Photo by Kristaps Grundsteins on Unsplash
“So the world of a story is a thing we can create or summon into being, but which the reader participates in creating and understanding. A story or novel is a kind of map because, like a map, it is not a world, but it evokes one (or at least one, for each reader). ”
With words, sentences, and paragraphs, we enable a reader to experience the events we dramatize/weave into a story.
Turchi makes two additional points that are relevant to a particular approach to effective story decisions.
Stories, like maps, include distortion. Just as a map does not match the territory it represents, stories don’t capture all aspects of human experience. A story is meant to feel like real life, but it isn’t the same at all, even if it’s realistic.
Stories, like maps, do not include details and events that are irrelevant or that the reader understands.
To create the experience we intend, we have to make effective decisions about what to include and what to exclude or allow to be distorted. A useful process to make effective decisions begins by understanding what we want to say, including the story’s essence and its primary point or lesson.
We use essence and lesson to make other fundamental story decisions, things like
the scale of change in the story,
the form of the story,
the primary need threatened by the problem,
the nature of the world that sets up conditions that threaten the need,
the type of antagonist that causes the problem,
the protagonist who must respond and try to solve the problem
the time it takes the protagonist to solve the problem
Each of these decisions constrain the micro decisions of the words, sentences, and paragraphs that evoke the story. Of course this is obvious. But the narrative situation provides a lens or filter that enables us to see more clearly what belongs and what doesn’t, what must be clearly shown in real time and what may be distorted.
The narrative situation is the story writers tell themselves and sometimes the reader about the existence of the story. That story behind the story provides a goal and motivation for a narrator or narrating entity, someone communicating something to someone, a narratee, about the problem the protagonist is trying to solve in the story.
When we take this perspective and focus on the narratee, the individual for whose benefit the story is conveyed, we can make some useful assumptions about their knowledge and experience (and therefore what we can omit or distort), what they value (and therefore what’s relevant to them), and what they believe (and therefore the perspective they bring to the story). In the same way, when we have a conversation with someone, we consider their experience, values, and beliefs (even if implicitly) when we decide what to say and how to say it. We could share the same series of events with our a child, a colleague, and a friend, and each version would be subtly different based on what who they are and what we’re trying to achieve by sharing the story. You can get a sense of this in different adaptations of the same story.
The goal of the narrator turns out to be quite important, and I’ll pick up there in a future post.
This post is part of a 75-day writing challenge and experiment. From September 9 through November 22, I'll be posting daily thoughts on writing, storytelling, and creativity based on recent readings or reflections. While my intention was to keep them very short—250 to 400 words—I've found that this range doesn't give me enough space to cover these topics adequately. I aim to keep them brief enough to be read quickly, but they will often be longer than 400 words.
At the end of the challenge, I will organize and revise the material with intention. For now, the object is to explore and share.