Author Archives: Sarah McElrath

About Sarah McElrath

A seeker, looking to find truth and wisdom in the world and through art, I work as a school librarian, writing and painting when I have time.

What are you reading to reduce your stress?

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Go for the alternate universe once in awhile

Yeah! Finally about to log in to my wordpress site. It was down since last weekend–hence the no post for two weeks. I’d love to say I’ve been writing like crazy in the interim, but that wouldn’t be quite true. (Too bad good intentions don’t count.) I have written some–but then life imploded and yeah, well, haven’t been writing so much. So here is what I intended to post last weekend. Still totally applies. In fact, I’ve been re-reading the first book in the series–but I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s the post from last week. Maybe then it will make sense.

Yesterday I read a book for most of the day. Not a horrible thing to do. Didn’t hurt anyone.

Life always coming right behind you

Wasn’t bad for my health, nothing like eating the 2 bags of on-sale-after-Easter candy that I have hidden away from husband and kids. Still, I had a lot to do. A LOT TO DO. (When you type it with all capitals it means it is really, truly true.) Laundry. A novel that was (and still is) crying piteously for attention. A week’s worth of cat hair and … other unidentified crud to be vacuumed up. Top that with meals, grocery shopping, bills, and visiting my Mum–and all of a sudden reading sounds like a really stupid idea. (I could type it in all capitals but then you might think I’m exaggerating. And quite frankly, I’m not sure my self-esteem could handle being thought STUPID.)

Except it isn’t stupid. Sometimes when life is going so fast it makes your head spin, that’s when you should take a time out. And that’s exactly what reading is–a vacation from your life. A chance to not be for a little while, and still come back.

Reading takes us places

I didn’t always used to be so understanding of my passion (my husband would say it should read habit or addiction instead). Just when I would be feeling completely overwhelmed, I’d find myself reading–and often reading something I’d already read! Nothing like going from being overwhelmed to being even further behind and mad at myself (There was usually guilt in there too–I’m a Christian after all. I think it’s a requirement.) But it still wouldn’t stop me from reading the next time. (OMG–it really is an addiction!) I often wondered what was wrong with me.

Stress Relief

I found the answer to that (well, to the reading part of what’s wrong with me–let’s not get crazy here) when I was searching for the benefits of reading to share with teachers and students for March is Reading Month. There are lots of benefits to reading (at least 26 according to Brad Isaac), including improving vocabulary, memory, concentration and focus. But one of the most interesting things I learned was that reading reduces stress levels up to 68%–according to research from the University of Sussex. So while It is true that I get further behind by reading, afterwards I am better able to deal with whatever stuff needs dealing with.

Of course, now that I know reading reduces stress, I try to utilize it in a more productive manner. To deal with the death of a close friend this past week, I read an hour or so every night before bed. It helped me sleep a little better. Definitely worth trying the next time you are feeling overwhelmed and stressed out.

Necromancing the Stone

So what was it I was reading? (and re-reading) A FABULOUS book called Necromancing the Stone by Lish McBride. It is a sequel to Hold Me Closer, Necromancer. The characters are believable, the dialog very witty, it’s full of action (makes me laugh out loud–and cry, but that’s pretty normal for me), and most of all, it makes me see the world a little differently. Although it is fantasy, it explores the topic of friendship, family, and identity. Oh, and it stays with me. I re-read parts of it about 3 hours after I had finished it because I couldn’t get it out of my head. Still thinking about it. Sigh. I love good books. Here’s hoping my book(s) strikes people that way some day.

Can Fahrenheit 451 explain why The Hunger Games is popular?

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Time Flies

Spring Break is almost done–and of course I had way more things I planned to do than could actually be done in the amount of time. Still, I slept, read a few good books, painted a little, visited relatives, and ate some good food. (Greg is barbecuing ribs ribs right now. What with his jalapeno potato salad it makes for a fabulous last supper.) Notice what isn’t on the list. No writing. Well, until now. Nothing like a deadline to get one inspired!

The work week is scheduled to start with a bang–5 classes of book talks. All on the

Classics

Classics. So is it possible to get today’s kids interested enough to sit and work their way through Stevenson, Twain, Bronte, Alcott, or Jack Schaefer? I LOVED Shane. My dad read it aloud to us when I was in 5th or 6th grade. But we didn’t even have a television growing up, much less the internet or Wii, or Xbox or Netflix. After dinner my dad would read to me and my brother and sisters. I have fond memories of listening to Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson (My brother and I played cast away in the woods by our house for several weeks after that one), Treasure Island, Huckleberry Finn, and Tom Sawyer. And of course, how could one not like the animal stories? The Yearling (how I cried), Sounder (cried again), Rascal, Incident at Hawks Hill (one of my favorites), The Incredible Journey, Lad: a dog (Why are all the dog stories sad?), The Call of the Wild (my daughter still hasn’t forgiven me for suggesting she read that one. She cried.), White Fang, Black Beauty, and of course, The Black Stallion.

Fahrenheit 451

Despite all the classics my dad read to us, there were many that I didn’t read–even despite being an English major in college. I just read Slaughterhouse Five this past summer, and I’m reading A Prayer for Owen Meiny right now. And it just so happened that I read Fahrenheit 451 right when The Hunger Games had first come out. A very lucky coincidence for me, I do believe. Fahrenheit 451 is a book that I can’t get out of my mind. Dystopian fiction, just like The Hunger Games. The difference is … a matter of degree. Only a matter of degree. But it is the small matter of degree that makes Fahrenheit 451 that much scarier to me than The Hunger Games.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a science fiction story set in a future (maybe not as

Burning books

future as we might wish, I might add) where everything is about being happy. Wall-sized televisions, radios that fit into a person’s ear, interactive shows–so much to keep people entertained, much like today. The main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman, and it’s his job to burn the books. Not that the government made reading illegal. Oh no. It was the PEOPLE who quit reading. It happened slowly. At first, it was this group or that group being offended by something this book or that book said. So writers had to make sure not to include anything that might be offensive–to anyone. And then there was the fact that people so busy, they didn’t want to take the time to read a whole book, so books became abridged, and then those become summarized, and finally, you could read the classics in what we would today call a “tweet version.” (Wouldn’t that be an interesting assignment? Write a tweet for each classic you’ve read)

Firemen

So really, the fireman’s job wasn’t even really necessary, it was about providing a show, entertaining the people. And Montag goes along with this unquestioning until he meets Clarisse. Clarisse is different. She talks about ideas, not things. She asks why instead of how. And that start Montag thinking. But thinking, like being different, is dangerous in this society. When an old woman chooses to burn to death along with her books, Montag hides one of the books under his jacket to find out what makes them so important. And when Clarisse disappears, Montag knows that it is only a matter of time before the firemen’s mechanical hound comes after him as well.

Dystopian Fiction is huge right now in the YA world. The Hunger Games started it, but now there is Legend, The Eleventh Plague, The Maze Runner, Epitaph Road, Blood Red Road, and Safekeeping–just to name a few. Why are teens so interested in reading such dark fiction? Why are so many writers writing dystopian fiction? (of course, the fact that it sells is part of it–but only a part. I’d argue that writers must still have a certain amount of interest in the subject to devote the time to writing it.) Maybe Bradbury and his book Fahrenheit 451 can give us some clues as to why this genre has become so popular in 2012-2013.

Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, shortly after WWII and during the McCarthy era of censorship. That, of course, plays a big role in the novel, and Bradbury admitted in an interview that it was this everyone being afraid of spies and their neighbors and censoring that led him to write Fahrenheit 451. As a librarian, I’m fascinated by the fact that Fire-Captian Beatty is the one who tells Montag that the end of reading came not from the government, but from the people. I read reports in the news declaring that Americans read less and less–but I’m never sure how much I believe those reports. In my own little corner of the world, I’d say students read about as much as they used to, possibly even more. A lot of book reading is now done on digital devices, but it is still reading. So did Beatty tell Montag that to cover up the government’s part in the matter?

The censorship issue is definitely still out there, whether it is the government, the corporations (thinking tobacco companies), or the people. According to the all-knowing (said with some irony) Wikipedia, Bradbury wrote a new coda for the book when the paperback edition was released in 1979. In it he makes several comments on censorship.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist / Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist / Women’s Lib / Republican / Mattachine / FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse….Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library closed forever. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.[8]

 

The American Library Association keeps a list of frequently challenged books. It’s always interesting to me to look at the reason why people protest this book or that book. All one has to do nowadays to see how “bothered” or “intolerant” people can be to those who hold different viewpoints is go on YouTube or Facebook and read the comments people post. We seemed to have become a society that is incapable of disagreeing in a civil manner. Sports fans, political parties, all the rhetoric becomes more and more inflamed. Maybe it is easy to imagine the intolerance growing into censorship and then something even darker.

The other theme in Bradbury’s book is the role of mass media in the isolation and

Technology

alienation of people. Again, from Wikipedia:

“In the late 1950s, Bradbury observed that the novel touches on the alienation of people by media:

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.[9]

In a 2007 interview, Bradbury stated that the book explored the effects of television and mass media on the reading of literature.[10] Bradbury went even further to elaborate his meaning, saying specifically that the culprit in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state—it is the people.”[10]

When Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, colored tv had just been approved by the FCC in 1950. Videotape, remote controls all came out in the 50’s. Lots of changes in the world. And then there is now. Technology has changed the world–and it is doing so at an ever-increase rate. Go anywhere nowadays and you can see people sitting silent, side-by-side, texting away on their phones and ignoring everyone around them. The wall-sized televisions, the thousands of channels, the “reality” shows that are all about entertainment and not so much about reality. People have hundreds of “friends”, but are they more isolated than ever? According to The Atlantic and many other articles, some research seems to be saying so.

And then there was WWII and the fact that it had served to pull America out of its rather insular position in the world. Have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan served to remind teens today that we are a part of a global society in which not everyone likes us? Does that play another part in what makes young people so fascinated with dystopian fiction? Does it help them imagine the worst so that the present doesn’t seem so bad? Or so that even if it gets that bad, there is still hope?

Whatever your thoughts on the matter, I think I will start by telling my students that classics are still worth reading today because they continue to offer us truths about human nature–and they are dang good stories.

Great stories

Oh, and when I went looking for a youtube video on Fahrenheit 451, I found one by the vlogbrothers–John and Hank Green. Love their videos (and John’s books too.)

 

 

Endings That Promise New Beginnings

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Life is Story

I’ve been thinking about endings lately, what with it being Easter and all. If all of life is a story, than maybe endings in life aren’t so different than the ending of a good story. We all are facing our end–just some of us live with it closer before us than others. Often we choose to live as if death is not waiting, but maybe we lose something when we do that. My mother, in her final year, told me that knowing she only had limited time left meant she was free to dispense with all the “chaff” in life. No hanging on to anger, regret, guilt or shame. The specter of death helped clarify life; it helped her see what was important in life.

Tying up the loose threads

In stories, good endings tie up all the loose plot threads. I suppose this is true in life as well. They call it “getting your affairs in order.” Maybe it’s mending broken relationships, saying goodbyes, or checking things off your bucket list. My mom bought a present for my nephew’s birthday that would be coming up. My friend made sure to knit a christmas stocking for the soon to be expected baby. Those important things in life. Those loose threads.

But what I think makes for a good ending in both stories and lives, is the promise of a new

beginning. That is the Easter story in a nutshell. An

New Beginning

ending that promises a new beginning for all. In a good story, the main character grows or changes in some way. Maybe it is recognizing the error of his/her ways. Maybe it is coming to realize what is important in life (like my mom said). In this way, the end also gives the promise of a new beginning. A better life.

I just finished Code Name Verity, a fabulous historical fiction book, the ending of which, although it did not please me, was nonetheless a fitting ending for a great story. It was fitting because it flowed naturally from what came

Code Name Verity

before it.

Most people like the “happy ever after” endings. Whether you end happy or sad, I would argue for leaving the reader with at least the hope of a new beginning. Even something as bleak as The Road by Cormac McCarthy gives the reader hope at the end.

So whether you look at the story of your life or the story you are writing, consider the ending. Does it tie up loose threads? Does it offer the promise of a new beginning? Does it offer hope.

Blessings on your writing in this Easter season.

Revision – Ways To Hear Your Writing Differently

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Revision

Where I’m at in the writing process determines if I love revision or hate it. When I’m in the midst of revision–like I am now–I often hate it. Still, I’ve found a couple of things that help me gain a new “ear” for my writing, and therefore make it easier for me to know what needs to change.

 

1. My writing group.

Reading my story out loud helps me catch awkward sentences, repetitive language, lack

Hear Differently

of transitions, and other problems. But for some reason, when I read my writing out loud to my writing group, I hear it differently, and catch even more. Of course, another added bonus to reading to my writing group is that my group members (I really do have the best writing group ever) catch the stuff I don’t. In our group, everyone has a copy of the piece of writing. The author reads it out loud and then sits back and lets the other members discuss the piece. The chance to be the fly on the wall is a huge benefit to me as a writer. Did they get what I was trying to say? Did they get something totally different? Where were they confused? Where did they laugh? What did they like? Not only does my group help me know if my writing is “working”, but they inspire me to keep going.

2. Recording my writing

Audio Edito

Life gets pretty crazy, and though I want to write every day, I don’t always get the chance. The biggest drawback to this lack of daily writing is that the story gets too far away. Maybe those who write shorter pieces don’t have this problem, but trying to remember what happened three chapters ago in my novel when I haven’t written for a week or two, gets really difficult. One of the ways I deal with this is by recording my story and listening to it as I drive to and from work. Even better, I got my daughter to record it for me (not without it costing me, of course), so now I hear it as if it is someone else’s story, and that helps me to be more objective in my listening.  Not only can I keep the story going in my head, but I’m forced to listen to it without making changes. This may not always be good, but since I’m revising for plot right now, I don’t want to get caught up in the little details (which inevitably happens when I pull it up on the screen).

Audacity is a free audio editor and recorder that works on both PCs and Macs. I did have to download a free converter in order to convert the audio recording to mp3 so I could put

Cassette Tape
(an old audio medium)

it on my iTunes and move it to my iPod (which is what I use in my car–seeing as my car is old and only has a non-working cassette tape player–do people even know

what that is anymore?) The only other thing I purchased was a cheap microphone. It’s possible you could record with the built-in microphone, but it probably wouldn’t work as well.

Audacity open on computer

Audacity is pretty simple to use. I’m one of those “read directions only if I can’t figure it out” kind of people, so I just opened it up and got started. The red circle is record and the yellow square is stop. At first I read from a paper copy, but then I switched to split screen on the computer

 

Which looks like this:

Split Screen
Audacity and Scrivener

I do the actual recording in my closet (it’s a very small walk-in closet) because all the clothes prevent the echo or tinny effect that I get otherwise. And it also helps prevent other “noise” entering into the picture. (like the cat barfing or the kids fighting)

 

 

Once I’m done reading, I hit stop and then go to File and Export. I just put it on the

Export as MP3

desktop because I’m going to then import it into iTunes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I tell it to save, it allows me to put in some more information. This is really helpful when I pull it into iTunes, otherwise I have to try to find it.

Metadata

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I open iTunes, I go up to File and click on Add to Library. Then I find my MP3 file on my desktop and add it. Kind of exciting to see it there!

My Story in iTunes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I move it to a playlist so I can listen to all the tracks in order, and then finally I can transfer it to my iPod.  Here is the first few paragraphs of my novel in progress, I Feel For You. (it is me reading (my daughter forbade me put her voice on the internet)–and I didn’t record it in my closet, sorry for the background noise.)  Valentine’s Day Storm

The Stories We Tell Others

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The stories we tell others

I’ve been exploring STORY a bit in the last few weeks, and here I’d like to focus on the stories we tell others. Dragging along from last week is the stories we tell ourselves–and those, to a certain degree, shape the stories we tell others. There’s a whole lot of other things rattling in my head as well: Terry Pratchett’s new book, Dodger, The Story (a chronological account of the Bible), and Significant Objects. In a way, the stories we tell others are a form of world-building. We include details that fit within the parameters of the world we wish to create. We ignore the ones that don’t.

Life is a rich and complex interweaving of inner and outer stories. Here are a few threads that seem to run throughout.

1. We tell others stories based on our perspective of the truth.

Perspective

I just finished the book Dodger by Terry Pratchett, and in the book (a historical fantasy according to the author’s note at the end) Charles Dickens explains to Dodger how truth is a fog. This explanation comes after Dodger’s encounter with the mad barber Sweeney Todd. Dodger is hailed as a  hero, but he dislikes the description because Sweeney Todd “wasn’t bad, he was mad, and sad, and lost in his ‘ead.”[ ] “I mean, I ain’t no hero, ‘cos I don’t think he was a villain, sir, if you get my drift.” Charlie then explains how truth is anything but simple because it all depends on perspective. “Truth is a fog, in which one man sees the heavenly host and the other one sees a flying elephant.”

Think about eye-witnesses. Every single one sees a different accident because every one of them sees it from a different perspective. That’s part of what makes eye-witnesses so terribly unreliable.

So what does this mean for your writing? First off, it’s a great way to develop character. Second, who you choose to be the narrator determines the story. Sometimes people go with more than one narrator for that very reason. And finally, think about how aware (or not)  your character is about their and others’ bias in perspective. What do they do when something challenges their “world?” How close does their story stick to the facts? Reliable narrator or unreliable narrator.

Best Foot Forward

2. We tell others the stories we want them to hear. This, of course, involves not only what we say, but maybe even more importantly, what we don’t say. A lot of our self-esteem is tied up in what other people think of us, and so it makes sense that we–both consciously and unconsciously–try to shape that image with the stories we share. If I want people to think I’m strong and practical, I might not want to share how I got all teary-eyed when the cat died in the Ramona and Beezus movie I was watching with my daughters.

This summer I got a bit bogged down in how to start the story I was working on. Mind you, I’d already written several different beginnings, but I wanted to use the “best” one. I finally figured out how to start the novel when I remembered to “ask” Jane (the narrator) how she would tell the story. To make a story ring true, the author must always remember who is telling that story. What would that character share or keep secret?

On the flip side, sometimes people hear what they want to hear–no matter what they are told. Terry Pratchett (being a master writer) uses this in his book, Dodger. The main character tells the crowd that he didn’t fight off the terrible villain Mister Sweeney Todd, but it doesn’t matter. The people are sure Dodger is a hero who valiantly fought off a savage murderer. That, after all, is a much more interesting story than carefully disarming a war veteran who is in the midst of a post-tramatic stress flashback.

The Upper Story

 3. We tell stories we think our audience can understand and relate to. 

I’ve worked with 7th and 8th graders for many years now, but still find myself talking over their heads. All those blank looks, and I know I need to change my story into something easier. Think about it, the story you tell about where babies come from changes depending on whether you are talking to a 7-year-old or a 13-year-old. (And, for those twenty to sixty ((and above)) you might get something like Fifty Shades of Grey)

On a less physical note, I was thinking about this idea of story and audience at church where we are reading through The Story, which is the Bible put in chronological order. As we study each chapter, the pastor makes a point of talking about the Upper Story and the Lower Story. The Upper Story is what God is doing to bring about His plan of salvation. The Lower Story is all the daily lives and dramas of the Israelites–and us. So maybe God tells the story of salvation through the daily dramas because that is what we can understand. Think of myths. Zeus with his thunderbolts was something the people of the time could understand and picture. Could it be that when the Bible was written, the earth being created in six days was understandable, whereas millions of years of change was not so understandable.

In your writing — How do your characters shape their stories based on audience? And of course, some of the conflict comes in the misunderstanding between characters, so maybe your characters don’t understand each other’s stories.

Reflections

4. Stories give value.

The book, Significant Objects, talks about a study where authors were hired to write a story about an object and then sell that object online along with the story. The results of the study showed that a good story made an object more valuable. I thought a lot about this. It seems to hold true to more than just objects. Think about people. So easy to stereotype–until you get to know an individual’s stories. That is when we start to see them as a person of value, maybe because so often our stories share common elements. In each story, we can see a small reflection of ourself.

And finally,

5. The stories we share with others either let people in, expanding their world and ours, or shut them out, locking us in. In your writing, do you (and your characters) shut doors or open them? Something to ponder as you build words and worlds.

Worlds of Stories

 

10 Ways to Overcome Creativity’s No.1 Crusher – PsychCentral.com (blog)

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See on Scoop.it – Feed the Writer

10 Ways to Overcome Creativity’s No.1 Crusher
PsychCentral.com (blog)
10 Ways to Overcome Creativity’s No.1 Crusher “The worst enemy of creativity is self-doubt,” wrote Sylvia Plath in her journal. And she couldn’t have been more accurate.

Sarah McElrath‘s insight:

Love #1. It is the power of the stories we tell ourselves that determine who we become.

 

"1. Remember self-doubt is a story.

As Davidson said, thinking you’re not good at something doesn’t make it true. Her art teacher triggered her self-doubt, but it was the stories spinning in Davidson’s mind that stopped her from creating. And these disempowering tales were clearly distorted."

See on psychcentral.com

The Lies We Tell Ourselves

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The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

One of the things that fascinates me the most about being hardwired for STORY, is the stories we tell ourselves. How much of those stories are true, and how much are lies? And are we even aware when we lie to ourselves? I know I am sometimes, but what about the rest of the time?

We all tell stories to ourselves that aren’t true. This is partly because nobody can ever be completely objective. We see the world through the filter of our past, our experiences, our upbringing, our expectations. This means the stories we tell are biased. However, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing–as long as you realize it. This is where it becomes important to listen to the stories and opinions of others, even those that are opposite of ours–especially those that our opposite. What scares me about today is how many people get their “news” from Facebook or Twitter. The ability to filter the world is both a blessing and a curse. What if we only follow those who are like us? Those who have the same beliefs and the same ideals. Those who say only things we like to hear. How will we ever know if we are lying to ourselves if we never check our stories against what others say and believe?

Sometimes it is good to lie to yourself. How can this be, you ask? Well, let me tell you about student teaching. The only way I survived was to keep telling myself I was confident, it was no big deal. I needed that “story” to act confident. It’s the whole, “fake it til you make it” thing. (Which, now that I think of it, was how I survived high school too.) Still, I was aware that it was a story I was telling myself. Head games.

Use this in your writing. In my first novel, Black Dragon, the protagonist tells herself a story

Dragon Fighter

to stay alive. She tells herself that she is a dragon fighter because dragon fighters fight, they don’t just give up and die. Think about the stories your characters tell in their heads. How can you use these to help your character survive and grow?

Sometimes it’s not good to lie to yourself. I’ve listened to people tell themselves stories about being incompetent, uncreative, or stupid. The saddest part is when they really believed those stories. Here’s the thing about stories–they have power. Even if you say those kind of things without really meaning them, eventually, if you tell yourself that story long enough, you start to believe it. It becomes true–to you.

Use this in your writing. The negative self-talk can tell us a lot about a character. But the opposite is true too. What if you have a character who thinks German are superior and Jews are inferior? Or what if you have a character who’s inner story is that he is a genius and all other people are idiots? What kind of things would that character be willing to do? Take a look at the Columbine shootings if you want the answer to that question.

Columbine by Dave Cullens

I’d read and heard a lot about the shootings at Columbine–of course, working in a school made me extra sensitive to all of it. But I couldn’t wrap my head around how these two boys could walk around that school shooting people and whooping it up like they were having fun. What kind of things were they telling themselves that made it “okay” for them to do such horrible things to people they knew? Finally one of my friends recommended the book Columbine by Dave Cullen. The book is non-fiction, but reads like a novel. I couldn’t put it down. Sifting through thousands of reports, police records, journal entires and more, the author paints a very chilling picture of Eric Harris as a psychopath who believed he was superior to all. Eric Harris’s warped inner story is what allowed him to shoot classmates in cold blood.

At the time I was reading Columbine, I was struggling with one of the characters in my YA manuscript, I Feel For You, and I started to think the solution involved that character’s inner story. So what do I do when I’m stuck in my writing? More research, of course. (not that I’m advising this) I read the book, The Stranger Beside Me, by Ann Rule (An excellent book about serial killer Ted Bundy) and Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D. Hare, PHD. One of the things that struck me most was the sentence, “Psychopaths frequently see themselves as the real victim.” How someone’s inner story could be so far from the truth was astonishing to me. Ted Bundy worked on a Crisis Hotline helping people through some terrible dark moments. Yet he was a brutal killer. The disconnect still boggles my mind.

Broken Inner Stories

One of the reasons I write is to understand myself, others, the world around me. And those things that boggle my mind keep me writing. Hope it works the same way for you.

 

Made Of Story (& 5 Ways This Impacts Your Writing)

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Made of Story

Back in the early days of February, I wrote about how I began thinking about The Importance of Story. Story kept cropping up in all sorts of places, and it eventually got to the point where I knew I’d have to write about it to connect all the dots. So today I want to look at how we as humans are essentially made of story.

First off, stories help us remember or learn what is important–the things that help us survive. Don’t believe me? Think about the difference of having someone tell you not to drive a car while texting, and then watch this BBC film that tells the story of a fictional 17-year-old girl, Cassie Cowan (nickname Cow), who is distracted for a few seconds while driving with two friends. who texted while driving (Warning, it is very graphic) The story makes the lesson much easy to remember than just the warning.

Lisa Cron, author of Wired for Story, explains how story is uniquely human.

Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution—more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to. Story is what enabled us to imagine what might happen in the future, and so prepare for it—a feat no other species can lay claim to, opposable thumbs or not. Story is what makes us human, not just metaphorically but literally.as important as opposable thumbs. Thumbs help us hold on to things and story tells us what to hold on to.

Second, story is how we know who we are, and how we explain our behavior. In the book, Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience by Laurence Gonzales, the author quotes Tilmann Habermas, a psychologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, who wrote:

“memories are strung together into a ‘coherent, ongoing narrative’ to create what we know of as identity. From the age of about ten, the left hemisphere of the brain begins to create that narrative, arranging it in episodes and giving it coherence as adolescence ends and we enter our adult years.”

Gonzales also quotes Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor of psychology who refers to the left brain as a “baloney-generator” that helps us explain our behavior.

Baloney – Generator

“Often those explanations have nothing to do with reality. They’re simply the stories that we tell ourselves to help us get around in the world. ‘The conscious mind,’ Pinker said, ‘is a spin doctor.’ LeDoux concurs: ‘People normally do all sorts of things for reasons they are not consciously aware of.’ And: ‘One of the main jobs of consciousness is to keep our life tied together into a coherent story.'”

Of course, Surviving Survival is a book about what happens in the brain when a person goes through a traumatic event. A trauma causes problems even after it ends because it has interrupted that narrative of life. But this brain science has relevance to all humans–partly because we all go through at least one traumatic event in our lives, and partly because this linking of memories, this created narrative defines our identity. Who we are is determined, in part, by the stories we tell ourselves.

Another interesting post on this topic is by Eva Grayzel.

Story World

And finally, story helps us understand the larger world/universe in a way that we can understand. I became interested in this idea of story when I was reading Terry Pratchett’s books this past summer. In his book A Hat Full of Sky, a Hiver (a creature who consumes the minds of those he takes over) comes after Tiffany. A one point Tiffany finds out that the Hiver is afraid of everything. Tiffany thinks she understands, but the Hiver thinks otherwise.

“Lucky humans, who can close your minds to the endless cold deeps of space! You have this thing you call…boredom? That is the rarest talent in the universe! We heard a song–it went ‘Twinkle twinkle little star….’ What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds, and that keeps infinity at bay and allow you to wake up in the morning without screaming!”

In summary, story helps us learn or remember what is important, know who we are and explain our behavior, and make sense of the world in a way that doesn’t drive us mad.

So what does this mean for your writing, your characters?

1. What stories help your characters learn or remember important events?

2. What is the narrative your characters use to establish their identity and explain their behavior?

3. How do traumatic events break that narrative?

4. How does your character write/develop a new narrative? 

5. What stories do your characters cling to in order to find meaning in the wider world? Or, for that matter, what happens when your character cannot find a story to help him/her understand the world in a way that keeps him/her sane? (Insane can be fun to write.)

Tune in later for How To Lie To Yourself and How To Lie To Others.