The Importance of Finding a Story

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I think it's just experiential. You know, my beliefs and assumptions are challenged every time I begin a story. And so for me, those revelations are instructive and you carry them with you into the next project you work on. Do you know what your next thing is? I do not. This is the worst stage. So when you don't know whether you'll ever be able to make sense of British documents, the worst stage is when you have no squid to hunt. It's hard, man. Finding the story is so hard. If any listeners, you know, dams are open, email me, please, I'll take you to the nicest dinner.

David Grann is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

“I became very haunted by the stories that [nations] don't tell. Nations and empires preserve their powers not only by the stories they tell, but also by the stories they leave out. … Early in my career, if I came across the silences in a story, I might not have highlighted them, because I thought, Well, there's nothing to tell there. And now I try to let the silences speak.”

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