Everyone's Story

Last weekend, I was asked to be one of a panel of judges for a book-pitching contest. Most of the projects being pitched were novels, and nearly all of these made the same mistake: too much plot. The writers spent most of their allotted three minutes describing how the hero did this, and the villain did that, and then the hero did this other thing, and meanwhile these other characters were doing more things, and on and on. I never had any idea what their novels were actually about. It sounded like a laundry list of events, rather than a connected flow of motivation, conflict, and resolution that is a story.

To be clear, writing a pitch isn’t easy – especially when the book you’re pitching is your own and you’ve spent the last year or two working very hard to find and craft all those events. Without this and that and the other thing happening, there would be no story, just a bunch of people standing around doing nothing. Why, it might look a lot your days, where you get up and make breakfast and go to work and come home and make dinner and watch TV and go to bed. None of that’s interesting. But in your novel, people are being shot at and falling in love and becoming lost in the jungle and discovering their secret talents. Now that’s interesting. If any of that happened to you, everyone would want to hear about it.

Maybe. I once listened to my history professor describe WWII, and I nearly fell asleep in class. How he managed to drain all the drama out the Nazis and Stalingrad and The Battle of Britain was nothing short of miraculous, but he did. Then again, my story-telling friend could have me on the edge of my seat relating his trip to a grocery store. Stories are never actually about what happened. That’s just the dressing. In fact, all stories are about the exact same thing: someone wants something and they can’t have it.

I know it can be a little annoying when someone reduces a complex and nuanced art form in this way, but it’s essential to remember if you have to reduce your complex and nuanced story down to a few paragraphs. It’s also useful as you go about your days. Ask me why I’m unhappy, and I might give you a list of problems, all the stresses and misfortunes that have visited me against my will. But they aren’t the reason. I’m only ever unhappy because I’ve convinced myself, however briefly, that I can’t have the peace, or the satisfaction, or the freedom I want. That’s all it takes, and in my mind, I might as well be at war, or lost at sea, or abandoned and unloved. But no one would know. After all, my misery was just a story I was telling myself.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com