What curators and online producers can learn from journalists in the art of storytelling: Liina Flynn

Liina Flynn works at the Tweed River Regional Museum as a curator and storyteller. She is also a journalist, graphic designer, photographer and IT consultant who has worked within the world of image and text for many years. Liina shares her experience in these range of disciplines with the CAN community.



With so many ways to deliver our messages, we need to rethink how we gather, construct and deliver stories to the world. In addition to the medium of print, the online medium is becoming a standard part of every household, and more people are combining image with text and sound to tell their unique stories and express their views of the world.

Working for a museum made up of three historical societies, I meet a lot of people interested in family histories. Many of the people working at the museum are volunteer researchers who do a great job of tracking down information, but they don’t have the confidence to put the research together into a story for publication, so I’ve attempted to put together some tips on how to think about constructing a story.

As a journalist, when I’m writing news stories, there are some basics that need to be said – what, where, who, why, and when are pretty important, but so is engaging the interest of the reader, watcher or listener. Reporting news is really telling stories about things that happen to people. When telling stories about history and object collections in museums, relating the objects to people and how they used them or were affected by them, will make for a more interesting story.

Choosing what to put in, and what to leave out.
Maybe you want to tell the story of an early pioneer to your area. With a bit of research, you find dates, ages, births and marriages. Telling the facts straight is a bit like eating dry toast – while some people may like it, it’s not appealing to most unless they are really hungry or on a strict diet. You can make the straight facts more interesting by tying in some research about the culture of the area, or other information from the era which relates to the story you want to tell.

If the scope of a story is too long and broad, you’ll need to focus on one part of it in order to keep the story short enough to make your point, without getting bogged down in too many details e.g. If your subject incorporates logging, fishing and road building, you may need to choose one of these aspects only to talk about. Are you making a movie/writing a book or a short story/one minute feature?

What do you write about and what resources do you use?
Start with what you have – photos, research, published books, borrowed images (with permission of course – make sure you give credit to anything you borrow). If you don’t have enough information, you may need to conduct your research in other organisations, or reconsider what you are going to write about. Even if you are pretty sure you think you know something is true, always check that your facts are correct.

Keeping the story interesting
When I’m reading a story, the first thing I’ll do is to read the first sentence or paragraph to see if the subject is interesting to me. Not only do you need to give the reader an idea of what the article will be about if they keep on reading, but you need to make it interesting and make them want to keep on reading past the beginning (and hopefully all the way to the end). Put the most relevant first, least relevant last, or that’s what they tell you. Sometimes it’s about finding the most interesting thing about your subject matter and leading into the story with that.

You don’t need to ‘make it all up’ yourself. Let your resources tell the story. Do your research then let the quotes from your sources, books and interviews deliver the information you want to tell – you don’t have to re-interpret and re-write all your research, you might just need to summarise concepts to link together some of the different ideas in your story as told in quotations.

When writing, use everyday language. Unless your audiences are exclusively specialists in a field, change the words you use to common terms. If a reader understands what you are talking about, they’ll be more likely to read till the end (and that’s the point isn’t it?)

If you are having trouble finding a ‘voice’ in your story, read your script / words aloud. If it doesn’t sound right or ‘flow’, re-write it until it is easier to read and sounds more like a conversational voice.

Don’t be afraid to re-write!
While we want to deliver the facts, the idea is to find some of the more interesting points behind the story you are trying to tell. Sometimes you might start with an idea for the story you want to tell, but the more you research and learn about the subject matter, the more your ideas change. When you find something really interesting, you might want to re-write and change the way your story begins to give this information first – all good writing is re-written, sometimes many times.

Always have other people read over your work – they can tell you if it reads well, is understandable or interesting. Sometimes you can get stuck on how to tell something, and a bit of feedback from someone can help you to get past the hurdle!

Whatever you do, don’t give up – keep researching and make notes of the more interesting points when you find them along with references of where they came from!

For more advice on the art of storytelling, email Liina.

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