Retell the Weird Ones

Errant thoughts on the monomyth, tradition, and the ecology of storytelling.

It’s funny to me when novelists and short story writers discover that monomythical stories work on most people.

It’s also funny when they decide that well-built narratives should be delivered with beautiful language 100% of the time, as if that combo is some Platonic ideal.

Should you try to write a great story with poetic language? Sure. Do it because it’s the hardest thing to pull off, not because you think it’ll work on everyone and deliver a perfect thrill.

But don’t forget the people that are bored by a lot of monomythical stories. Don’t write off writing for people that want a strange experience. Write the book you want to read.

Also, it might be worth asking if the corpus needs another traditionally plotted book. There are plenty.

There are enough extant mythological stories to entertain the world for the rest of human history. They stick. But the weird stories get buried.

And because human consciousness way overshoots its survival duty and presents us all this excess energy, we repeat ourselves. We keep making art. This won’t stop.

Maybe the strange stories—the stories that feel unfamiliar and deeply unsettling—need to be repeated more often.

And as always, in the name of the ecology of your attention, please consider ignoring all of this.