What Makes a Good Story?

A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.

In the process of editing his memoir into a screenplay for the film Blue Like Jazz, Portland-based author Donald Miller struggles to come up with how to tell his life story in a more compelling way. This in turn, makes him question why he didn’t live a more compelling life in the first place. He chronicles this time in his search for meaning in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and these are my top 5 takeaways.

1. Reframe your life story.

I blew through Miller’s book after hearing it recommended by one of my favorite podcasters ex-Silicon Valley entrepreneur Noah Kagan. In the book, the author makes the connection between the principles of a story arc and our own lives. We live life in a story arc and oftentimes, we forget just how rich human life is.

“The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn’t that big of a deal, that life isn’t staggering. What I’m saying is I think life is staggering and we’re just used to it.”

2. Trust your struggles.

Even in difficult times, we can still be living in a good story. The most memorable characters are the ones that overcome terrible situations and come through winning. Miller encourages us to live a better story by taking risks and inviting challenges into our lives that will grow us. He pushes himself to hike the Inca Trail and bike across the country even when he was in no ready shape to do so.

“A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.”

“An inciting incident is a doorway through which the protagonist cannot return.”

“He doesn’t give up when he encounters a setback, because he knows that every story has both positive and negative turns.”

3. Live less out of habit and more on intent.

By viewing our life as a living narrative, it prompts us to live it in a way that is intentional as opposed to letting life passively happen to us. We may not be able to control when an inciting incident occurs, but it most certainly occurs for us in the benefit of character transformation.

“The reward you get from a story is always less than you though it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined. The point of a story is never about the ending, remember. It’s about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle.”

4. Find magic in the mundane.

This does not mean your life must consistently be adventurous or sacrificial. If anything, living during a pandemic has exposed us to appreciating life’s simple moments. There are countless books and movies where characters aren’t gallivanting to Mordor or crossing sand and sea for hidden treasure. But rather, there are many stories where the environment changes a little, and our pleasure comes from the protagonist’s character development.

“It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll.”

5. Connect to something greater than yourself.

As a Christian, Miller weaves in spirituality that does not detract from his message. He proposes our lives are a story arc that is placed in the arc of a larger story. As a way of abstraction, the Universe will not reveal the story of the forest and what it means for us to be a tree in the forest. At least not in this lifetime. Instead of expecting that understanding the ocean will end all our troubles, we can surprise ourselves by being content in spending time as a drop of water knowing we are a part of the ocean.

“He put us in with the sunsets and the rainstorms as though to say, ‘Enjoy your place in My story. The very beauty of it means it’s not about you, and in time, that will give you comfort.”

This book has introduced me to the perspective of seeing life in the framework of a story, overcoming fear of active editing to my own story, learning how to make for an interesting storyteller, and appreciating the delicate way life can unfold. Read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years for more stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in a real way that inspires you to love people well and do good things for the world.