I'm starting to think that story structure is a problematic theme in my life and I need to do something radical to untrain my brain from seeking it.
Let me explain.
Stories are wonderful. They help us make sense of the world. They give us a way to share experiences and feelings and lessons. As far as I am aware, humans are the only animals who engage in storytelling. Crows recognize faces, whales go through menopause, elephants mourn, but humans draw pictures in each others minds through words. And these words can carry abstract concepts and inspire empathy for people we have never met. Stories are miraculous.
Story structure, or narrative, is the thing that I am stumbling on right now. You may not think you understand what narrative is, but I promise you do. You’ve been absorbing story structure from the time you heard your first fairy tale.
There is a poor boy named Jack who is sent to town to sell the family cow. He instead exchanges her for what he’s told are magic beans. (Exposition.)
Jack plants the beans and a giant beanstalk grows high into the clouds. Jack climbs it. (Rising action.)
Jack encounters a giant with a goose that lays golden eggs. He steals the goose and has to escape from the giant. (Climax)
Jack escapes back down the beanstalk and cuts it after him, killing the giant. (Falling action.)
Jack and his mother live for the rest of his life in comfort thanks to the goose that lays the golden eggs. (Resolution.)
Once you understand story structure, you realize that almost every story you absorb — be it drama, comedy, tragedy, sitcom, romcom, superhero movie, parody, biography or etc etc etc etc—follows this almost identical pattern. You meet your character(s) and you feel some sort of way about them. A situation unfolds. The situation leads to action, to drama. The situation gets resolved. The character(s) finish the story changed by the situation somehow, for better or for worse, but usually for better, for happily ever after. The end.
So I’ve known for a long time that life is not a story and it doesn’t make narrative sense. Eleven years ago I gave a TEDx talk on pretty much that exact topic. But I still find myself in what I call the StoryTrap, trying to find meaning in every challenge, to see the hard stuff as the dramatic arc of a longer story that hopefully has a happy end. Which is silly, because if this was true all of our lives would essentially be the Marvel universe, with endless main characters having to save the world over and over and over and over and over again.
If I wanted this newsletter to make narrative sense, I would use this paragraph to tell you about how the last few weeks have been challenging in a few different ways, then I would describe those challenges in vague terms to protect everyone’s privacy, then I would end by saying hey this got me thinking about narrative and so I decided to write about that and hey presto now it all comes together and makes sense.
Boring. Not just boring. Counterproductive.
As I said earlier, stories are magic, and their magic is often in how we are inspired to feel empathy for people or creatures we’ve never met. I read Where the Red Fern Grows when I was 12 and cried so long and so loudly that my little brother came to the foot of the stairs and yelled up, “What are you crying about now?”
“I – just—read—the—saddest—book,” I gulped out to him. He huffed in disgust and stomped away. To be fair, I did cry a lot in my teens and tweens. And twenties. Anyway.
I’ve been reading about what some people call the trauma industrial complex, wherein our hardest life experiences are essentially content, things we can sell. That dramatic arc — things were bad, they got worse, then I got better — is the essential ingredient of every self help grift. And this is not to say that we shouldn’t discuss hard things, or that we shouldn’t lean into the strength and wisdom that challenges foster, it’s just to say that I think we are selling ourselves short by always expecting a resolution.
I’m worried as I say this that it only makes sense in my head. But here goes. I’ve always been a sucker for the end of the movie. I’ve always wanted to see a version of myself where it all works out. Needle drop on a cool song, fade out with me and the people I love smiling, roll credits. And I know I have a unique brain and might be describing something other people just don’t do, and that’s fine. I only need to be right 85% of the time. I’m not superhuman.
But we don’t know that it’s all going to be okay until the very end, and realistically none of want to get to the very end any faster than we have to. So why do I keep wanting to arrange life along a narrative structure, and assign meaning to things that objectively just are, and objectively just kind of suck? I don’t know. I’m trying to unlearn it. I’m trying to get out of the StoryTrap. I’m trying to un-story. I guess that means being more present. (Ugh.)
Last week I got to attend several events for the Humboldt County Children’s Author’s Festival. It was absolutely lovely and inspiring, especially listening to the authors talk about why they write. I bought several of their books. It occurred to me that children’s authors might be some of the most optimistic people on earth. At least, contemporary children’s authors, unlike the very grim Grimms who were delivering lessons about cannibalism and red hot shoes and other things that never made the Disney edit. And while children’s stories often follow the traditional narrative structure, and include lessons, they do not prioritize resolution the way contemporary adult stories seem to. The main character of a children’s book may be changed for the better by their experience, but this change is not the end of the story. They remain malleable, teachable, curious, often going to bed with excitement about what the next day could bring. Children have no end state where their character is fully defined and their fate determined.
I wish life felt more like that. I wish that we were all a little more curious. I wish that if we can’t be optimistic, we could at least be more open to the idea that we could be pleasantly surprised. I wish we thought of pain less as a hero-building narrative device that we shoulder in solitude and more like a collective reality that we help one another understand and live through together. I wish we were less afraid to have our big feelings in public, the way kids do when they read a sad book or skin their knees. Oh, that hurts. Oh, I’m sorry. Oh, it’s going to be okay. It feels like forever right now, but it’s not forever. Nothing is forever, nothing is finished, and that’s what makes it worth being here.
Tomorrow is another, possibly even better day. Let’s stay curious about it together.