What Stories Are & Why We Need to Write Them ✍️

For the past five years I’ve been working on a book about writing stories that will be published later this year. In it, I’ve included what I think writers need to know to tell powerful, deep, resonant stories. I’ve organized the material around the five aspects of writing that story-makers need to master: Structure, Character, Theme, Plot, and Scenes.

Here’s why:

Structure contains and organizes the story, and its limits ("freedom within limits") contribute to all the other elements.

Character is the enlivening heart of any story, its main focus, and this main character is the guide, avatar, and/or projected pseudo-self through whom the reader gets to live and learn vicariously.

Theme infuses the story with meaning—a resonant message—that’s conveyed through the character’s interactions with plot situations (including other characters).

Plot is what the character does and doesn’t do in the face of inner and outer conflict generated by an inciting incident that sets up a story problem and a story question.

Scenes express all of the above through “showing” the character in action: dealing with conflict, expressing/repressing feelings, making choices under pressure, trying/failing/getting to achieve a story-worthy goal.

What is a story-worthy goal?

I once heard this clear-eyed yet unusual definition of happiness: Happiness consists of the overcoming of obstacles on the way to a goal of one’s own choosing. Swap out happiness for story and you’ve a pretty good definition for a story arc. In stories, characters are faced with situations and must choose a way to respond. Their ultimate, unconscious desire always relates to happiness—their version of it—so how they choose to respond to the story problems will include a specific, concrete goal that represents their version of happiness. As they head toward that goal, obstacles ensue. That’s storytelling in a nutshell (easier said than done, I know).

I’ve spent a lifetime figuring this stuff out through trial and error an study and it’s still hard. But so worth it. Because stories carry us away, in the best sense. They reveal, inform, inspire, and delight. They help make life bearable, manageable, acceptable, and, when their alchemy is right, they can contribute to change and evolution on a personal level and even a societal scale.

Stories can: heal, guide, expose, educate, enlighten, encourage, aid, direct, repel, activate, support, comfort, motivate, and so much more. They help us overcome the obstacles on the way to the goals of our own choosing.

Stories help us navigate our life situations. They help us grow and evolve in a life, and world, full of change. A human lifetime is finite, and the world goes on without us after we’ve gone; we’re all too aware of this. Many stories deal directly and indirectly with the ramifications of this existential awareness.

At some point, most of us encounter an internal question: is such a life, with its accompanying awareness, a gift or a curse? Your thoughts and beliefs about this will affect how you behave and the choices you make in your life. Writers usually take their worries and questions to the page, and this is how stories are conceived.

The book I've written isn’t a story itself, rather it’s about how to write stories. It’s the guidebook I wish I’d had thirty years ago. Toni Morrison said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” I wrote my book because I believe stories—especially in the forms of novels, screenplays, and memoirs—are the biggest magic we have as humans.

When my book comes out, I hope it will be a useful companion to help you write the stories you care about. But in the meantime, keep doing just that. Write what you want to read. Teach what you want to learn. Tell the stories you wish someone had once told you.

“Story is a yearning meeting an obstacle.”

~Robert Olen Butler ~

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

~ Joan Didion ~