a timeline to help identify the best opening scene, an optional flashback etc. And then I begin arranging the Post-its on the desk to build my structure, just like building a storyboard for a film.
6. The beginning and ending are crucial here. Do they correspond? Is the main question driving the reader through the story answered by the end? Do I have the nut graph or nut section in the right place? And what about the ending of each scene and each paragraph: Will they keep the readers engaged and keep them hooked? The different colors help me get a visual idea about whether I have the right mix of potatoes and sauce, which is how I think of background or exposition and narrative scenes.
7. Then I just write it all from there. Sometimes I move my notes around if I realize the flow is wrong. But very often I do not need to do any structural work after this.
8. The organizing takes half a day or so — for the long stories, maybe a day in total — but saves me time in the end. A fresh example: I recently spent a year reporting on-and-off for an immersion story. I had 12 notebooks — almost 100 full pages of transcribed notes, medical records, SMS-correspondence etc. When it came time to write, I spent one day reading and organizing and plotting my sticky notes. Then I wrote the whole first draft of a 6,000-word story in less than two days.

The photo above is of my desk in 2016 as I was working on a long feature story about the division in the Danish labor market. Some people felt left out of the workforce due to lack of skills, education or physical or mental problems. At the same time, the attitude in the Danish welfare system was changing toward those who have difficulty holding a job. I had good scenes but several characters, and also a huge amount of facts, explanatory and material. It all needed to fit together neatly.

My one word was GAP — my reminder that I was writing about the gap in society between people with valued jobs and those feeling left out.

Now I use this method whenever I am doing a story where a narrative with a central character is involved. That could be a feature story or profile for the weekend edition of the newspaper, or long, immersive projects for magazines or books. I find that even with short pieces or just a quick news profile, getting the structure right saves me a lot of time. With longer pieces it is crucial not to get lost.

I don’t remember learning the Post-it technique anywhere specific. I developed it myself in ways that work for me, although a lot of people use some variation of it.

When I teach or coach, I always walk students through the technique, and I know many use it afterwards. Recently I taught an intern trainee in my newsroom, where I am an editor, the principles of Post-it structure in 10 minutes. We had interviewed two women and had to braid their story together with historical facts and expert quotes.We had very little time — the story was running the next day. But with the Post-its in hand, the structure only took half-an-hour to outline, and he managed to write a very beautiful piece in a few hours.

***

Line Vaaben is writer and editor for Politiken, the largest daily newspaper in Copenhagen. Her work has been published in several textbooks, and she teaches narrative and longform journalism. She is currently working on a book about femicide in Denmark.

The post Sticking a story together — and nailing the structure appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

[dc]O[/dc]nce upon a time, the sun and the moon — the man and the woman — had a quarrel over who was the strongest of the two, and whether one or the other should carry out the important task of lighting up the sky. After a fierce fight they discovered that they were equal in strength. Therefore, they decided to share the work, so that the sun would be lighting up the sky during the day and the moon at night. And thus the celestial bodies were in harmony.

This story is told among the Agta people, a hunter-gatherer community thought to be one of the earliest inhabitants of the Philippines. But many will recognize the structure from a variety of animal fables in books or films: a simple story that sets the rules for interpersonal relationships and conveys social norms and moral. The story is one of four, which a group of anthropologists from University College London were told during a field study among the Agtas. Other stories had titles like “The Wild Pig and the Seacow,” “The Monkey and the Giant,” and “The Winged Ant.”

Actually the anthropologists had no intention at all of researching storytelling. They set out to investigate the value the Agta people gave to various members of their tribal communities: How they valued the best hunters, the best gatherers and the strongest fishermen. But they also asked them to evaluate the tribe's storytellers — a less significant test group. Or so they thought.

Nearly 300 Agta from 18 separate camps were told to play a resource allocation game, where players were given a number of tokens representing rice and asked to distribute these between themselves and their camp mates.

Much to the anthropologists’ surprise, the storytellers were valued above all other professions. Although they did not contribute directly to the tribe's survival, they were awarded more rice than any other members — even above the best hunters. They also were more popular with the opposite sex and had more children than average among tribal families.

The question is, why would individuals invest so much time and energy in becoming a skilled storyteller, and why would that “work” be given such a value by others? From an evolutionary standpoint, the many hours spent listening to and telling stories would seem time better spent foraging, reproducing or simply doing nothing, which at least would save energy.

The researchers, who published their results in 2018, concluded that the storytellers' were held in high esteem because they contributed to an understanding of the group's social interaction and reinforced the norms and ethics of the tribe. They conveyed messages and rules on cooperation, social equality and gender roles. The story about the sun and the moon for instance, promotes cooperation between the sexes. In fact, the researchers found that overall levels of cooperation were higher in camps with a greater proportion of skilled storytellers.

All which suggests that storytelling may perform a beneficial group-level function: The better the stories were told, the better the tribe worked.

Can the same value translate to journalistic storytelling?

I stumbled over this study last year, doing research for a textbook about narrative journalism, and I was thrilled — both as a researcher and a storyteller. I mean, who doesn’t want more rice and more attention from the opposite sex?

But what also intrigued me was the evidence of the function and evolution of storytelling. Stories are everywhere, but what do they actually do to us? Not only individually and emotionally, but in how we function as societies.

I got in touch with Dr. Daniel Smith at Population Health Sciences at the University of Bristol, and asked him whether he thought that his findings also could apply to storytelling in journalism. He stressed that he was no expert in journalism, as his focus is on stories told by small scale societies and their evolutionary and anthropological function. But as we talked, he agreed there are definite parallels.

“All societies in the world tell stories, so there does seem to be some in-built bias that humans have towards paying attention to stories,” Smith said. “However, there's not a lot of agreement in evolutionary circles over why we enjoy listening to and telling stories. Our results suggest that the content of stories may perform a group-beneficial function in terms of coordinating behavior, so perhaps this could be one reason we're such storytelling animals and pay attention to narratives in journalism.”

However, the function of storytelling is still debated within Smith’s world: “There is no doubt that people love a good story. But in evolutionary circles, there is no consensus as to why.”

He cautioned that while narratives in traditional hunter-gatherer societies help coordinate behavior, it is not certain that result can easily be transferred to the rest of the world.

I pressed a bit to probe whether narrative journalism can play a productive role in modern society. Plausible, he said.

“Narrative journalism and journalism more broadly can certainly galvanize movements and influence peoples' behavior,” he said. “Just think of Trump and Brexit. But whether this can promote cooperation in the same way that Agta stories can is more unclear.”

The need to understand more about stories in modern "stratified" societies

Hunter-gatherer stories seem to be for the good of society — probably because these societies are, at core, highly egalitarian without many large distinctions in terms of wealth or power. In order to be listened to, the skilled storytellers must promote ethics of cooperation and equality in their stories, or else they would simply be ignored.

“However, in stratified societies those in power get to control the stories and individuals are less able to ignore or move away from them,” Smith told me. “So the stories they tell can be more self-serving, rather than benefiting everyone.”

And he also noted that there’s a wing of scientists who believe that narratives have no particular function. They argue that we love them simply because they are structured in a way that manipulates our cognitive and emotional functions. They catch our attention, but have no higher purpose. According to that school of thought, stories aren’t valued for any adaptive reason, but because they “are structured hi-jack our cognitive and motivational machinery — kind of like how click-bait operates by having the most attention-grabbing headlines.” Cognitive scientist Steve Pinker of Harvard has referred to some music as “evolutionary cheesecake” — something delicious we developed because it meets some of our innate needs.

Smith wonders if the same could be the case for storytelling. But he thinks the truth might lie between the two schools of thought. He is seeking funding for more research to into understanding why humans tell stories and how this behavior evolved. He wants to dig into why we use stories to transmit information, whether it can shape behavior and whether evolutionary theory can explain cross-cultural variation in narratives.

Rice bags as reminders of value

This is all heady intellectual stuff, and important to think about. If we want our work as professional storytellers to matter, we best understand how and why it works.

[caption id="attachment_154768" align="alignright" width="350"] Journalist, author and teacher Line Vaaben[/caption]

But I kept getting tugged back to that image from the study, about how the Agta expressed their value for each other with tokens that could be exchanged for rice. I imagined grains of rice piling up in front of a particularly skilled storyteller.

And it came to mind how we often describe storytellers as members of a worldwide tribe. Like the Agta people, we are hunters and gatherers. We may not hunt for game or cast for fish or bring in a harvest of grain to feed the tribe. But we do hunt for and gather information and details, then turn them into coherent, engaging stories that we can pass on to others, hoping they will provide some kind of understanding of themselves, other humans beings or the world we share. We are providing sustenance of a kind, and bear a huge responsibility to do it ethically and with a constructive purpose.

In 2019, to conclude my fellowship at the University of Southern Denmark, I hosted a conference on the importance of narrative. In my presentation, I told the story about the Agtas. And during the coffee break, I served slices of “evolutionary cheesecake.” At the end of the day, all the participants were given a small bag of rice, each tied with a quote about storytelling from some of my favorite writers. I encouraged them to pass it on to another storyteller as an appreciation or to take it home as a reminder of the importance — and sex appeal — of their work.

About the Agta

Agta are hunter-gatherers who live in small tribes in the dense rainforest in Luzon, Philippines. They hunt wild pig, deer and monkey with bows and arrows, catch fish with spears and forage honey and wild fruit. And on top of that, they tell stories.

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