Here it is: the second interview of my journey into Storytelling. Please check out my previous Storytelling posts here. And my 365 Reviews here.
Last winter, I was running a Pop Culture Classroom fundraiser at a local Barnes & Noble to raise some money for books. The event was a large success, mainly because I was able to borrow the talents of some great local artists: Gene Ha, Jim McClain, Sean Dove, and Zach Lehner. These guys are amazing, and it was dope that they came to help us raise some funds!
While we were hustling gift-wrapping at the front door to make even more bucks, I met a dude that I had followed on social media. Dan Dougherty introduced himself to me, said that he heard about the event through Gene Ha, and he would be happy to help out with our events in the future. Yet another great moment from that day.
Since then, I’ve followed Dan closely on social media, and we became social media friends, until a faithful encounter about a week ago.
I swear to you this is true: one morning last week, I was drinking my coffee, scrolling through Instagram when I saw a couple really fun Beardo comics scroll through my feed, and I thought, “Man, I need to finally hit up Dan. Maybe I can get him to do an interview for the blog and catch up.” Later that day, my wife and I were out for pizza, and he walked into the same restaurant. No joke!
We said what up, and I told him I was going to hit him up the next day. I did, we met for coffee, and we chatted about all things education and comics. It was a blast! What I did than was take our conversation and I crafted three questions that I then sent him to answer based on our discussions. Here is what followed:
DD: What I try to keep in mind first and foremost is intent, as in “what was the point of what I’m making and is what I’m doing helping or muddling that up?” I really enjoy playing with all kinds of mediums and approaches, and I don’t mind “writing through” an idea without knowing exactly where I’m going, but I consider that to be prep work that hopefully leads to finding a good motivation/intent that I can develop and present to my audience.
What makes a story engaging? That’s a big question! At the core of it, I’d ideally like to have some small relatable aspect to get me engaged, but then I want it to take me to new ideas and places I’ve never been. You know a story is good when you wished you had thought of it first.
Happy storytelling!
Eric
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