The Power of Story

I was recently asked what makes a story come alive. My short answer to this was that a story comes alive when the words on the page not only propel the story along but also create imagery that allows the reader to experience the story both intellectually and emotionally. When a reader identifies with the characters and feels what the characters feel, that’s when the magic happens.

But the question started me thinking. When most of us think of “story”, we think of being entertained. Someone has spun a tale that makes us laugh, or cry, or scares the shit out of us.

But stories are about people — about the characters who populate the pages. (What about animals, you say, there are many stories about animals and not people. Take Watership Down for example. Yes, but in those stories we attribute human traits to the creatures that run around on the page.)

What I want as a writer is to create characters that readers see as living, breathing people. In order to do that they have to live and breathe for me. Otherwise, they will lie there on the page — lazy, boring. How do you create rich, developed characters? Through the story! We get the sense of who a character is by how he/she handles what we throw at them.

I rub my hands together in anticipation of being that puppet master that walks her darlings through an obstacle field before they can…