INSIDE THE STORY
I've spent the last 3 weeks caught up in a massive moving/spring cleaning project, all under the blistering summer heat of this great state I call home. While it's been invigorating and very satisfying (participating in a garage sale for the first time) I am a little behind in my reviews. So instead this week I'll talk about something I mentioned months back at a fun writer's meeting . . . the stories you like are about you.
Pure and simple, you like a story if you are in it somewhere. Through liking the story you tell others about yourself--and through the story the author can communicate to you how you are seen by others. Stories help us communicate who we are. Flatly, bottom line, if you're not in a story, you will find it boring. Just boring. You can't even remember it. Other stronger emotions--including hate, anger, or embarrassment--only happen if the story showed a part of you.
Stories can show your dreams and fantasies--what you wish was real. Your nightmares--what you fear. Your petty spite, envy, or unfairness towards others--you know it's a little monstrous and selfish, but it's jolly good fun to indulge it in a book. Your ideals--the characters you admire and wish you looked like or the lands you wish you could live in, the relationships you'd like to have with others, uncluttered and romantic. They can show you as the hero, the villain, a comic side character. You may admire and identify with the heroine, but all the time, honestly, you're really pretending. You're her antagonist in the story. You may be very angry at the way the story shows you--but fascinated. The story has a hold on you. Because it's about you.
Case in point--as I sorted ancient VHS tapes belonging to my grandfather and random other people who once put tapes in his home--some of them completely unwatched for decades, still in shrink-wrap--I stumbled on a tape of McLintock, starring John Wayne. And I realized "I am not in that." Because I find it so absolutely boring I forgot it ever existed until I fell out of the closet onto my face.other people seem to love McLintock. It seems to be a kind of classic.
BECAUSE THEY ARE IN IT. I don't know who they are, but they're in it.
What works do you most deeply find interesting? You return to them over and over and over. Somewhere, somehow, whether as a dream or as a reality--you're in them.
Pure and simple, you like a story if you are in it somewhere. Through liking the story you tell others about yourself--and through the story the author can communicate to you how you are seen by others. Stories help us communicate who we are. Flatly, bottom line, if you're not in a story, you will find it boring. Just boring. You can't even remember it. Other stronger emotions--including hate, anger, or embarrassment--only happen if the story showed a part of you.
Stories can show your dreams and fantasies--what you wish was real. Your nightmares--what you fear. Your petty spite, envy, or unfairness towards others--you know it's a little monstrous and selfish, but it's jolly good fun to indulge it in a book. Your ideals--the characters you admire and wish you looked like or the lands you wish you could live in, the relationships you'd like to have with others, uncluttered and romantic. They can show you as the hero, the villain, a comic side character. You may admire and identify with the heroine, but all the time, honestly, you're really pretending. You're her antagonist in the story. You may be very angry at the way the story shows you--but fascinated. The story has a hold on you. Because it's about you.
Case in point--as I sorted ancient VHS tapes belonging to my grandfather and random other people who once put tapes in his home--some of them completely unwatched for decades, still in shrink-wrap--I stumbled on a tape of McLintock, starring John Wayne. And I realized "I am not in that." Because I find it so absolutely boring I forgot it ever existed until I fell out of the closet onto my face.other people seem to love McLintock. It seems to be a kind of classic.
BECAUSE THEY ARE IN IT. I don't know who they are, but they're in it.
What works do you most deeply find interesting? You return to them over and over and over. Somewhere, somehow, whether as a dream or as a reality--you're in them.
No comments have been added yet.
