What is Story?

Story is like the skeleton key which fits any lock and is able to open every door.

Do you want to teach a child something important? Tell them a story. Instead of handing off a list of countries, names and dates, history becomes an organized collection of narratives. Children who can imagine themselves walking a dirt path in a hot, sticky jungle will not soon forget a vividly told story about Dr. David Livingstone.

Do you want to convince someone to help you? Whether with a charitable endeavor or an artistic undertaking, you will win participants best by casting a vision illustrating how they can be involved, how they can contribute in ways no one else can, and how they can benefit. You’ll want to create a clear picture of this vision. If you want to engage a person’s emotional and intellectual investment, you’ll need to tell them a story—the story of what you envision happening when the two of you work together toward a common goal.

Do you want to sell something? Problems aside, all marketing is storytelling with a huge side helping of suggestion. First, a suggestion you might be hungry followed by a story about how delicious and healthy and cool it is to consume ______ product. First, a picture of what it’s like to be happy, and then a story about how happiness is connected to the scent of lemon and the taste of fizz and a good deal of sunshine on one’s skin. We eat up stories all the time, without even realizing a story’s being told.

There are countless illustrations of this facet of human nature. Stories can protect people from danger, prepare a response, change a mind, save a life, teach a lesson, soothe a trauma, unlock a secret, hide a crime. The people who are highly skilled at telling stories other people believe are often extremely successful or extremely evil—sometimes both.

Then there are the writers who take up story-crafting as their profession. I’m tempted to think stories are so innate to human beings, we authors ought to be able to spin them off with ease. But the opposite is the case. We who are in love with words, who see symbols and plotlines woven throughout our lives in vivid detail, come to a page and wrestle a story onto it. We push through a jungle of distractions, hesitations, self-doubt and second guessing. If story is the air humans breathe, we writers become word-microbiologists. We put thousands of invisible molecules of story under our microscopes, searching for the secret of how it all works. And we come away knowing less than we thought we knew. We grow more in love with the art, despite being frustrated by aspects of storycraft that persistently elude us. At least, that’s how I’ve been experiencing this journey.

How has story changed you?

How have you used it in key moments of your life?

I like to view a whole person as a Story. We all have a beginning, a middle, and an end. We’re all written upon by Truth. There are plot twists and character developments and tropes. Human nature itself is a trope we cannot escape mimicking. No matter how unique and original you are, there’s nothing new about your experience of life and the world—we share a common ancestry. We tell stories to each other as a form of connection. The stories are in our bones, and that’s why we can be changed at our deepest levels by stories. But stories are also the atmosphere we are swimming in, breathing in, consuming, and producing. They’re as common as sunshine.

If story is a skeleton key, I think the world is made of doors.