On Storytelling

At 10 AM, I have an interview with a newly promoted university professor, the highest tier in a professor’s trajectory in the country. Like how I prepare for interviews, I drafted a guide with open-ended questions segregated under loosely tied themes. I always try to keep the conversation free flowing, hence the diversion from yes-no questions and, importantly, approaching the subject matter with no structure and biases set aside.

Since joining this new job, I have secured opportunities to interview key personalities I would never interact with daily, starting with the first university professor in CSU’s history and recently a professor who led a groundbreaking study about pure-breeding a native chicken that is endemic in the region. While I have found an easy inclination for writing since college, it is new for me to fully claim this as a passion.

It started when I was employed under a project that aims to contribute to poverty alleviation in the country. The majority of my workload, then, was visiting our project sites in the rural areas and interviewing our farmer-partners for feature stories about how they work around their conditions and how our interventions helped them.

From such exposure, I understand the responsibility entailed in interpreting people’s narratives, especially when you realize it is more than about what you can gain from finishing the writeup, but more about how to angle the story in a way that represents their interest best and call for development support that is holistic and not temporal.

I still believe that stories move people. And the way to uphold the value of meaningful stories is to take writing as a social responsibility. It is a good sign when, upon finishing the interview, their dialogue buzzes in your ears and quakes you while in bed. You cannot wait any longer to start transcribing, highlighting the lines that strike back to the clouds, and drafting with your subject’s stake on top of your head.

Even with the long conversations and secondary documents, I remain afraid of messing up the story sometimes. What if I end up toning down their struggles? While this is troubling, it also signifies that I hold such responsibility to produce a purposive story.

On the other side of the pressure is taking it all in and feeling more grounded and humbled. I still take so much fulfillment from being entrusted by my interviewees with a chapter of their lives, the strategies they employed for the challenges they braved, and their endurance for life’s atrocities.

I am lucky to do this for work, to thread the human phenomenon from one subject to a few readers. Stories make all of what we are going through relatable. This is why information is transformational and, in essence, very powerful. I hope writers alike believe such.

--- Feature Update one month later: