Narrative Power Analysis — "The organisation had the platform. The community had the story."

Before you write a single word of someone's story — ask yourself this: who decided this story would be told? Who controls the platform it lives on? Who is absent from the process right now? What stories are never told — and why? Whose voice actually leads in the final piece?

I call this Narrative Power Analysis. It is not a writing framework. It is the practice of making power visible before you begin — seeing clearly, honestly, without the comfort of good intentions, who controls the narrative space you are about to enter.

Why I know this from the inside

I know because I reproduced these imbalances. I spent time writing stories for NGOs the way most communicators do. I was handed cases, made them compelling, centred donors. I never met the people whose stories I was writing. I worked from briefs. Their only presence in my working process was a photograph at the end of a document.

By the time a story reached me, it had passed through so many layers of distance — each one moving further from the person's own words, their own truth, their own sense of themselves. The most honest description of what I was doing: the organisation had the platform. The community had the story. And one of those parties had all the control.

The five questions

Who decided this story would be told? In most NGO contexts, stories are selected based on what will resonate with funders. The community member had no role in that selection.

Who controls the platform? Who has the ability to publish, edit, remove, or reshare this story? Does the person whose story it is have any control? In almost every case I have worked in, the answer is no.

Who is absent from the storytelling process? The distance between where the community member is present and where they are not is the power gap.

What stories are never told — and why? Silence is also a power choice. The stories that complicate the official narrative are systematically absent.

Whose voice actually leads? In most impact storytelling, the answer is the organisation's communications team, working from a brief that has already made most of the significant decisions.

Power is not always visible. But it is always present. The communicator's job is to see it — and decide, deliberately, what to do with it.