storytelling

Fright — By DaigoOliva CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Stories are everywhere around us, and they weave together to make up a huge part of our lives.

I watched a TED presentation by Karen Thompson Walker about fear in which Walker, the author of a novel about the whaleship Essex discussed why we have fears. Primarily, it’s because we have a story in our heads about the subject (spiders, let’s say) that causes us to act in a specific way. She calls fears “unintentional storytelling.”

Let’s say you are afraid of spiders, because you have heard stories about people being killed by spiders or people have warned you about them. You have created an unintentional story about spiders that keeps you fearful. The stories, you’ll notice, build up like a game of “telephone,” and the stories keep getting more fantastic and lurid.

In the case of the Essex, by the way, the sailors had heard stories about cannibals in the islands nearest them, and they didn’t go that way. The cannibals weren’t actually that bad, and that would have been the best way to sail. They chose the least scary way, the way their stories told them was least scary, which was the worst way. All died.

Where do we get our stories? The vast majority come to us when we are young, from our parents and others. The story of our religion is a good example. This story forms what we believe about life and death. The story of our family is told over and over, at the breakfast table, at holidays, at funerals and weddings. “Remember the time when…?”

Our stories about ourselves are powerful. In the Wise Heart, psychologist Jack Kornfield says, “Who would you be without your story?” I stopped and thought when I read this, and had a bid “Ah ha!” moment.

Who we are is the stories we tell ourselves. If I say, “I’m a writer,” I am what I think I am, what my story tells me I am. If the story you tell yourself is, “I can’t write,” you aren’t a writer. Take away the stories we have told ourselves, and others, and what do we have?

A recent article in The Atlantic discusses the human need for stories.

Stories can be a way for humans to feel that we have control over the world. They allow people to see patterns where there is chaos, meaning where there is randomness. Humans are inclined to see narratives where there are none because it can afford meaning to our lives—a form of existential problem-solving.

In one example in the article, research subjects saw several triangles and a circle moving around and when asked what they saw, all but one subject had created a story out of the movement of these inanimate objects. We do this with animals too – my husband insists that the dog licks his face because she loves him. Ha!

Stories may one of the most important links our brains make. We are “wired for story,” and our brains are built to make sense of what we see, creating context so we can figure it out. Our survival depends on it. If our ancient ancestors didn’t have stories about sabre-toothed tigers, for example, they wouldn’t know to run when they saw one, or how to kill it, and they would not have survived.

Thinking about the stories we tell as writers can help us be better writers. Are you telling a riveting, funny, sad, important story?

A couple of books to help you think about storytelling and how it relates to your writing:

Campfire Tales — On Flickr by Clevergrrl

Everywhere I turn, I run into the concepts of story and storytelling, and I’m fascinated by the truth that these concepts are central to the human experience. I find evidence of story and storytelling everywhere. Most recently, I encountered a quote I want to share with you.

It’s from the first season of True Detective, an HBO series. In this first series, the major characters are two cops, played by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. At the end of one episode, the two have a dialogue about the meaning of life, and McConaughey’s character, Rust Cohle, gives a speech that includes this:

Rust: “Yeah, I think you remember how I never watched the TV until I was 17, so there wasn’t much to do up there [Alaska] but walk around, explore, and…”

Marty: “And look up at the stars and make up stories. Like what?”

Rust: “I tell you Marty I been up in that [hospital] room looking out those windows every night here just thinking, it’s just one story. The oldest.”

Marty: “What’s that?”

Rust: “Light versus dark.”

Is it really true that there’s just one story? I decided to put this statement to the test. Stories about fighting the bad guys (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings) are certainly light versus dark. But what about a romance novel? A YA vampire novel? A comedy?

The “dark” can be inner as well as outside. There is the “dark” of loneliness, of fear of death, or fear of what might be called a “death in life,” that might be manifest in many ways.

Take a movie like Tootsie, in which Dustin Hoffman dresses like a woman to get a job on a sit-com, and he falls in love with his co-star (played by Jessica Lange). Where is the dark? I believe Tootsie has a lot to say about who we are as humans, not just men or women, and our inner longing and loneliness (the dark). In the most poignant scene, the two are in her bedroom with little pink buds in the wallpaper, and the longing in Tootsie is palpable.

A concept that has meaning for this discussion is what’s called the “dark night of the soul,” the title of a 16th-century poem by a Christian mystic named St. John of the Cross. The term is used by Roman Catholics to denote a spiritual crisis, but in its broader sense it can describe what spiritual author Eckart Tolle says is “collapse of a perceived meaning in life.”

The darkness is all around us, and in us too. Storytelling around the campfire is a perfect example of how we try to keep the dark away.

Darkest Winter

As I write this, we are at the darkest point of the year – the winter solstice, when days are shortest and nights longest. I’ve always felt this is a special time, because it combines the reality of darkness with the hope of light, as the succeeding days grow longer.

Gary Zukav, a spiritual teacher, says,

The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.

Christmas as the Light

The light vs. dark story is played out in many religions, but I wanted to mention Christianity as a premier example. We celebrate Christmas at midwinter, that darkest time of the year. We sing carols like Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, which includes “light and life to all he brings.” I remember as a child going to a Christmas Eve service in which we sang “Joy to the World” while holding lighted candles. The church was filled with light.

The final lines of True Detective return again to the discussion of light vs. dark. Marty has said, looking at the sky, “it appears to me that the dark has a lot more territory.”
Then Rust says:

Rust: “You’re looking at it wrong, the sky thing.”

Marty: “How’s that?”

Rust: “Well, once there was only dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.”

May your stories bring light to the darkness.

Stories – The Fabric of our Lives – And our Writing

There is Only One Story