Right after Christmas I spent an afternoon with my sweet friend Cortney and her family. Cortney loves stories. She loves to know where the story started and where it ends and what the characters learned along the way. In so many ways having her as a friend has taught me to enjoy peoples stories a little bit more.

Her grandmother loves dominoes, so it has now become a family tradition and they are pretty competitive. I walked around their kitchen and the rest of the house while they played and could hear the trash talk and the laughter, and it was sweet. Almost as sweet as the homemade caramel cake Cortney had made. After they played they sat and ate lunch together...the stories flowed. Her dad shared the story of how Cortney's parents met, and at some point grandma and dad disagreed on how that dating relationship went. It was fun for me to quietly observe them and capture moments of laughter and hearing stories from two generations.

Cort, thank you for allowing me to do this! I hope you enjoy seeing a little bit of your story...a tiny glimpse of one day that was awfully sweet. (just like that cake.)

You don’t want to explain to the audience, because that makes them observers. You want to reveal to them little by little and that makes them participants because then they experience the story in the same way the characters experience it. - Bill Wittliff