Story Magic

As I’ve mentioned many times, including my last essay, all stories need problems and conflict. The challenge and the struggle are why a story is being told. I’ve spent the last fifteen years writing about little events from my life, all of which included trouble of one kind or another. I should mention that I like stories, but I don’t like problems. I like it when things go smoothly and everyone gets along and the team I want to win is victorious. This puts me somewhat in conflict with myself, as the Storyteller Bill and the Just Living His Life Bill would seem to have very different priorities.

I have occasionally wondered if Storyteller Bill engages in some subtle sabotage. He exists, after all, in a different reality than his domestic twin. The storyteller is never particularly interested in what’s happening right now. He likes to relive things, sculpting them to his pleasure as he does so. The here and now, meanwhile, is too cluttered with details, too unfocused. Unless, of course, trouble arises. The diagnosis, the argument, the clogged pipe, harness my attention in one place. Now there’s tension, now I’m wishing things were different, and the storyteller smells material.

However, there is something quite important that the storyteller is more aware of something than his twin. Because he has to help a reader understand just how big his problem really is, and because his conflicts always resolve when his character shifts his perception, when he stops worrying about the future or believing he’s not good enough, the storyteller knows that the trouble isn’t actually real. The feelings are real, but they are always based on a misunderstanding, and so even the suffering itself, no matter how intense, is still just a kind of very vivid dream.

So, like any good magician, I must make the unreal seem real. I know what’s coming, after all. I know the spell will be broken, that the dreamer will awaken, but I can’t let the reader see what’s in my top hat. That would ruin the trick. Because the truth is, while the storyteller might love trouble, he also knows there’s only one reality, what is found at the story’s end, when the troubled mind comes to rest, unbothered finally by the problems it created.

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