A common complaint of wannabe writers is, “What do I write about?” The simple answer is always, people. Our species of social critter is ultimately only interested in ourselves. We, quite naturally, want to know everything there is to know about our own species. We especially want to know about all the variables in behaviors of different peoples in different places and times. I suspect that we want to know what we can expect to get away with doing in our own social context. The human race is infinitely variable and adaptable in its behavior. We also learn from each other all the time. There is always something new to learn. Every imaginable different and unique lifestyle is of great interest to humans. We are interested in different cultures and mores. We are interested in different beliefs and customs. We are interested in different marriage customs and sexual practices. We are interested in different child rearing practices and goals. Everything there is to know about people and their lifestyles is a viable target. In addition to being about people, your story must be about a condition, or a problem involving those people. They must have a problem, or problems, that must be solved. The more difficult and complex the problem and the more intimate the relationship of the characters to the problem, the more interesting the story will be at the end. This problem has to be different from a nice, safe, normal existence with easily solved problems. There has to be multiple opportunities for some kinds of strong struggles of variable kinds. It might be an internal struggle with the characters suffering agonies of self-doubt, conflicted interests, and gut-wrenching psychological and emotional results. Perhaps, it is a struggle as violent and as externalized as fighting one’s way up Pork Chop Hill. It might be as mild as a struggle in a story about the tension between a sexually repressed butler and a lovely, gregarious, young and sexually expressive maid serving at an important dinner party. It is the resolution of the problem, or problems, that we humans find to be of the most intense interest. That is why it is always reserved for the very end of the story, play, and book. That keeps the reader reading to the very end. It makes them feel that they received a good value from their investment of time and money. The path to resolution provides the “room” necessary for there to be “trials and errors”. This makes the story still more interesting. People like this because they can substitute themselves for the characters in the story. They can let the characters suffer the errors and trials and not be troubled by the consequences that are also suffered. After all, the reader can put down the book at any time and recover. The poor character has to face that hungry lion. Hungry lions are nasty, smell bad, and have troubling ideas about doing lunch. There is always the possibility that the reader will learn how to cope with a new and different situation that he might possibly encounter at some future time. The reader might accidentally learn something useful. How to avoid being lunch. How to make a pass at a young woman. How to duck and dig in. We learn from the fictional tribulations of fictional others. We can “see” fictional characters “walk into” a situation, make mistakes, and we “see” ourselves doing the same kinds of things. We do learn from fictional others and we want to apply that learning to our own lives. Certain story lines never change. Everything else in a story is a variable. Take any classic story. Strip out the details. Strip it right down to bare plot. Change the details. Change the time, place, and names. You have a new story. How many times has “Romeo and Juliet”, “Hamlet”, and “Oedipus Rex” been rewritten? The number must be incalculable for each of these classics. That is why those story lines are classics. That is why we humans never get tired of the same old, same old.
(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace completed an MA and taught in the public schools for 28 years. He recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, the layers of money sucking priesthood, and their departures from the fundamental ideas and messages of Religion. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will outrage everyone. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com
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