What is a Story

An earlier version of this advice appeared in my LiveJournal in 2005.

So, you've decided to clean the lift.

I mean, write a story. Damn these Dark Star flashbacks!

What is a story?

It isn't possible to agree on this, but here are some ideas:

a) a story is a piece of fiction;

b) a story has a beginning, a middle and an end;

c) a story has a protagonist who has to solve a problem; once the problem is solved, the story ends;

d) a story puts a moral lesson into a fictional context where it can be less easily resisted;

e) a story is always about people, in the end, even if it's about aliens;

f) a story is a way to escape from the real world for a while and immerse yourself in problems that are not your own.

I could go on (yeah, I can hear you all yelling "please don't!"). A story is some of those things or none of those things or all of those things. Or something else entirely.

We tell stories all the time. We constantly tell them to ourselves as we construct a narrative out of the sensory input we receive, using our prior experiences as a guide. We tell them to others. How was your day? What happened to you? What do you want to be when you grow up? True stories get dramatised and even fictionalised in the telling. Details are added or omitted. The story is 'improved' to show the teller in a better light. Or a funnier light. Depending.

Life is narrative. Anyone and everyone can tell a story.

Corollary: not everyone can tell a story WELL.

When King Lear asks the Duke of Kent what he can do, Kent replies:

I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in telling it, and deliver a plain message bluntly.

Kent is no storyteller, by his own account. He is an honest man who deals in plain words. Like Cordelia, he suffers in the play for his inability to wax lyrical (and his honesty: he is no hypocrite like Edmund, Goneril or Regan).

At first glance, it seems curious for a storyteller to suggest that the art of storytelling is one of deception. But make no mistake: it is.

Stories are lies. Plain and simple. Tales of people who never were and things that never happened in places that don't really exist. These lies must be told convincingly. This requires collaboration between reader and writer. The reader must willingly suspend their disbelief, and the writer must strive not to undermine that process.