I grew up reading from my father’s bookshelf. As such, my introduction to a life of books was dominated by motivational and inspirational jargon: the Think and Grow Rich, 48 Laws of Power, John Maxwell leadership books, all of Rhonda Byrne’s Secrets, The Richest Man in Babylon, and the likes. Save for the one or two literature books I must have read in primary school or early secondary school, which might as well have been textbooks, fiction was far from me.
Somewhere in that foundation emerged a bit of a snob for fiction. As far as my young mind was concerned, why on earth would I read something someone had simply imagined out of what I considered to be nowhere? Of course, I know better now. I know that fiction draws its light from the plane of living and can stretch it far beyond the possible. Alfred Hitchcock interestingly described drama (of fiction or film) as real life with all the boring parts edited out.
The thing is, it also didn’t take the first 20 years of my life to grow weary of the incessant advice and regurgitated theories of motivational books. I needed literary art to survive. So, when I discovered creative nonfiction, it was as if my world opened. I realized that my beef wasn’t that fictitious stories shouldn’t exist; it was that the years had built me into a staunch observer of the world. I was conscious of the many stories the world handed over to us daily, and I believed, and still believe, that those stories deserved to be witnessed and documented in their own right, rather than packaged into more “compelling” plotlines.
Picasso also describes art as the elimination of the unnecessary. To that, I believe the very subject of what is necessary, and what is not, is left for the writer to decide. Because it is my firm belief that the mundane too can be presented as art, it becomes, by this definition, art in its own right. Creative nonfiction (CNF) is the art of telling true stories using the techniques of fiction. In the world of CNF, nothing is invented. Instead, we make use of the same elements of scene, dialogue, character, emotion, description, suspense, and so on to make readers experience the story we have witnessed, as opposed to simply talking about it as gist or gossip. The challenge, however, is that while we all have stories, many of us may not be good at seeing them, talk less of creating art out of them. But first, why do they matter?
Why real stories matter
1) Posterity:
I believe our stories hold a lot of magic (or madness) that should be retained in time. I started writing about events that took place in my life before I even knew there was a genre devoted to it, simply because I realised I had a terrible memory, and what is forgotten, in many ways, probably did not happen in the first place. I wanted to remember them. But I believe a lot of our most compelling stories are retained only in memories.
We know the stories of a few war heroes because they made these stories known to us, but we don’t know about our parents who lived through periods of warfare as children because those stories fell through the cracks. Sometimes, writing is simply a way of refusing to let something that mattered completely disappear.
2) To acknowledge our life events and shed light on important themes:
Imagine if nobody wrote about things like slavery or racism. As heavy as these themes are, if these stories were never told, they would exist only in a few minds and eventually fade away. When we see stories of people like Malala, we learn about the different worlds that exist for people across the world. Individual stories give us a path into themes that may otherwise feel distant, abstract or impossible to fully understand.
3) Because if you don’t share your story, someone will for you:
Whether it is to our liking or not, history is being (re)written. On a continental level, many of us get irritated when we read the incomplete stories of the West about Africa: that we are, for one, impoverished people living in huts, that the children always have flies perching around their mouths, and so on. I believe that it is largely because we let our stories be told on our behalf for too long.
Of course, that has changed a whole lot now. But it remains a pertinent challengegiven the increasing reliance on Artificial Intelligence. Much of what AI learns about the world is drawn from the stories and information that have been recorded and made available over time, and African stories remain sparse within that body of knowledge. If we do not correct this, one day our grandchildren may search this new body of “truth” and mistake what does not exist in it for what did not happen.
4) Your stories cannot be replicated without it being an immediate lie:
In 2026 as I write this, it already takes seconds to create a fictitious story. In a world where content is no longer scarce and could be so easily replicated by Artificial Intelligence, I believe more than ever that our original stories, told as the art form that they are, would still survive should the robots make the world theirs. I believe everything could be taken from us, save our own stories. Knowing our original stories could never be taken away from us is in itself a kind of defiance.
Over the last few years, I have walked into a phase of my life where the term “reality is stranger than fiction” became all too visible. Traumatic events that would have read like exaggerated plots became my reality. Yet somewhere in the witnessing came a hunger to once again document reality as art; to replicate emotions and share them with others, so that they might see their own lives in mine. A burning desire to remind everyone that the truth of our individual perspectives matter and that the art of observation should not be lost on us. There are things worthy of being noticed and documented.
Given the scarcity of outlets for the art form, at least in my part of the world, this became the basis for my creation of Mega Story Magazine. Originally launched as an online competition known as the Mega Story Hunt, which itself began as a way to promote my debut memoir,“An Escape to Paris”, Mega Story Magazine is now a platform created for those who alsocare about the art form that is the world we exist in, told without the need for fictitious embellishments, whether exaggerated or reductive. It is a home for writers and readers of this unique genre to develop a habit of observation, to notice the stories that exist all around us, realizing that we can become our own heroes – or villains.
Mega Story Magazine publishes creative nonfiction, any true story about real life, noticed and told as art. We publish true stories about people, places, memory, and culture; about the strange and challenging experiences that make up a life. We are interested in work that is deeply reported, elegant, emotionally honest, and grounded in truth. We publish both big stories and simple ones. If it matters to you, it just might matter to us.
I am truly excited about the journey that lies ahead and all the magic we can uncover. Welcome to Mega Story Magazine. May we continue to notice, document and tell the stories that make up our lives, and may our stories pave the way for us.
