What makes a great story?
You have to have a protagonist, someone who has a good heart. He is determined to solve the crime and get the bad guys off the street. He works really hard at being a good father and husband. She is unafraid to stand up to a system that is rigged against her. She had a difficult upbringing, but is determined to do better.
But the protagonist can’t be perfect or we can’t identify with her or him. He gets so obsessed with catching the bad guy that he neglects his family. He tries hard to be a good family man, but flat out blows it sometimes. As she fights the system, she becomes a hard person with a chip on her shoulder. In subtle ways the negative traits that she learned from her parents find new forms of expression.
For a good story you have to throw some crap at the protagonist. We have to see what happens to him when things go south and all hell breaks loose. Will he stumble? Will he come out the other end a better person? Or will he be drug down, relapse, and act out behavior that says, “Screw it!”
How is this thing going to end? Now it gets interesting.
Our lives are our story. Most everyone I know thinks they learned everything the hard way, could never have predicted all of the weird twists and turns they have encountered, and generally feel like they are living a shit show at times. Like the person in the story, we have to figure out what’s next.
People respond all different ways. We know people who do not recover from adversity and we know people who are inspirational in spite of it, even because of it.
Your life is your story. What’s done is written. The next chapter is a blank page. What will be the next few sentences? That’s up to you.
