The Stories In Between
Flexing your creativity means diving into various story types, exploring different characters entangled in situations that may or may not result from their actions or reactions, all springing from their motivations. This principle applies across the board; and when I say anything, I mean anything. The audience, the readers, don’t need to witness the impending doom of the world to feel invested.
Hello, Timmy! Yes, I’m in a good mood today—mainly because I’m about to tackle a topic that needs to be hammered forcefully into the minds of many corporate folks with any proximity to the writing craft. This applies doubly so to the flock of flying writers circling around them like those tiny fish attaching themselves to sharks—the name of which escapes me at the moment.
To make the audience care, you have an entire toolbox at your disposal: stakes, motivation, and character, to name a few. We, as readers and as an audience, don’t truly care for the special effects, the grandiosity of adjectives used in your work (purple prose, we’ll talk about it eventually), as long as we don’t care about what is happening. The beauty here lies in the fact that if you can make readers care, then you can write about just about anything.
The cliché, trope or archetype of the merry band of misfits saving the day works; it’s fine, it’s functional in itself. However, you don’t necessarily need the day-saving scenario to make people care. If you manage to make your target audience care about your characters—their motivations, hopes, dreams, and nightmares—then you can write about them doing pretty much anything.
Saving the day is crucial, but so is saving a dinner. Let me paint a picture for you: the story follows a struggling family, desperately clawing their way out of a financial abyss. They’ve been in this rut for years. The oldest child remembers times of plenty, making him angry, confused, and frustrated. For the youngest, this hardship is reality, unfamiliar with anything better but still feeling awkward compared to her peers who have resources. The mother grapples with guilt for her children, a bit of self-pity, and some anger toward her husband. Meanwhile, he is consumed by frustration and disappointment. In a very human response, he fixates on the idea of providing a good, hot dinner for his family—it becomes his obsession, his sole objective while trying to climb out of the hole.
So, we follow the father and the family as they interact, attempting to communicate their feelings but failing to do so. Sadly, it’s true that many conflicts would cease if people knew how to express themselves and understand what they are being told. The conflict and drama emerge as the situation pushes the worst out of them. However, the father fixates on the dinner, the good meal, the resources for food and stability. Here, Timmy, we have a hero’s journey, sans swords, magic, or epic battles of might and power—just human struggle.
Across the entire tale the readers are beset by the question, Will they climb out of the hole? Will they forgive themselves? Can they forgive each other for what has been said? Will they buried their feelings and move on? Or will they have a heart to heart moment that will begin the process of healing? Because emotional damage is not fixed in a single conversation or moment. I can really go on and on and on Timmy, there is very little limit in the number of questions that your readers will ask about the story, and if they start asking themselves those question you have won half the battle. But lets go back to our little example tale.
At the start, everything is fine. Then comes the call to action, and the journey unfolds with the family descending further and further until a breaking point is reached, and things change—maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. But the father faces a challenge, something to contend with, a monster that needs vanquishing, though it has no physical form to strike his sword upon. Just a very bad hand filled with bad actors, most of whom are his family and himself. There’s also the matter of the hole—did he fall due to bad luck, his own mistakes, or foul play? The nature of what caused the problem will determine how the story plays out.
Timmy, take a bus ride through a city, and you’ll pass countless people navigating their days in the streets. The vast majority of them will never find themselves in a heroic situation; most of these stories are mundane yet of utmost importance to those people because they are their own. The same holds true for your characters.
Your hero and their merry band of misfits pass through a small town, engaging in the routine of buying food, drink, perhaps lodging for the night if it’s late, resupplying, rearming, and then continuing on their way. However, within that town lies a myriad of untold stories.
Consider the blacksmith entangled in a love triangle, the implications of which could destroy his business, for example. You see, Timmy, the world at large may not pay attention or show interest if a single solitary smithy goes under—another one could replace it in due time. But to the blacksmith? That means the world.
For something to matter, there has to be a real possibility of failure, and you can play with this as well. An ending is a beginning, after all. You can always start at the end of a previous tale and deal with the change that brings—perhaps a death in the family or a petty power struggle between shopkeepers.
Timmy, in the midst of the large and deafening stories we’re accustomed to seeing (thanks to corporations with the creativity capacity of a stunted caveman), lies an infinite spectrum of the human condition that deserves to be told—whether with proficiency or clumsiness, through trial and error, success or failure. It deserves to be told, Timmy, just as much as you deserve to narrate your own story through your works.
Consider this a small plea from an old, cynical soul: don’t let the big and noisy stories blind you. Embrace the stories in-between.
Until next time.
