In a post on Writer Unboxed, Tiffany Yates Martin discusses the power of words as weapons and connections. “Storytellers shed light in the darkness, increase connection and understanding, open minds and hearts,” she says. “Yes, it may be politics and people who shape the course of the world, but it’s the storytellers who can help shape the ideas and mindsets behind them.”
In the face of fear, hopelessness, and rage, writers can still craft stories that connect one person to another, even if those two are wildly different. Yates Martin says that writers can use this powerful tool to help readers understand different perspectives and people who are different from them. “No one was ever attacked into changing their mind,” she says. “Few people reexamine their views and search their heart because they were shamed or mocked or belittled or dismissed.” Writers are often the people who can transcend their own negative emotions to help create connection.
“We storytellers are supposed to be the ones who can see the facets in all our characters—in all their glorious shades of gray, not simplistic, unrealistic black and white,” she writes. “Can we do that in our real lives as well?” Yates Martin suggests we can, or at least try.
“I’m as prone to feelings of resentment and fury as anyone, of wanting to lash out, to meet ugly with ugly, in fact to top it with my extensive language skills,” she says. “But what I can also do, as a storyteller, is look at the big picture.” In other words, if we want to create a better world, we need to embody those values – in life and in our writing – even when it’s hard.
“People are complicated,” Yates Martin says. “If I use my own words to wound or attack them, what have I done but divide us, and confirm those hateful words I’m trying to help them overcome? If someone believes that they are battling forces of evil, how can I change their minds if my angry or pejorative or hurtful words convince them they are right?”
Being mindful of our language and using words in service to the greater good may not always bring people together. But Yates Martin says it’s the only thing that might. “In our creative work we can change the course of history,” she says. “Yes, we must use our words to speak out against injustice. To fight for the change we wish to see in the world. But we have to be that change too.”
