What Is A Story

What is a story in terms of human experience? What does it do that is universally true for all of us? Synonyms for story include description and drama, history and myth, record and fantasy, all ways of giving understanding to events, of making sense of our relationships. A good story, one with believability, becomes our understanding of what happened and informs our sense of new experiences.

Take the shortest story as an example.
“For sale. Baby shoes. Never used.”
Once you’ve read that, a new pair of baby shoes at Goodwill are never viewed the same way.

So, if like me, you sometimes wonder why bother writing when you have so much else to do or creativity fails to motivate, or -definitely like me- you’re just being lazy, remind yourself that in many cultures, writing is seen as a means to connect with the divine. In Western culture, it allows for the preservation and transmission of knowledge, wisdom, and cultural heritage across generations. On a personal level, writing can be a deeply personal and introspective activity. It allows us to express our innermost thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Oh, and it can be art.

I mention all this because writers work to make their story real for their reader. In doing so, they both describe, and create, reality. The reader is left with a sense that they have experienced something new. And they have. Some books, like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, have profoundly altered their readers’ perceptions of reality.

Stories that create a new bit of reality are like Schrödinger’s Cat – they come into existence when read.

What is a story to you?