As someone who wants to write you have to ask yourself the question what stories have yet to be told? According to Georges Polti’s 36 dramtic situations, no matter the story you tell it will fit somewhere within his 36.
I have oly skimmed the surface of the 36 but I bet you can take most stories in all their forms and find many of his scenarios within them. That doesn’t mean all stories have been told but it does mean we are all hitting similar beats along the way.
What matters is not the beats but how we make them our own, how we use the character and the detail to tell our story. The structure of stories will always share a myraid of elements but the details such as the characters, perspective, voice, writing style and on and on are what makes each story unique.
If you were to take any scenario or any writing prompt imanginable you would probably get as many answers as their are people because we each come at it through our own perspective. That perspective is the lens by which we shape our reality.
How we see the world helps us shape the world we live in, you know the law of attraction which is the belief that by emphasizing the positive or negative, we attract those positive or negative experiences into our lives.
Although I don’t know if I believe it to that extent, perspective is powerful, it shapes our perception of the world and the stories in our own lives and of those stories we wish to create.
If we saw the world differently how would that change who we are and what actions we take. I believe that stories are some of the most powerful things we have. There is a reason that stories in all it’s forms is so prevalent be it in news, media or personally because they get us engaged and they reflect the human condition.
They are used to teach, to make us feel, to help us understand the world we live in. When I think of all the time and energy I have put into creating my own world, years of work crafting rules of a universe even without the story, I can the need and the want of myself in every word.
What I have created is built on every lesson I have learned, every article, book and story I have been told. It is built on the work of giants, from academics, to the master storytellers to the people I have met on my travels across the globe or at home.
I believe that we relate to stories because they inspire us to push further maybe in just a small way but maybe just maybe in grand ways. That they can teach us about ourselves and who we can become in some small way.
When you write, you are putting elements of yourself in the story, it is a mirror for how we see the world. Like how in fiction we can explore themes that we may not be able to do in reality because of their sensetivity.
We have always been storytellers even before the written word when stories were told in whispers beneath the stars to teach our children to not go our after dark or about how to live this life.
Realtiy is full of an infinite abundance of stories, when we tell our own stories we and stripe it to its fundamentals, we can take decades and express that in a few pages or a sentence. We can travel the stars or to a different era long since past or to an era that is yet to be.
In this world stories matter, those that exist are often more incredible than those found in fiction. By that same sentiment, there are worlds that have been created with such care and thought that in your head you see them as real.
As a writer that the most incredible gift, that you could convey a story that touches someone, that makes someone feel something, that they wish that these words were real. That is the goal, that is the dream for anyone who swims in the depths of the story.
Live your adventure, make your words count by pouring your soul into them. Never allow anyone to tell you you can’t but also understand that it isn’t easy that to write a story is a mountain to climb but one worth the effort because not all the stories have been told or can ever be told.
It doesn’t matter if you can fit all stories into Georges Polti’s 36 dramtic situations or a combintation thereof. It is the contrast between the similarity and the difference in your story that matter and only you can tell your story either that of the one you live every day or the one in your head that you want, no need to get onto the page, or the screen or however.
Tell it, be critical of it, accept feedback to improve it but never stop trying to tell it because only you can, because it matters because if one person can read it and learn from it or be trasported away into a new world as expereince the story then it is worth that effort.
That is why I want to write, that is why I am afraid to write, that is why I have no choice but to write even if it sucks, even if its a train wreck because I can’t let my own doubts stop me from finding the story and telling it to completion in some shape or form.
So to all those about to undergo the #nanowimo journey, I don’t know if I will get to the end of a draft but God damn I am gonna try.