A preface to my thesis. I am an amateur storyteller, I do not pretend to know anything for certain. These thoughts are just a reflection of where God has me on my artistic/spiritual journey. I look forward to your thoughts and feedback on this post.
Thesis: Stories, the good ones, center around characters that are utterly and abrasively real, but are, at the same time way too large and abrasive to ever fit into the real world....
Thesis: Stories, the good ones, center around characters that are utterly and abrasively real, but are, at the same time way too large and abrasive to ever fit into the real world....
There is an interesting dichotomy that exists in the world of storytelling. One's characters must be truthful, relatable, they must provoke sympathy, empathy, anger, some sort of emotional response. But one word that I think every storyteller must avoid at all costs is realistic.
Theatre, movies, books, songs, no artistic storytelling should never be realistic. Now before you jump down my throat, hear me out. In order for a story to be worth telling, we as an audience need a taste of the dramatic. We need danger, excitement, characters that are larger then life, otherwise, why would we have gotten off our couch when we could have sat at home to watch our own crazy family be 'realistic'.
The storyteller may employ elements of realism, doing so helps to make the character relatable to an extent, but he or she must caution themselves about trying to recreate life exactly as it happens. When I sit down in a theatre, or when I'm reading a novel, I want to be swept away by a character who does and says the things that I only dream about, who walks up to the girl he loves and says all the things that I only rehearse in my head. I want to follow the character who can't control his temper, but must, at all costs, be patient with his son. I want to read about the woman whose heart is so big that she refuses the let any child go hungry, so she takes orphan after orphan into her own home, saving children's lives. That's what great stories are extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
To be blunt, don't write stories about boring people. Romeo and Juliet were not boring people, they were impressionable teenagers who went to the ends of the earth to save a love that was less then a week old, those are people who are larger then life, they are extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
-jon
Theatre, movies, books, songs, no artistic storytelling should never be realistic. Now before you jump down my throat, hear me out. In order for a story to be worth telling, we as an audience need a taste of the dramatic. We need danger, excitement, characters that are larger then life, otherwise, why would we have gotten off our couch when we could have sat at home to watch our own crazy family be 'realistic'.
The storyteller may employ elements of realism, doing so helps to make the character relatable to an extent, but he or she must caution themselves about trying to recreate life exactly as it happens. When I sit down in a theatre, or when I'm reading a novel, I want to be swept away by a character who does and says the things that I only dream about, who walks up to the girl he loves and says all the things that I only rehearse in my head. I want to follow the character who can't control his temper, but must, at all costs, be patient with his son. I want to read about the woman whose heart is so big that she refuses the let any child go hungry, so she takes orphan after orphan into her own home, saving children's lives. That's what great stories are extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
To be blunt, don't write stories about boring people. Romeo and Juliet were not boring people, they were impressionable teenagers who went to the ends of the earth to save a love that was less then a week old, those are people who are larger then life, they are extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
-jon
