Joey's Story
The Early Years
The Accident
The Recovery
The Rehab
The Benefit
Moving On
When I started putting together my story I knew I wanted to make this story feel real. After all, this wasn’t just any story. This was my story. And to make my story really feel real and stick out from all of the other tales just like it, I thought it needed a gimmick.
I thought my first idea for a gimmick was a sure fire hit. I kept a journal during the events I wanted to cover in my story and I could simply publish that. Brilliant!
When I opened up my journal, it was much sparser than I remembered and had more holes in it than Johnny Cochrin punched in the defenses case against O.J. Despite this, I decided I would go through with the idea. So, after setting the journal next to my computer, I began typing the copy from the journal while filling in the holes that needed filling along the way.
Using this method, I completed about 5 pages, when I realized an important fact: This sucked.
The holes that I had filled made things seem forced and unnatural. I then found out that it is darn near impossible for someone to write a stand-alone natural reading journal that makes sense to someone who has never met you.
My next idea was short lived. It’s what I call writing from the drunken random new buddy perspective. I got this idea from thinking about when I tell my story the best. This was easy. I tell my story best after 7-8 drinks. Who do I tell my story best too? Even easier, after the 7-8 something comes over me and I approach random groups of people and tell my story. It usually begins something like this:
“Did yaah knoow that eight years aga Iwastragically injured in a car accident…”
You could see how writing from the drunken random buddy perspective could be a bad idea. Especially since after 8-9 drinks my language gets a bit more course than this type of story ought be.
What I decided to do was a series of web pages featuring videos and stories. Let me know what you think via my blog.