Can a Story Change Your Life? - Series Introduction

Is there a kind of story so good - so well executed, so resoundingly right and true - that it makes you a better person for having encountered it?  I think there is.  And I believe that anyone who's ever aspired to become a storyteller - whether as a writer, illustrator, director, or other creator - can attribute that ambition to at least one such story.  A story that bowls you over, that makes you stop and take renewed stock of your life and the world around you.  A story that forces you to reevaluate your goals and outlook.

A story's poignancy isn't determined by its own merits alone.  To work properly, a story has to open up a line of communication between its author and its audience - a kind of one-way dialogue made up entirely of action-and-reaction - the results of which rests most heavily on the audience's reaction.  In order for a story to have the kind of impact that can alter a person's life, it has to resound in the specific ways and areas that resonate with the fixtures of a person's values and beliefs.  That a story crafted by one isolated individual could achieve such a resonance with another person across time and space is itself a minor miracle.  That also means that a story that inspires and impacts one person might not reach another - at least not to the same extent.  A story's effect on an audience member falls on a continuum, and no confluence of author-story-and-audience ever falls on the exact same spot.

This dampens somewhat the usefulness of pointing out specific examples that have made an impact on me.  There's no guarantee that what I've found to be poignant and influential will have the same effect on anyone else.  But I think illustration by example may be the most accessible way to demonstrate how this miraculous conflux of entities - which is, I think, the ultimate goal of any storyteller worth his or her salt - can occur.

Accordingly, this series of posts will introduce the stories that have made this sort of lasting impact on me, and the path that has led me to where I am today.

Attaining Wisdom

"By three methods, we may learn wisdom: first by reflection, which is noblest; by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter."

- Confucius, 551-479 BC


To a certain extent, the attainment of wisdom is life's overarching endeavor.  Wisdom in this sense entails understanding: of the world, of oneself, and of the relationships that lie between.  Such understanding can be obtained through pure cogitation, which, as Confucius intimates, is the most elemental approach, as abstraction gives rise to abstraction.  Thought paves the way for comprehension.  The flow from one to the other requires no conversion from one form to another - both are constructs of cognition, built of the same brick and mortar.

Imitation, which involves the close study of the means, or path, by which a result is obtained, focuses on modality - which, if mastered, will yield a functionally equivalent result, independent of whether the actor fully appreciates the means or the end.  Perfect imitation can, potentially, be achieved by sheer rote, and in this way, prove to be the easiest means of attainment.  It entails a transition from process to object, from movement to destination.  A transition occurs from the former to the latter, but it is a natural progression, fluid in its unfurling.

Experience is by far the most immediate method, for it depends on the filter of physicality.  If reflection is a top-down approach to wisdom, experience is bottom-up: it is a latticework of particulars that form a skein of understanding by virtue of their interrelationships.  But each point of the lattice is hard-won, paid for with wages of time, effort, pain, and conflict.  And many such points are required.

Fiction, both the reading and writing of it, shares with life the attainment of wisdom as its ultimate end.  But its function, and the means by which it allows us to attain it, is an interesting hybrid of the three paths considered by Confucius.  Fiction is by its very nature a kind of directed abstraction, of cogitation distilled by the lens of the narrative structure.  Yet the use of that structure is to a certain extent an inevitable pantomime of the processes and modes used by generations of storytellers.  There is room enough for innovation and novelty, but  certain core structures and dictates must be observed - or at least comprehended.  Only by comprehending them can the storyteller then subvert or break them to positive effect.

And yet what is fiction but a simulacrum of experience?  It allows the reader - and even the author - to live countless other lifetimes, sharing in both vicarious joys and sufferings, yet also reaping the points of wisdom plotted by those would-be experiences.  It begins with the forms of abstraction, utilizes the tools of imitation, yet yields the result of experience - which, in the end, is the shared goal of all three paths.