I never heard the kick.
Nor the shouts of warning.
Or the woosh of the ball.
But I remember lying on my back, the breath knocked out of me, a soccer ball casually rolling away.
I was about 9 and had gone to the field to watch my uncle play pick-up soccer. Of course, a book accompanied us.
I don’t remember feeling any pain when the stray ball walloped the side of my face. But I still remember the book I immediately started reading again. Brown cover, I think. Inside, the adventurous pursuits of a young boy and girl becoming millionaires off selling toothpaste—3 cents a jar, 2 cents for material, 1 cent profit.
Their pursuits stayed with me decades later, as did the Boxcar Children and Hardy Boys before them, and four Pevensie’s, a couple of Bagginses, and countless others afterwards.
Who are these characters who grasp so firmly onto the root of our souls?
These plots which glue to our brains and emotions?
These flickering pages beating out portals to imagination?
What is a story?
- Are stories perspectives?
- Are stories snatches of life?
- Are stories journeys?
- Are stories teachable moments of truth?
These are elements of good stories, perhaps.
Then, are stories just an assemblage of words, or an assortment of images?
- If so, what separates Little House on the Prairie from the Farmer’s Almanac?
- Star Wars from Popular Science?
- The Lord of the Rings from the Nature Channel?
- Rudy from the Super Bowl?
What’s the difference between telling a friend,
“I ate mint chocolate chip ice cream”,
and explaining, “I got a hankering for ice cream, so I hopped into the car, whizzed through the back roads to beat rush hour traffic, narrowly avoided not one, not two, but three threatening mailboxes, and screeched into the parking lot just as the ice cream joint was about to close.”
Isn’t the latter more interesting?
And make you want to find out why an ice cream parlor closes before supper?
We can discuss all day (and we will) what makes a good story. But we can’t do that until we know what makes a story.
Ready?
Wait for it…
A story is a narrative with a beginning, middle, end.
“I’ve heard that mumbo before!””
Ahh, good! You’ve probably heard it because it’s true. You imply a good point though: what does this actually mean?
Let’s get even more clinical (just for a moment, I promise! I don’t like going to the doctor’s either):
STORY:
A Character’s Desire (Beginning)
+ Their attempts to achieve their desire (The Middle – also known as the “plot”)
= Result (Success or Failure – The End)
Let’s talk about ice cream again.
Something in you (perhaps the wailing notes of an ice cream truck, or the breath of dry summer wind) awakens an intense passion for cold, sugary, goodness. You decide you simply must have it (Beginning/Desire).
You risk every bone in your body weaving through traffic at breakneck speeds in a desperate attempt to get that cold stuff before it’s too, too late (Middle). The conflicts and obstacles you experience en-route to the sugary goodness is the “plot”.
You squeal into the parking lot to either 1) retrieve your cone (Result: Success – the story ends), or 2) realize that the parlor is closed, or worse, out of mint chocolate chip (Result: Failure- the story ends).
“There’s more to a story than that!”
You’re right! Good stories are chock full of delicious and nutritious bits such as complex characters, inciting incidents, plot points, allies, villains, subtext, trials, flaws, themes, foreshadowing, set-ups, payoffs, dark moments, and victories.
But you’ve gotta start somewhere.
Beginning. Middle. End.
It might not seem like much, but if you’ve got that, you’ve got a story.
Now let’s work on conquering the distractions getting in the way of your writing!
Leave a Reply