Why Write Stories?

Stories. We are surrounded by them. Why is story such a powerful medium, and one which we find everywhere?

When you tell someone what happened last week when you knocked over your coke and mortally stained your friend’s shirt at the restaurant, you are using Story. When you sigh and admit that greediness is your “Achilles heel”, you are using Story. When a pastor recounts The Picture of Dorian Gray to make a point about humanity, he is using story. And if none of the above apply, if you are alive (which you probably are if you are reading this), then you are living in a Story.

Why is story such a powerful medium, and one which we find everywhere?

If we believe that the world has no meaning and no order, then the very existence of story ought to be a miracle. Story is organized. Story is like life…but it isn’t…

To quote James Hynes, a novelist and writing instructor of Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques (Great Courses), story would then be the “creation of order out of disorder, meaning out of meaninglessness”. If this is true, then what are we to model great stories after? What is to be our highest aim and source of imitation? Our personal favorite book?

If we want to begin with a belief in a world of order, organized by a loving, creative, ingenious God, then story suddenly makes sense, because life is a story. This is what we must model great stories after, and this is our goal. It’s definitive, it’s sure, and it’s precise.

Now, I am of those who believe the latter statement to be true. Therefore, when I speak of story, I think of the utimate story that I aim to imitate and whose author is perfect. It gives the very meaning for which I write stories at all.

But what exactly does story have that other mediums of communication don’t?

Let’s say I wanted to express to someone how good it would be if Christians were to show more compassion and mercy towards orphans. I could simply say:

Orphans should be a major concern for the Christian community. They are vulnerable, and helpless; parentless without choice. The Bible makes it clear that it is our duty to help the poor, widows, the strangers, and the orphans.

Not bad. But would this perhaps be more poigniant?

Her last hope was gone. Papa’s face, his sturdy arms that had always pressed her close and promised to never let her go, were now buried beneath the black, sooty soil. Her heart wasn’t beating fast and loud, as she had expected it. It didn’t feel as if it had torn in two and was bleeding to death. It had turned hard with suppressed fears and the press of grief.

It should have been. Why? Because it made you step into that girl’s shoes. It made you feel her grief and her fear. 

Story acts like a metaphor. It often allows you to understand concepts in a deeper, more subtle way than any dissertation ever could. You understand the subject at a deeper level because it lets you experience something without actually living it yourself.

They say “Experience is the best teacher”. If this is true, then Stories ought to be the second best teachers. And it is…if you don’t count the other arts.

For art is the expression of ideas. It’s communicating the essentialities of life, the questions and doubts of life. It’s making people think beyond the here and now, and moving aside the curtain to remind people of the truly important things – the things behind the tasks of the everyday.

In my next post, I’ll be discussing poetry, and reasons for which we need it. Until then,

God bless!