About Everything Interesting/Everything Boring

Post 1789:

Maybe one of the only things I can say with certainty when it comes to storytelling is that anything can be interesting and anything can be boring.

How many action movies have made you fall asleep? How many page-turner thrillers have you abandoned? More than a few, I bet.

On the other hand, I’ve been completely taken in by stories that have absolutely nothing to do with me, my country, my “lived experience,” or even my idea of reality.

I’m reading (slowly) Madame Bovary right now. This should be about the last thing I’d ever like. It’s awesome. While I am not a person in France who thinks about life in terms of bedding and dresses and frocks and flowers, I’m very much invested in the characters.

Turns out, the people in this story are just as messed up as we are. I mean, you’d think there would only be so many ways to have your head screwed on wrong when you don’t even have an iPhone, but not true. Turns out, all you need to be is a regular person.

I think I go wrong in my writing when I focus too much on the situations in the story and forget the characters. It’s easy to do because the story needs to make sense and often times the writer already has a concept of how the characters feel about their world.

Don’t forget to let the reader know that they’re following someone interesting. Good or bad, worthy of their time. People want to understand, deep down. Unless the characters are poorly written. Then they’ll want to not understand. In fact, they won’t have a choice. That’s pretty much game over. You avoid that one. Cheers and see you after.