Viewing entries tagged
writing

Plot choices

Since January 1, there have been three specific subjects that have leapt to the surface of all the conversations I've been having. On both sides of the vax fence, across the wealth and privilege spectrum, and with no regard to age or gender, these three threads of consciousness keep spiking up, like a heartbeat monitor, or a FaceBook ad. Ordinarily I might have overlooked them as, well, pretty legitimate concerns given the world we're in right now. But, the three threads together caught my attention, so here we are.

The first thread is this:

"It's a new year, I must plan my days, make some resolutions."

The second, not surprisingly, is this one:

"The world is so uncertain right now. I feel more fear than hope. I don't know how I'll actually get through this year."

And the third, probably due to my role as a Story Coach, is this:

"I'm not a storyteller."

Maybe you can see already how these three ideas connect, but it took me a while. I had to close my eyes and just type it out - freewriting the tangled mess of thoughts and intuition in my head. As I typed, I realised I was feeling some anger, and frustration, and some hope.

I'm frustrated at most of humanity, to be honest, including myself. Every time we say "I'm not a storyteller" or "I don't have any good stories to tell" or "I just live a normal boring life" it jars my soul. Because we are ALL storytellers. We are constantly telling and retelling our stories, to ourselves, to our friends and family and kids and social networks. We go to sleep telling our stories to ourselves, making things mean this or that, blaming this person or that person, validating this hurt or elevating this piece of ego. We are prolific storytellers.

This is the whole reason I do what I do: I think EVERYONE needs to share their stories. I think it's vital for humanity, that the rest of us hear what you have discovered about the world we're all scrambling through. We are all built to consume stories, and we are all, always, telling them. And while my job is to help people craft their ideas in a way that is meaningful, the paradigm goes far beyond books and presentations. We have the power to craft our life stories in the same way.

But, when our crafting ends up on auto-pilot, our stories end up just feeding our ego, or our pain, or our pride. Even though they have such great power to nourish our souls with deeper elements like meaning, peace and hope.

(I guess this is all sounding a bit mad by now, but stay with me. I'll either bring this home, or completely lose my way. It's really 50/50 at this stage...)

For me, what connects the three big ideas together - making plans, fear and uncertainly, storytelling - is CHOICE.

A writer is constantly making choices about the events that are included in their story. While absolutely EVERYTHING might happen to a character, not everything deserves equal weight, and the writer will elevate some events, diminish others, and even cut some scenes from the book, in order to keep the focus on what is important. And we do the exact same thing in our lives. When we retell our stories, and when we are right in the middle of living a story, we will unconsciously elevate certain events and diminish others. I do this all the time, and very often I end up with a story that feeds my own ego: "here's a story of my day that shows how awesome I am..." or worse, "...how tragic my life is."

The power a writer has, and the power we all have in life, is this: We have the agency to elevate or diminish the impact of an event in our lives. And we can craft the telling of these events in such a way as to transform ourselves, and those around us.

Even with all the uncertainty, we can still ask ourselves questions like "what is valuable in life?" "what do I believe about love? Hope? Beauty?" And then we sort through the mess of life events, elevate some and diminish others, and slowly craft a story that resonates with that message.

The way we shape our stories can bring hope, encourage a fresh perspective on life, contribute to a deep insight of the world, all of those things. When we don't have so much control over the events, we still have control over the telling of the story, and it's my hope that all of us take up the "storyteller" mantle for ourselves, and curate our experiences in a way that will nourish our souls, and eventually, perhaps the soul of the world too.

Looking for the exits

Last year, I wrote about Rach's shakti mat. It was all about distributing conflict, so as to avoid one piece of discomfort becoming so sharp and urgent that it takes over our whole life. It's a great read, I think (and you can find it at nathanmaddigan.com/blog) but it turns out, I'm not done with this damn shakti mat.

Yesterday, I was lying on it again. And it hurt so much.

First I tried to ignore the pain - you know, think happy thoughts, tell myself stories, replay a tv show in my head - but that didn't work at all. So then I tried to get away from the pain somehow. I'd sit up, try and roll over a bit, arch my back so that less tiny spikes were stabbing me. But nothing helped.

It was exhausting, and frustrating, and somehow, the pain kept hurting. And it felt broad, like it was everywhere. Any mental exit I ran to was suddenly blocked by the pain. Happy thoughts, stories, the tv show, they all had this cloud of discomfort that dropped between us, so that I couldn't find the door handle and escape.

My mind felt like it was rolling around in a soft panic, unconsciously pushing back against the pain, searching for a way out.

After a few minutes of this torture, I tried something new. I gave up.

I stopped looking for exits and just leaned all the way into the mat, and focussed my attention on the needles pressing into my skin.

It was a completely different experience. My mind cleared, the panic subsided, and I felt free to just put that pain into its own compartment. Once I allowed myself to focus directly on the pain, I could see its edges, and it wasn't as huge as I thought. It wasn't all-consuming.

It was there, but it wasn't EVERYWHERE. When I was ignoring it and searching for relief, it felt like it was everywhere, and it was trapping me, controlling me. When I looked directly at it, I kind of trapped the pain instead. I could see all the exits now, I had some perspective back.

As I kept doing this focusing-thing: eyes closed, attention narrowed to the pointy daggers in my back, I began to notice something else: the pain was becoming less. My body was getting used to it, my mind was observing it, and I began relaxing, softening.

It was doing its Shakti-mat-healing thing, I suppose. The pain was slowly replaced with a warmth, as the blood flowed to areas on my skin that needed it the most.

Whatever was happening there, five minutes later I was so comfortable I had a nap. Truly. Right there on a bed of nails.

Now, please, please hear me: this post isn't really about pain, per se. I'm in no way suggesting that I have some kind of zen-like solution to pain, especially debilitating chronic pain, and I'm definitely not playing it down. Experiencing ANY amount of pain sucks. It hurts, sometimes a whole lot. Sometimes it takes over your entire life, and every day is a struggle to keep going.

With deep respect to those who experience this kind of life, it would be daftly naive of me to profess to know how you feel, or give you some kind of solution. This post is not *that*.

If anything, this experience with the shakti mat might just be a metaphor for the way many of us deal with discomfort.

In storytelling, characters will always try and avoid discomfort. They look away, turn away, walk away, avoid, ignore, distract... It's human nature, and it's okay. If a character didn't do it, we wouldn't even believe the story. It would seem somehow false.

The problem is, while the characters try and avoid all discomfort, the writer is spending all their time focusing on it. Writers know that stories need conflict. That conflict drives change, decision, transformation, all of that. So the writer will be considering the pain in great detail, finding the best way to get it right up in the face of the characters so that they must engage with it, and respond to it somehow.

I hate discomfort. And conflict, and pain. I'd choose comfort every chance I get, just quietly.

But, this shakti mat helped me realise that when there does happen to be a pain, a discomfort in my life somewhere, things do NOT go well for me or those around me if all I do is run about in a panic, looking for exits. I don't treat people well, I don't think straight, and I often don't even know exactly what it is that is hurting me. I only know that it keeps getting in the way of my exit strategy.

It's only when I stop unconsciously reacting to the hurt, and deliberately look at the source, not the exits, that I find my way forward.

So, with all that Rach and I have on this coming year, I know there will be great discomforts, great challenges and conflicts and hurdles to get over together, and as a character I'm completely terrified of that.

But as a writer, I'm wildly excited about this story. This year is going to be great.

All words no pictures

I love this week between Christmas and New Year. Nobody seems to know what to do. Some shops are closed, some are open, most of the population have headed away from the city for their holidays, and those that are left wander the streets like kings of the apocalypse, owners of a ghost town. None of the usual rules apply.

It's a limbo week, as the year wraps itself up, and everything new is right there on the horizon. Fresh starts and open skies, just over that ridge. And as we walk towards the shiny lights, we discard the luggage of the year, letting go all the victories, the defeats, the joys and the hurts, so that we can start again.

This year for me was all words, and no pictures. For fifty-two weeks, I only wrote. As a photographer, who was only known for being a photographer, this was a different path, and certainly not one that any business coach would advise. "Leverage your imagery" they would say. "Don't waste that talent."

But, way back in January I wrote about "chasing ourselves" no matter the cost. That is, leaning in to who we are becoming - whenever we discover another piece of ourselves we chase it down, and we keep growing.

And that's really what I did this year. There were so many pieces of myself that resonated so strongly around meaning, relationships and storytelling that I wrote all year about it, and had the pleasant surprise of not running out of things to say.

I've loved every moment of this process. It was hard sometimes in those zero-degree mornings to get up and write, and it was hard after a 15-hour day to head out to a bar and write, but every single time I did it, I loved it.

Story theorist Robert McKee once wrote that when we experience a story, we are seeing the storyteller's own map of the hidden order of life. In all the things I've written, some of them simple stories, some of them a little more complex, what has risen to the surface are ideas around meaning, connection, conflict, relationships, identity, work, authenticity, truth, awareness, love, and whimsy. And all of it, wrapped in this frame of "storytelling," and "story-living."

If these elements were my personal map of life's hidden order, I'd be okay with that.

I'm excited about 2022. I'm excited to write more words, and perhaps also play with some pictures again. Or video. Or paint. Maybe some interpretive dance. I'm sure the medium doesn't matter as much as any of us think. But whichever form it takes, I hope I can keep accessing my map of life's hidden order, and when I share it, I hope that you will take only what is useful for your own world, at the right time.

Thank you for your encouragement over the year. Thank you for reading and commenting and sharing. I know I'm just writing for myself ultimately, but it's really fun to hear how these words resonate with others. We really are all in this together.

And Rach, thank you for giving me that soft but oh-so-powerful permission each day to spend the time.

With so much love, and giddy excitement for the new year.

The Christmas show

One year in my early twenties, I was in a Christmas production for our local church. I played Joseph, soon to be married to Mary, the mother of Jesus. I’m not sure how I was roped in to this role, but it probably had something to do with Mim.

Mim - Miriam was her full name - was the kind of human that was just born with shine. At nineteen years old, she was already completely fine in her own skin - confident, dorky, just as willing to get up on a stage as she was sweeping up the trash after a show. She laughed all the time, and she talked all the time, and her talk was filled with questions, ideas, and rants about God and boys.

Once, she was so into her monologue that she followed me into the church bathrooms, all the way in. She even stepped up to the urinal with me, at which point I waved a hand in front of her face, pointed down, and laughed “Mim. Urinal.”

“What?” She looks around like she just teleported onto the tiles, and her eyes go wide. “Oh shit!” she squeals, and careens away, like a baby giraffe on a slip-and-slide, “Ew! Ew! Gross! Ew!” Mim was great.

So, Mim and I were in this play. For a week leading up to Christmas we would act out the birth of Jesus - the Christmas story. Mim played Mary, and most of the days she got to hold a real live baby, which was pretty special for the audience. There were shepherds, and wise men, and a star, and a choir. We even had a real donkey. Just the one donkey, but it somehow represented all the animals in the manger, or something. What it did best was leave enormous landmines at the door of the church. But between the dumping donkey and the real-live baby Jesus, we had a pretty solid production going on.

What I remember most though, was the Thursday lunchtime show. The show where everything fell apart.

First, the baby wasn’t available. Double booked for a Huggies commercial I suppose. “Fine,” says Mim, “I can nurse a little watermelon or something."

Then, the donkey got lost, somewhere on the farm. Then two of the three wise men had forgotten to ask their parents for permission to be here, and were stuck at home. One by one, the cast dropped away, until our production manager Kelsey declared that we’d have to cancel. She said it was only a small group of parents anyway, and they could attend the Friday show.

Mim shrugged, and looked at me. “What else can we do? We can’t play all the roles ourselves, and I don’t have that many watermelons."

I looked back at her, and because she had asked the question, I felt I needed to answer.

“Let’s do it anyway.” I say.

“You’re kidding. With watermelons?” Mim claps her hands.

“Watermelons are expensive.” Kelsey states with a frown.

“No, not watermelons,” I’m staring over Mim’s shoulder to the television in the corner, some talk show is playing on mute. “Let’s have a question-and-answer time. Mim, you and I can just be Mary and Joseph and let the audience ask us questions. We can still share the Christmas story, but it can be more casual, you know?"

Kelsey is still frowning, but I know she’d rather run something than have to cancel. Mim is nodding slowly, eyes bright, a little half-smile on her lips.

“Let’s do it!” Mim announces.

So, an hour later, before an audience of twenty, Miriam and I walk onto the stage, all dressed up in cliche Biblical attire, and pull up some stools.

—

Back then, I had no idea what the ingredients were for a successful story. I thought we just share information, and label it “story.” That was what our production had been doing all week: We were pretty much laying out the information about Jesus’ birth, with some actors reading some lines.

So when our first question, from a young mother on the front row, was “Um.. How was your trip to Bethlehem?” we replied with some information: “Oh, fine thank you. We took a camel from here to here, there was no room at the inn so we found a stable…” etc. Even as I was sharing it, I felt the energy dropping. Information-sharing isn’t the same as storytelling.

Another question followed, for Mim, “Mary, it must feel wonderful to have such a supportive man by your side, while you carry the Lord’s child inside you?”

It wasn’t even a question, but Mim responded with a smile, “Oh yes, it's really very nice."

Energy. Dropping some more.

What happened next was out of character for me, except that I was playing IN character, so it seemed to fit. A man in the back row was already asking another question, and I stood up, with my fake beard and funny robe, and I held out my hand, which stopped the question mid-sentence.

“Hold on.” I said, taking in the surprise on each face, and the concern on Kelsey’s. “I.. Um..” I looked at Mim, who looked equally surprised, but excited too - she gave me a little nod and a smile. “To be honest,” I continued, “it wasn’t nice at all. It was horrible.”

There were a few gasps, and Kelsey slapped her palm into her face, but in such a way that she didn’t even blink, which I thought was impressive.

“What was horrible, Joseph?” A grandfather at the side of the group seemed truly curious.

“The whole process!” I replied, sitting back on my stool and shaking my head. “How would YOU react to your fiancé suddenly and mysteriously becoming pregnant, and then saying the baby was God's?” Mim caught up instantly.

“It’s true, Joseph was a mess! He did not NOT take it well.” She crossed over to me and put her hand on my shoulder, still addressing the crowd. “He thought I’d cheated on him. Then he though I was mistaken, making it all up. We had some fights.”

“Some big fights.” I continued. “I mean, she’d never done anything like this before, but it was really hard to get my head around. I was so angry.”

“What were you angry at?” A tiny woman sitting on the floor called out.

“Well, I was angry at Mary, for being so calm about it all, and I was angry at God, for doing things in a way that I just NEVER understand, and I was angry at myself, for not knowing how to deal with it all.” I took a breath. "I wasn’t being my best self, and I couldn’t change it, and I hate that."

I had passed my hand over my eyes for a second, and when I looked up, everyone was staring at us. There were nods in the crowd, a few tears. Mim returned to her stool, and the questions after that became a lot more interesting. We talked about the Christmas story, sure, but we did it in a profoundly human way, with real emotions and conflicts and doubt.

We’d somehow shifted from the surface questions of “what happened?” to the deeper story-questions of “what did you make all that mean?” and “what do you believe about it?”

At the end of our hour, the audience applauded and many came over and hugged us. One man said that he finally understood something he’d been struggling with for a decade. The tiny woman on the floor shook my hand solemnly and said that she absolutely does not believe in God, but she thinks He did a good job when He created human emotions.

Another woman drew Mim aside and sternly advised her to raise the child well, and not let him ever be ashamed of his beginnings. Mim nodded sagely and thanked her with a hug.

I think I remembered that hour so clearly because, out of all the shows, this one seemed to matter. Whatever happened there wasn’t the usual information-sharing, with a bit of entertainment thrown in. It went deeper. The audience were moved. And we felt great playing our part in that movement.

I reckon this was what playwrights felt when they put a new play on the stage, and saw their audience engaging with the story. And it is probably why they write such elements into their scripts as vulnerability, honesty, conflict and beauty.

Because we want our interactions with others to matter. And all these elements of humanity - the vulnerability and the conflict - help to unearth the stuff that matters.

A social constellation

A few days ago, Rach and I found ourselves driving along the coast of Cottesloe, heading towards a party filled with people we mostly wouldn't know. The sun splashed sideways across the windshield, catching on every dust spot and unfortunate bug that had settled on the glass. Beach-pines lined the road on our left, creating a strobe of shadows and blinding brights as we cruised past the little beaches and ice cream shops.

"I might not last too long tonight." Rach says. "We've been up since five am, hey?"
I look over to her, awash in the flickering golden light, and want nothing more than to turn the car around, head home, and snuggle in to bed with snacks and a movie. "I'm with you, love. We can just drop in, say hi to our new friends, and then sneak away."
She nods, and smiles at me. I don't know if her smile looked tired, or if it was my tiredness that made me interpret it that way.

I sometimes wonder why we say "yes" to things. What was going on in my head that caused me to respond so positively to an invite from a stranger? By saying "yes" Rach and I effectively locked ourselves in to a commitment that would take energy, time and even money (we are bringing a plate and a beverage after all) for potentially zero returns.

On the rational surface, we both should have said "no." Our weeks are busy, our bodies tired. But there was something else in us, something deeper, that whispered "yes." Something aspirational, perhaps.

I slowed the car as we got closer to the address, looking for parking, and taking in the area. On our left was the ocean, on our right, our destination: an ageing apartment block, old - like 70's old - red brick and white cement, pretty run-down really. As we rolled past, I could see couches and rugs laid out on the grass behind the letterboxes. Low tables with cheeses and a little stage in the corner. It was neither a house party nor a beach party, being where it was right there on the verge. A border party, maybe. Switzerland.

We parked a bit further up, and started walking. There was a delicious barbecue aroma in the air, and some upbeat tunes in the wind. Around us, others were arriving, converging from all directions. I imagined what this would look like from high above, through a filter that only sees energies, and none of the geography.

I would be a pale blue line, travelling from there to here. Rach would be a yellow line, right now snaking alongside me, but will no doubt skew once we arrive at the party. And then there would be all these other lines - every colour in existence, all streaking across the landscape, heading towards each other. I imagine it would look a bit like a constellation, with each intersection of lines a tiny stardust explosion. Every crossing of one human with another, a potential connection point, a potential new creation.

The possibilities that these simple intersections carry are mind-blowing, if you think about it. Five years ago my line crossed with Rach's and we backtracked, crossed again, spun and danced and twined ourselves up so tight together that it must have looked like a supernova tied in a knot.

We step off the curb and enter the party - all these energetic lines slide past us, weaving, sparking, all smiles. A complete stranger in aviator glasses points at me from across the grass, waves, and nods his head knowingly before turning back to his conversation. I laugh, surprised by the gesture, and another stranger sees my smile and returns one of her own.

Something happens in places like this, places where all our lines converge. I'm sure it can go either way, but what I saw on this afternoon was a gathering of souls all attuned to the same intention: openness, grace, kindness, interest. We all thought the best of another, and gave the best of ourselves.

As the sun dropped below the horizon, the live band gave way to the DJ, and the picnic blankets became little dance floors. Neither of us wanted to leave. I was deep in a conversation with some new friends, and Rach was dancing with a diminutive ninja sporting an afro and a catgirl mask. We stayed for hours, laughing, dancing, connecting. The tiredness that accompanied us on our drive here had certainly not stuck around.

It's a strange dynamic, this give-and-take of energy between humans. Without any of the intersections, Rach and I would have lasted ten minutes at that place. But our lines collide with others, and in little starbursts of humanity we both light up. And we return with stories, experiences, new friends, even new projects to begin together.

When storytellers are crafting a meaningful story for their characters, they will use "conflict" as a vehicle to get their characters moving, growing, changing. But conflict isn't always painful: sometimes it's just the thing that pushes up against comfort. Technically speaking, it was harder work to go out and talk and listen and dance than it would have been to just watch a show in bed. But, once we were there, once we tipped ourselves out of the comfort and into the melee of life, we actually enjoyed the additional work.

It’s like we needed to be here, at this place we didn’t want to be at, because it would make our lives more meaningful. And in a story, the writer knows this. The writer knows what each character is capable of, and will place them in circumstances and interactions that will get them there. I think we can all have some measure of trust in our innate human ability, when intersecting with others, to shine.

This is why writers throw characters into difficult situations. It’s not cruelty. It’s omniscience.

Deus ex machina

This week Rach and I had lunch with our accountant, Hau (pronounced "how," just to save your brain for the remainder of this post.)

Hau is an incredibly generous, powerful and humble soul, who has taken care of me ever since we studied business and accounting together. In those classes, he was the A-grade student who would have his head down, scribbling furiously and soaking in all the information, while I was the art-brained student, clearly on the wrong career path, staring out the window and falling asleep on the desk.

I don't even know how we became friends, but decades later here we are - meeting over lunch to talk about family, love, tax and cryptocurrency.

On our way in, Rach and I were not doing well. We were shattered, heart-sore and bank-account-sore, to be honest. We are in the middle of a thing that demands all our time and all our savings, so each day is a battle to stay above the chaos. Our "thing" is epic - the destination is so exciting - but some days, the journey really hurts.

So we drove in silence. We took some deep breaths and sometimes reached for each other's hand. I couldn't get my words right, and there was a lump in my throat.

The restaurant was in the Crown complex, so we drove to the free parking area then started walking. In a few minutes we were surrounded by shiny lights, glass towers, theatres and bars. The casino was pumping. As we passed the entry, each gripping the other's hand a little too tight, I imagined just swinging in to the roulette table. "Five minutes," I'd tell Rach, and then I'd bet the car, or something, and win big, and walk out with a cool million in cash, and then finally be able to buy Hau lunch instead of the other way round.

Hau meets us with laughs and hugs, shaking his head at everything that's going on in his life. "Eat! Eat!" he tells us, "what are we just sitting here for?" And we head to the buffet. I'm still deciding which kind of rice should accompany my first scoop of curry and Hau swings past with a plate full of vegetables and greens and something that looks like salmon crossed with a dumpling crossed with a cucumber. "Come on Nathan! Fill your plate man!"

I'm still thinking about the casino. How great life would be if we just won a bazillion dollers. How much of the chaos could be removed.

—

In ancient Greek and Roman drama, there was a practice that playwrights often employed to resolve the chaotic plot lines in their stories. When everything got too messy, instead of working the characters through conflict, growth and change, the writers would simply have one of their many gods turn up to solve everything.

Literally, two minutes before the end of the play, an actor playing a god would appear, suspended by a crane over the stage, and they would fix everything.

In Latin, this was called “deus ex machina.”

God, from a machine.

We use the same phrase today in writing, to describe random acts or events that save everything, that come out of nowhere and just fix all the chaos and resolve all the conflict. It’s the weakest way to resolve a plot, and the audience feels it instinctively: all this conflict was built up, ready for some powerful story-moments, and then, poof! Any sense of meaning turns to disappointment, eye-rolling, frustration.

All that aside, I’d still be up for a super-improbable event to solve all my problems. Maybe a rich relative could leave me a mansion?

—

Hau is talking about crypto now. There was a big crash in the market recently, and many investors were left with nothing. Hau said that those who lost everything were the ones who put all their hopes in the one magical crypto stock that they hoped would take them to the moon. They stopped trying, growing, learning, he said, and instead they just waited.

I ask what stops him from becoming like them - content to just wait for the big rescue. He pauses to think, and then tells us that every morning when he wakes, he signs the cross, and gives thanks for his breath, his health, the sunlight on his face, the children in his household. He doesn’t demand or expect a magical rescuer. He just gets into the work, and remains thankful for any provision that comes his way.

I look over his shoulder to the flashing lights of the keno machines, and give a little sigh.

As we walk back across the parking lot, nothing has been solved. Hau didn’t fix us, we didn’t win a million dollars, and we’re already late for our next thing. But, Hau did give us a "next step," and we’re already talking excitedly about the work. We’re either foolish or courageous, but either way we’re not afraid to get back into the work, to keep going in the conflict.

I hope our audience never gets the chance to roll their eyes at us. I hope that we can keep going, keep engaging in the highs and lows. There is so much meaning to be found, moments to experience, good work to complete, and so many incredible humans to share life with.

We are capable of bringing our own order into the chaos, and if a "deus ex machina" moment happens, we’ll take it for sure, but it’s going to have to keep up, because we’ve got work to do.

Show don't tell - llet t'nod wohS

After last week’s post, where I dropped in the concept of “show don’t tell,” I haven’t been able to let it go. All week, there’s been a vague shadow of an idea, like an irrepressible ghost trying to get through to me.

I’d be cleaning my teeth, and over my shoulder is this thought, just kind of staring at me, eyebrows raised.

I’m in a meeting, and across the room in an empty chair, the thought is sipping ice water and rolling its eyes at my jokes.

Even now, in this bar with the renaissance cat paintings on the wall - the thought is next to me, flicking my glass, drumming its fingers on the table, staring at me expectantly.

Fine, I say to the shadow. I’ll write you.

--

The concept of “show don’t tell” is as old as any story. It’s powerful because it’s true, but it’s not simple, and it’s not binary.

On stage or screen, yes, we craft the story so that the audience can see the character’s identity through the actions they take. But what about literature? We learn so much about a character through their own internal dialogue, about how they perceive their world, and that’s all TELL, without any SHOW.

I am more like a book than a movie. I’m ruminative. I need to talk things through before ever acting. I have to speak, rant, question, second-guess myself, to get some clarity. And it’s not just clarity on what to DO, but even what it is I BELIEVE. My friend Jason and I are both ruminators, and will spend countless hours wandering city streets, spending a whole night on a single topic, just musing and playing with ideas around it, trying to get to the core of what each of us believe.

It sounds a lot like "all talk no action." How does “show don’t tell” work for that?

Often I have behaved as if my life were literature, and others could just read my mind. I’ve assumed that they understand my intentions, my motivations, my heart. On the inside I’m feeling all these things, and believing all these things, while on the outside, I’m as dull as a brick. I remember once being accused of indifference, of not caring about someone, and I was so shocked. To me, I cared deeply about this person - they were always on my mind - but to them, I was distant and uncaring.

Nobody can read our minds. Whatever we are thinking needs to be demonstrated somehow before others can believe it.

So we speak, or we act.

But, if we ONLY speak, then we may not seem authentic. We say things that aren’t proved by actions.

And if we ONLY act, then our actions can be misinterpreted. We do things that aren’t explained clearly.

“Show don’t tell” becomes a lot less simple, and certainly not universally true. To be honest (and to borrow a phrase from a Roblox game my kids play) it’s an absolute clutter-funk.

—

I look over at the shadow-thought, reclining in the candlelight, and I scowl.
"You are not easy to write." I grumble.
“But here you are writing” it replies smugly.
"But all I’m doing is dumping words onto a page. Adding to the noise. It’s all ‘tell.’" I say.
“So it doesn’t matter?”
“If I don’t do this, nothing happens at all. The words stay locked in my head, and nothing reaches anyone.”
“So it does matter?”
“Oh shut up."

—

Show. Tell. Talk. Act. They're all important. And we’ll all do it differently. This dance between speaking our truths, and acting on them, is a fluid, ever-changing energy, and really can't be constrained to a rulebook of specifics.

It's frustrating to admit, but most of our decisions are born from intuition rather than logic. Behind all the words and all the actions is a mysterious drive, a spark, a shadow of an idea that pushes us towards speaking or acting, and I don’t really know how much control we have over that. I heard an interview with a writer this week, and she was asked about her process, the rules she followed for writing her books.

She said that no system has ever worked for her. She said that the words come, and all she can do is write, and observe what she is writing, and make sure she believes it, and then edit appropriately.

Which I thought was wonderful, because I can’t do systems either. For writing or for living. But I can try to stay open to intuition, and respond with both words and actions, and then observe it all, and make changes, and keep growing.

—

I stare over my empty glass with a sigh, and the shadow-idea stares back.

“Is it enough?” I ask, a bit hopelessly.

The shadow leans forward, places a hand on mine, and smiles. “It’s enough."

The "inspirational writer"

This week Rach and I attended a book launch for a dear friend of ours, John Woodhouse, whose book I had designed. It's an enormous art book, so the launch was also a one-night exhibition, with framed proofs of images from the book up on walls for purchase. A few hundred people attended - artists, collectors, models, restauranteurs, business owners, photographers, writers - the group was extraordinarily diverse.

As we mingled and flowed around the artworks, we would strike up conversations with strangers, sharing what we loved about a particular piece on the wall, or what we loved about John. Just as each artwork was born out of nothing, each of our conversations and connections were now doing the same thing. Nothing into something. I was loving the evening.

A half-hour into the event, I was being introduced to someone, and it went like this:

“Nathan is a writer - he writes inspirational words… He’s an inspirational writer. You write inspirational words too, don’t you? Beautiful. You two should talk..”

And we talked. My new friend quickly clarified that no, she’s not an “inspirational writer,” she just writes as honestly as she can, and she hasn’t even done that much lately. And I qualified myself too, explaining that I don’t even understand the term, but it didn’t sound as complimentary as I’m sure it was intended. “Inspirational” sounds like some kind of advertising angle, or self-help guru. Here, have a warm fuzzy to get you through your day.

Not that it matters, really. In writing, in art, in life, we all do things, and everyone else makes it mean something for themselves, and we have very little control over it.

Sometimes the things people conclude about us are complimentary, and we feel great about ourselves. Other times, it’s hard judgement, and we feel horrid. Either way, us humans seem to have this uncanny habit of subscribing to it.

We just go there, immediately.

“She said I was rude to her friends! What a bitch!”
“He called me fat! He’s so mean… but he’s right, I think.”
“They gave me an award! I. Am. Amazing!”
“I didn’t win the award! I'm so crap and talentless.”
“She told me I’m boring… I am so boring.”
“2000 likes! I am so popular!”
“Only 39 likes.. I am such a nobody."
"There's a comment on my feed about my face. Am I ugly?"

We take these tiny comments from others, and we blow them up, we call them truth, and we put so much head and heart space into them. We subscribe.

There is a character in episode five of BJ Novak’s wonderful new show, The Premise, who describes her Instagram commenters as truth-tellers. "They are objectively right” she declares, because they are distant and don’t know her, so can’t be subjective. And her own voice doesn’t matter, because she is too close to herself, so can’t be objective.

Obviously it’s pretty extreme to write off the opinions of anyone who actually knows us, and trust only in the opinions of strangers. But it’s equally extreme to only believe ourselves, our “inner voice” and ignore any praise or criticism from others: how would we ever grow?

So where do we land, then? If everyone is just doing their best to fill in the gaps of their understanding of each other, no-one is going to get it right. We’re all essentially playing Marco Polo in the dark, hoping someone will guide us towards our best selves.

There is a well-known phrase in storytelling, “show don’t tell,” that encourages the writer to let the character come to life through their ACTIONS, not through any words the writer might say about them. If the character is brave, for example, we don’t write “Emily was a brave woman.” Instead we place Emily in a situation that elicits a response, and when she acts bravely, the audience draws the insight of bravery for themselves. The words aren’t truth. The action is truth.

Extending the concept, if Emily were to SAY something like “I am so brave,” it would also not mean anything until she acts. If she says “I’m fun” or “I’m so boring” or “I am not rude” or even “I am inspirational,” none of the words really matter.

Once she acts, then the audience knows the truth. She has to SHOW, not TELL.

To combat all the words, the judgements, the criticisms, the praise, perhaps we could just turn down the volume, and NOT subscribe. Perhaps we can use all that energy that we would have used to reply, defend, share, amplify and put it towards DOING something. Just doing the things that resonate with who we want to be.

People can call me an “inspirational writer” and they can call me a “shallow romantic dreamer.” They can say I’m a super privileged white man, and they can say I’m too young and optimistic. They can even say I’m a bad father, while others tell me I’m dad-of-the-year. And then I can say even more things about myself, just to try and keep up with it all.

But the best thing I can do, and the only thing that can really make any impact, is this:

KNOW what I think is important in life.
DO things that support that.

For me, here’s what I think is important:

I think we are all built to witness - to interpret our world and each other. We are built to inspire, encourage, excite and inform each other.

So when somebody makes what I say or do MEAN something for them, even if it’s different to what I intended, I will try and be interested, instead of defensive. They've seen something I haven't, and it could be useful for me to hear it, without taking out a whole subscription to the idea.

Because I’m still learning about myself, it’s all just words anyway, and tomorrow I’ll be getting right back into the truth-doing.

Subplots

When I think of my life, I mostly see stories. The past, with its memories and experiences. The future, all hopes and dreams. And the present, where I try and direct my story so that I get things I want in life. Basically.

This isn’t a new revelation or anything, and we all do it. It’s fundamentally human to arrange our lives into stories, and it’s how we end up connecting with other humans: we share our experiences and we listen to others’ share theirs. I'll ask you about love, and you might start with something intellectual, but you’ll end up referencing a personal experience.

If I ask about shame, it would be the same thing. Or laughter, or God, or book reading, trees, swimming pools, fresh bread, sleep, Sonic the Hedgehog.. No matter what the subject is, you and I will both head to the library in our heads and find the book that connects to the topic, and we’ll share it.

I have friends who are amazing at accessing the right book at the right moment. For any subject or topic, they can just grab the relevant book off their mental shelf and share their story. They are some of the most entertaining humans I know.

I tend to meander through my library. I’m not quick to grab the obvious book, because for me there isn’t one. There are ten. You say “swimming pool” and I reach for the books about "gasping for air," “summer nights,” “whirlpools with neighbours,” "skinny dipping in Los Angeles" and "favourite kitchen designs."

And the older we get, the more stories gather in our mental bookshelves. Stories and opinions and insights and memories. We have galaxies in us.

But here's where it falls apart. As magical as our brains are at cataloguing all this data, it's still a bloody big bookshelf. And, if we're honest with ourselves, our cataloguing system is a complete mess. With every new experience, we toss another book onto the pile. It's easy to start looking at our lives as an eclectic mix of disconnected experiences.

For my story coaching clients, our greatest challenge is almost always this one: to craft meaningful plot lines out of all the random experiences and ideas of life. Without curating and arranging the stories, the whole thing becomes noise.

I have a dear friend who recently shared with me how much of her life feels like noise. She said she has been working on so many subplots in her life that she can't even find a central plot anymore. She had invested her life into the side-hustle of her children, for example, and suddenly realised she had lost her self in the process.

Kids are a big one, but it’s not only the “children” subplot that can take us over. We give so much time to our work, our hobbies, our partner, our responsibilities, our health, our studies, that it’s no surprise we lose our hold on a “central plot” for our lives. In fact, for many of us, we would struggle to even be able to define a Central Plot. We may have had aspirations at one time in our lives, but now we're just living in subplots, filling the gaps with smaller stories.

I'm not saying that living a life of subplots is bad. In storytelling, subplots exist to add dimension to our narrative, and to our identity. They keep our life stories interesting, they allow us to learn more about stuff and things. Subplots are awesome.

Except, when we lose control of them. Except when we forget they are SUB plots and start thinking they are our EVERYTHING plot.

What I mean is this: in a great story, every subplot will serve the overarching Central Plot. Ideally, a subplot would push us along the path of our Central Plot, with great pieces of conflict and challenges and choices to make. A really good subplot can even launch us into our Central Plot, and get our greatest life stories happening.

But, there must be a relationship between the plots to hold the story together. If the audience cannot find a unity between the subplots and the Central Plot, then it disengages, and the plots split into confusion. I've felt this way so often over the years. The confusion of disconnected plot lines.

I think we are called to BE someone. Not just DO a whole lot of disconnected subplots, but to BE someone. We are each valuable and powerful souls, journeying through this life growing into ourselves, daily becoming. Who we are, as individuals, matters to the world. Who we want to become, matters.

My own Central Plot is (of course) a work in progress, but I know that I am heading towards a greater capacity to love, and to receive love. To write, and create in a way that pulls humanity towards freedom and hope. To support, listen and empower others. To dive deep into story philosophy and then share the bits that matter when the time is right. To be a joyful wide-eyed soul in the world. All of that.

And there are subplots that push me along that path, that add meaning to my days. But there are also subplots that distract me, that split my story into confusion. Each time I discover one, I have to seek help, try to rewrite or remove it.

I know this is a strange post. You're probably trying to decide if it goes on the "self help" shelf or in the "confusing musings" corner. Wherever it lands in your library, I hope it can be helpful when the confusion arises, as a reminder that the things that matter to you, actually do matter.

Human(kind)

I am in a candle-lit corner of Mrs Brown, a late-night bar in North Fremantle. The sofa is at least a four-seater - I’m snuggled in to one corner, and way over on the other end, a stranger is drinking his wine very slowly, taking turns reading his phone and then staring up at the wallpaper, a tangled illustration of ivy and vintage lilies.

Across the room, an older couple are having what looks like a fascinating conversation, their noses about four inches away from each other. Their hands are as twined as the wallpaper ivy, and they look happy.

Against the wall two exceptionally good looking humans are drinking something bubbly and resting their chins in their hands, taking turns sharing stories and nodding with deep knowing nods.

Closer to me, a group of men are laughing hard, slapping backs and buying rounds. They were talking about redundancies and the price of gold last I listened.

I came in here a half hour ago to write, and I haven't written a thing. I tried to be intelligent, then funny, then whimsical, then disciplined, but, nothing. It’s hard to gather momentum at nine o’clock at night. Rach and I were up at five this morning, so I suppose that doesn’t help things.

So, here I am in my couch corner, drinking my own wine very slowly, with nothing to say. I reach for my headphones, close my eyes, tune out the voices, and turn up Phoebe Killdeer.

The bass line kicks me over the edge, and I start to observe instead of define. The flickering candlelight plays warm over faces, it lights up eyes, casts dancing shadows against the encyclopaedias on the bookshelves.

There are pockets in this place, not light-and-dark so much as thermal energies. Spiritual warmth, or something. The back-slapping guys are deeply interested in each other. Solid eye-contact, edge-of-the-seat leaning-ins, the works. Nobody cuts another off, they each take turns to speak. They are gentlemen souls, wrapped in rough exteriors. The older couple at the fireplace are themselves embers, holding a deep heat crafted over years of attention to the coals.

I watch the room from behind the rim of my glass, a curious wallflower, and I think back to something I heard Hugh Mackay speak about recently. He said that good news is everywhere, but it is the BAD news that gets the screentime, because good news isn't "newsworthy." He said that kindness is everywhere, happening all the time, but it will never make the news.

The distant man on the other end of the sofa stands to leave, and realises that I'm in his way. His looks down at me, momentarily confused, brows beginning to scrunch together, clearly stuck. I smile, tuck my knees up, and nod him past, and his face becomes human: wide grin, laugh-line-crinkles, nods of appreciation. I swear he almost hugged me. I didn't even take my headphones off and we could have hugged goodbye.

That moment won't make the news. Even though it proves our inherent human disposition towards kindness and connection, it won't be reported because it's just not newsworthy. It's commonplace, everyday. And we're all far more interested in the bad news.

And right here is the tension of my whole professional existence: I want things like kindness and human connection to be the news, to be talked about, celebrated, applauded and encouraged. But everything I know about life and story says that nobody will care. Hell, I won't even care - not if there is a "bad news story" competing for my attention.

As far as attention goes, conflict is king. Successful marketing demands we "start with the problem." Storytelling 101 says "a story needs conflict." News reporting needs conflict, or viewers will change the channel. Advertising first convinces us that we have a problem, and then it sells us the solution.

With all these influences, we have become attuned to conflict, to the drama of bad news, and we forget what we are meant to do with it. We forget why conflict even exists in the first place.

In storytelling, conflict exists to draw out a response. We call it an "inciting incident," that forces a character to make a choice, to respond in some way. We present our protagonist with some bad news, and see how they will react to it. If the response is kindness, then that kindness is more meaningful because of the difficult context.

The bad news calls the good news into action.

I think in real life we often stop too early in our story. We hit the conflict (ours or someone else's) and we stop reading, as if THAT'S the whole story. But that's the story just getting started. It's the next chapters that are transformational. How will the the character respond? Who will they become? Is there still hope?

As I walk out of the bar I realise I am surrounded by good news stories. None will be aired, but like Mackay said, these stories are everywhere. Kindness and connection are an inherent part of us.

And if I can remember all this when the conflict comes, then I might allow the kindness to be called into action, and perhaps I too will contribute to the greatest narrative of all: being human.

Giving voice to the radio waves

Hemmingway once said "write drunk edit sober," which I love. Not that I often do exactly that, but the idea of freewriting is a strong one - that open-minded, hold-it-lightly, stream-of-consciousness that just plucks words out of the ether and tosses them to the page.

So, this post is a freewrite. I'd normally refine it, simplify it, whatever, but after reading it I thought it would be most authentic to just leave it as is.

Enjoy.
__________

What if everything is just flowing through us like radio waves all the time?
Energy and creation, messages from God, voices from the past.
And what if most of us, most of the time, were just oblivious to it?

The few who are sensitive to certain frequencies would “see” something that others don’t. They would “feel” something. An intuition, a 6th sense, a premonition, a prophecy.

In the pentecostal church I grew up in, we were encouraged to reach our senses out, stretch our sensitivity to “discern” spiritual movements in the world. And we did, and we felt stuff. We saw things, and heard things, we dreamt dreams and saw visions.

I have a friend who sees feathers. Not “I see dead people.. and feathers” kind of thing, but she just notices them. A feather in the wind, a feather on the ground, a feather in a doorway. She is very aware of feathers, and she assigns meaning to them. It's never just a happenstance, when a feather appears. The moment is elevated, and my friend feels seen and known by forces greater than herself. I see way more feathers now too.

I have another friend who feels the darkness someone else is holding. He says it's like a black wave, like ink, and when he gets that feeling be becomes more interested in the person, more attuned to their words, their fears and masks. And when the time is right, he calls it out. He asks them about their darkness, and they respond with surprise and relief, and they leave with a lot less ink in their waters.

I’ve been wondering whether this might actually be the masterplan for us humans: That we each see different things, interpreting the same event in an entirely unique and personal way, so that together we can be a full-spectrum community. I see X in that event, and you see Y, and instead of arguing that only one is correct, we consider that both frequencies are valid. An attitude like this would allow us to paint all the dimensions of something that would otherwise be limited to our single-perspective shape.

Like, if a giant cylindrical pyramid landed on its side in the desert, and there were two groups of people, one at the south end, and one at the west end. Those in the south would declare that what they see in the distance is absolutely a circle. Those in the West would say it’s definitely without a doubt a triangle. If neither group moves, then no amount of conversation between them would result in a change of opinion. They both have the absolute truth, and therefore the other options must be false.

It’s a dimension thing, and a perspective thing.

The solution of course is simple. Somebody leaves their fixed viewpoint and takes a journey of discovery. They do a lap of the cylindrical pyramid and realise that there are other dimensions in play. And when they return, they can share with the others the new, broader, wider truth:

That both sides were true, and neither had the whole truth.

But in our lives, we often can't move. We're stuck in our spots, and when we hear of new perspectives it's very hard for us to shift our understanding to believe it. Even when someone who has taken that journey of discovery explains it to us. But I think it's our unique privilege to try.

Perhaps what makes us human is our ability to intuit, to NOT take a “fact” at face value. To ask of everything, not “what is happening?” but “what do I make this mean?”

To incline our hearts towards the radio waves, and allow everything flowing through us to have a voice.

In story, we know that truth is NOT the facts. Nobody really cares about the facts. The audience is not here for the facts. That is just information. What the audience is most interested, in, and what we all actually need the most from each other, is an understanding of what we made the facts mean.

Meaning is not found in a list of facts, but in every unique and differing perspective of humanity. None of us alone can build a complete picture of our world.

We need each other.

Tsunamis and shakti mats

A few years ago, Rach ordered a shakti mat online. She described it as a modern-day bed of nails, and was very excited about it’s arrival. I wasn’t so sure. Not because the science isn’t solid, because it is - distributed weight means less downward force means less pain - but because, at a very basic, carnal level, I don’t ever want to step, sit, or lie down on sharp pointy things. It’s just not comfortable for me to even think about.

As a kid, I stepped on a tack once. It was right under the arch of my bare foot, so it didn’t go all the way in before the pain registered, but it was enough to elicit a substantial squeal, a bucketload of tears, and a vow to never go barefoot ever again for the rest of my life. So I felt like my wariness of sharp things was at least a bit justifiable.

I remember when it arrived - a thousand tiny spikes hand stitched into what looked like a rolled-up doormat - and Rach was so excited. She danced downstairs, rolled out the mat, and promptly lay barebacked on the spikes. Her eyes went wide, and a she emitted a little gasp, but she didn’t get up. I started thinking about where the ambulance would park to most effectively collect her.

But ten minutes later, she was still on the mat, describing sensations of warmth, healing, physical restoration. I asked her if she knew where she was, and how many fingers I was holding up, but she assured me she wasn't delirious. This is just what happens with a shakti mat, she said.

Short story long, I tried it too, and yep, these mats are amazing. Because the pressure is distributed across all the tiny spikes, there’s enough pain to increase blood flow to the area, but not enough to actually break the skin and make a mess. It’s like Rach said - there’s a healing going on - something powerful and regenerative.

I think storytellers understand the power of a shakti mat. Not to heal their bodies while they write or anything like that, but in the way they distribute conflict.

In a really well-written story, the conflict is never singular. Storytellers know that if their story has only one level of conflict, then, like stepping barefoot on a single tack, it elicits too much pain for the protagonist to think about anything else. The story becomes one-dimensional: how do I find immediate relief from this pain? It's hard to hold the attention of the audience if that's all that's going on. But when the conflict is distributed across multiple levels, the story becomes richer, the protagonist draws deeper insights, and the audience is held for longer.

Take a story about a great tsunami that floods New York City, for example. Our singular conflict resides in the physical environment, and if that is the only conflict level the writer stays on, we’ll end up with a cliche action adventure full of disaster after disaster, and a cast of thousands either making it, or not making it, and an audience who may even start rooting for the wave instead of the people.

It's entertainment, but it's not meaningful. It kills the time, but there aren't really any lasting insights.

Distributing the conflict, however, would allow the writer to explore relationships, emotions, mental weakness, political failings, societal ironies, etc. This is how we connect, after all: we don't draw insights from the tsunami itself, it is how others respond to the tsunami that matters to us.

How did she manage to smile after THAT happened?
What did they do to keep their relationship so strong while THAT was going on?
Where did she find her strength in THAT moment? What made him do THAT? Why would she say THAT? How would I have dealt with that situation?

So, even in an epic tsunami movie, the writer could tell a simpler tale, perhaps with a cast of just three, and by exploring multiple levels of conflict, actually keep the audience engaged the whole way through, and come away from the story with their own insights into some of those topics.

And that's really the goal of storytelling: to hold the audience's attention, and to move the audience's hearts and minds.

But this post isn't about disaster films, or even about writing. It's about living.

I think at the core of it all, we just don’t give conflict the respect it deserves. When any discomfort comes our way, we immediately try and resolve it, remove it, avoid it. We hate discomfort. We get angry at the injustice, we feel terrified of the pain, we feel embarrassed, ashamed, abused, hurt, astonished, enraged, weak, destroyed. We feel bullied, controlled, manipulated, lost, desperate. All the things. So we put all our efforts into this one question:

"How do I find immediate relief from this pain?"

Which is an absolutely legitimate response to discomfort. In story and in life, a character will always seek to return to comfort when presented with conflict. It’s how we are wired, it’s automatic, genetic, natural.

The great tension of life and story, though, is that conflict is the vehicle that moves a character forward in their story. It’s the only way to make a character move.

Without discomfort, or conflict, a book's lead character would just stay on the couch binge-watching Netflix for twelve chapters and then the book will end, and and it won’t matter how it ends, because nobody is still reading it anyway. They’re using it to hold open a back door, or they’re scrunching the pages to get their fire started in winter.

Writers know this truth: We need conflict in our stories, in order to grow, change or move.

Which brings me back to the shakti mat, and the single tack.

If anyone steps on a single tack, and it jams itself full length into their heel, there is no space for insight, growth, or wise reflection on the discomfort. You just get that sucker out of there. The pain is intense, and the demand for relief is urgent. Nobody should "embrace" that sort of conflict.

But the pain from many tiny tacks, with all their points distributed, is not the same. The pain exists, but it is not as intense, it doesn't have the same immediacy. It allows for nuance, and healing, and learning, and change.

A writer’s challenge is to distribute the conflict. And our challenge, in living our real life stories, is to help spread that conflict out. To consider all the small pain points in our lives as pieces of our identity, artefacts of meaning. Before they get too big and sharp and urgent, we have the opportunity to work with the pain, to learn about ourselves, to choose our responses.

The pain points are there anyway, so we may as well acknowledge them all, roll out the mat of tiny spikes, and see what can be restored and healed.

On uniqueness and identity

I discovered this in a notebook from a few years ago, and after all the conversations Rach and I have had this week I think it must relevant somehow… If you’re not feeling very unique this week, then read on..

--

Yesterday evening I found my ten-year-old, Jeremy, flopped on his bed, tears rolling down his face, eyebrows all furrowed and eyes kind of furious.

Two minutes before that, he was happily working through his Harry Potter Lego castle, generally joyful and chatty.

This huge crash in emotions was triggered by one little experience: Shasta, his younger brother, asked him for help with a new drawing app on his iPad. It was an app that Jeremy himself found just a few days earlier. He loves to draw, and wanted to create some new styles and comics, so researched the right tools, and eventually found this one.

Jeremy was so excited about this new tool, and had been studiously learning how to draw things. He had just started his first comic panel.

And then, disaster hit.

His brother got excited and inspired by what he was doing, and asked if he, too, could have the app. I saw no problem in it, and said yes, and all of a sudden Jeremy’s energy dropped a little.

Twenty minutes later, Shasta is asking for help, holding up a screen already filled with drawings and colour and comics that look as good, if not better, that Jeremy’s own work.

I can imagine what happened next in Jem’s mind, because we still do this as adults:

First, a sharp feeling of injustice, that someone just stole the “thing” that makes us, us. Then, jealousy - this other human is producing really good work. And they seem to be doing it with more ease than we ever did. And lastly, resignation - that compounding sense of “what’s the point, now?”

And, what is the point? Someone else can do what I’m trying to do, and it seems better, and they make it look easier. So, why bother anymore?

It’s pretty disappointing. All of a sudden, the desire to create dries up, the feeling of uniqueness and individuality crumbles to dust, and we are left with frustration, jealousy and often anger at that other “better” person.

So, I'm sitting on the edge of the bed, watching this little face leak angry tears down hot cheeks, and I ask “is this because of Shasta and that app?”

Jeremy’s gaze is locked on a spot on the wall, but fresh tears appear on his lashes. He nods, and says, “Shasta didn’t even care about drawing until I got the app. He just did it because I’m doing it!”

“Does it matter?” I reply. “That he has the same app as you? You guys produce very different work, so no one would compare and say one is better than the other?”

“But it was MY thing. And now he’s doing it too!”

And there it was: “It’s my thing.”

—

Comparison breaks us, and I hate it. I’m sure it wasn’t meant to, but over thousands of years of us humans relating to each other, we have managed to turn comparison into something dark. Now when we see a difference in another, instead of applauding the diversity, we make a judgement of better and worse.

And ownership diminishes us. It tells us that we are what we own. It makes us believe that our uniqueness comes from the tools or titles or toys we hold, instead of the vast galaxy of resource that exists in our physical, emotional and spiritual being.

Who you are is found in the totality of your being. Everywhere you’ve been, everything you love. Everything you believe. All that you allow to waterfall through your heart and onwards into others. As far as unique and beautiful humans go, you’re freaking untouchable.

And you know what the great irony is? I KNOW this about Jeremy, but he’s going to spend the next decade slowly believing it for himself. So every time he turns to me with defeat in his eyes, I’ll tell him again, “you are beautiful and unique, little one. Do your thing, stay open, relax, it’s ok. Keep the channel open."

__

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

- Martha Graham

Like-minded vs like-hearted

This week, I spent a lot of hours writing a thing. I had an idea, and was focussed on sharing it, pushing my opinion, convincing my readers that the idea is true. I was going to post it today.

But then I read it. And then I trashed it.

I realised that I was writing so that others would agree with me. Like-minded others who would rally to my side, while I shared a polaric opinion about something I honestly didn’t know enough about.

There is a great difference, it turns out, between being like-minded and being like-hearted.

Like-minded people gather together and agree, and rant against those that disagree. We form groups and sides, and double down on our beliefs and stances and our right-ness.

Like-hearted people, in contrast, gather on the plain of love, acceptance, and difference. We believe different things on the surface, we can disagree, and have totally unique life experiences. But we stay together to learn from each other: perspectives, opinions, wisdom from other angles.

I often find it difficult to engage with a single-minded writer. They either have me on their side, or they don't, and then they are just trying to convince me of something. That's fine for a science paper, but it's not STORY.

Storytelling is all about like-heartedness. All writers have deep beliefs and opinions, but the great ones never explicitly need to share them. They wrap their world views in a trojan horse of shared narrative experience, allowing their audience to walk with them and draw their own conclusions in their own time.

Storytelling invites everyone in. It may seem like the softest tool of revolution, but it honestly has the most power to actually change someone’s mind. Living like-heartedly means you don’t have to convince, win or own. You just have to invite, and listen, and share the stories.

How should a human being lead their life?

Aristotle poses this question in his writings in Ethics, and it’s one we all ask ourselves at some point in our lives:

“How should I lead my life?”
“Why am I here?”
“What is meaningful? Worthwhile?”
“What’s the goal, outside of survival?”

I doubt there will ever be absolute definitive answers to these kinds of questions, but I want to share a storytelling perspective that I just find useful to life-hack some meaning into my days:

For some context, when writers and speakers craft their stories, they have certain intentions. They might want to move the audience. To elicit an emotional reaction. Or tell a story that is considered meaningful, memorable. Or they have an idea to unpack, a vision to share, an inspiring something that could spark change in the audience.

They essentially craft stories to describe their own beliefs and values, in such a way that strangers will be moved towards those values in some way. They have this crafting toolkit that allows them to build meaning and influence into their scenes. They have the ability to generate an interesting and engaging story, that forces an audience to sit up and listen.

It's a bit manipulative really, but a good storyteller will deliver their content in such a way that others’ attentions are captured, their interest held, their hearts awakened, their imagination alive, their minds intrigued and challenged. And when the story is over, the values of the audience may be slightly more aligned to those of the teller.

That’s a really powerful skillset. And no, I don't think the ability to influence others makes life meaningful.

What interests me is WHY storytelling elicits this engagement at all. Do we, the audience, respond to good stories because they are told well, or are good stories told in response to our natural predilection to respond to those deeper elements contained within?

The storytellers of old may have developed their craft out of necessity to be paid, but the chemistry works for a reason, and I think it’s this: We all respond to STORY because we are built to engage in the deep elements within the story.

Conflict. Meaning. Love. Loss. Transformation. Everything we respond to in a story is a reflection of what resonates in our real lives. The story is simply the archetype of a truth that we all deeply and intuitively understand.

For example, let's say we have a protagonist in a story who gets removed from office through a nepotistic process. The storyteller is describing an injustice, a bullying, and we the audience immediately feel it. Not because we have been specifically overlooked in favour of the boss’s daughter for a "logistics role" at work, but because in our deep human core of universal understanding, we have felt the same. The surface experience is different, but the underlying philosophical base is the same. On the surface, there are a billion different stories, but below, we are the same.

When searching for meaning, this concept really makes my heart leap, and it's at the core of my story coaching work: how to get past the surface differences, and realise that we are the same. We’re all in this together. We are human.

We need to get over, get past, get beyond our assumption that whatever is happening on the surface is all that is happening. The surface is not the truth. The surface is just “life”. It’s the stuff that’s happening. But below it is where the storyteller works: In the realm of what we make those surface experiences mean. This is the space I want to consider a whole lot more often: what did I make that mean?

So this is where I find meaning for myself. This is why I’m still learning and researching how storytellers craft their stories. Because within that crafting is a deep insight into the human condition, and a whole toolkit for creating meaningful life experiences.

These days, my question is this:

“By implementing the ancient tools of story in my actual day-to-day living, can I generate new life experiences that I and others would find interesting and engaging? Could I create life scenes that capture attention, hold interest, awaken hearts, revive imaginations, intrigue and challenge minds?”

And my answer is yes. I absolutely can. It will be a life’s work, and it will be infused with hope and love and conflict and mindfulness. But also, a little more meaning.

Nook

I recently attended a writer's club in the city. An eclectic group of authors, screenwriters and creatives spend ten or twenty minutes at a time writing things based on a prompt. The focus this week was on past memories, childhood moments, that sort of thing. The idea is that the prompt triggers certain words, that draw out certain memories, that remind us of forgotten experiences, that we can use to discover more about ourselves. It's a kind of narrative therapy, as well as a creative writing exercise.

For me, this exercise was a reminder of how I synthesise my thoughts and ideas. It's embarrassing to admit, but I honestly feel like my head is perpetually empty. A clean slate, or a holding space. Until I speak a word, or write a sentence, my mind is entirely blank. When I form the words, my brain then catches up - it's quite backwards to how I imagine most humans think.

I've gotten used to it over time, but it's still scary: To do or be anything in life, I have to somehow trust that my emptiness is fullness, and then I have to speak myself into being.

Anyway, below is a piece I wrote in the writer's club. You might see a progression from "empty headspace" to "childhood memory" to "what really matters to me."

(The prompt was "cosy nook" incidentally, and we had twenty minutes.)

----

I like freedom. I do. Wide open spaces, and open skies, and all of that. But they are not my favourite places. What I love more than anything are smaller spaces. Snuggle spaces. Cosy nooks. When I’m in the wide open, my mind reaches for the ceiling, it stretches to the edges of sight. I take in as much as I can reach, and it’s hard to process it all. Writing in a field is not easy for me.

No, what I love are loft spaces. One desk and a rainy window. A rug, a heater, a chair and some whisky. Constriction of the physical space, so that my mind can relax, strip down to it’s togs, and dive into the deep well of internal space.

When I was a kid, we moved houses a lot. I didn’t think it was anything unusual, but eventually I learned that no, most families had more than one Christmas in the same house. Most kids had treasures, and stuff from years ago, whereas we always arrived at a new house a box or two lighter. It was the moving company that lost the box, Dad would say.

But here’s the thing. As far as childhood memories go, my most fondest ones involve those cardboard boxes. When we were getting close to moving day, we would have rooms piles high with boxes, pushed up against the walls and the windows, three or four high. I would get lost in the beige cities of the spare bedroom, spend hours snuggled in a corner, the towering boxes on my left, and the window to the garden on my right.

I don’t ever remember the garden though. I never saw outside the glass. My world was two feet wide and as deep as my 10-year-old body, and it was wonderful. I had books to read, a cat to pat, and nothingness to stare at. It was the late afternoon light that really got me. Everything just glowed, and I would focus my attention on a space three inches in from the window, on the fine cloud of haze, dust and cat hair that spun in lazy golden circles. It was eternal time in that space.

No, writing in a field is not easy for me. I would need to build a barn.

Transformation

In storytelling, there is always a great emphasis on making an audience feel something, or think something, or change somehow. We ask "how will this story transform my audience?"

But why is audience transformation important? Why bother considering who we are speaking to, or writing to, at all?

For many, especially in academia, considering one’s audience is not their highest priority. Their concern is for the integrity of the content, the completeness of the information. And that’s okay. They are doing exactly what they should be doing - accurately documenting a concept for historical record, for education.

The subtle (but actually enormous) difference between information-sharing and storytelling, is in the intent:

Storytelling intends to move others.

Storytelling is social change-making, idea-sharing in a way that is memorable and transformational. So, how the audience responds to your ideas does matter. A well-crafted story allows your reader or listener to easily take your ideas with them. Like a passenger on a road trip, your idea is driven to fresh places, introduced to new friends, shared and enjoyed.

It's transformation, not documentation.

Storytelling is a relationship. It seeks permission, it respects all parties, it builds trust. It opens possibilities for your audience, but doesn’t coerce change out of them.

Whether we are on a stage, writing a book or in a conversation, wherever our ideas are being shared it is vital that they are delivered with care and consideration of the audience in front of us. If we cannot make our audience care somehow, our stories will go nowhere.

When an audience is open to our message, then our ideas, our contribution to the world, have the best chance of making the personal, societal or relational impact they were conceived to make.

Three layers of questions I ask everyone

I'll let you in on a secret. This business I'm running, where I help you write your best books and tell your best stories, is really just a trojan horse. It's a useful by-product of my real journey to find all the ways to craft a meaningful life.

Every hour I spend researching storycraft, and narrative theory, and story philosophy, I am learning how writers engage their audience, how they create meaningful moments, lasting change, character transformation. And it's incredibly powerful to master all these techniques, so that our stories can be powerful and memorable. But beyond the creating of stories and content and ideas, I'm finding myriad crossovers with the living of meaningful stories.

Everything we respond to in storytelling also holds a truth somehow in real life, and this fascinates me. I think it is important, and you'll find a lot of my writing is trojan-horsing these ideas into the conversations. Just wanted to give you the kind of heads-up that the city of Troy would have no doubt appreciated.

One such story/life crossover is in the questions writers ask of their characters.

When writing engaging characters, we ask questions in layers. From the external layers at the surface, through the feelings and emotions of the internal layers, all the way down to the philosophical beliefs and worldviews that a character has. Finding the answers to these questions helps us to understand and identify with our characters, and also develop deeper more meaningful interactions with them.

Thinking in this way was extraordinarily useful during all the interviews Rach and I conducted for the book we published a few years ago, and it has become something I apply in my daily conversations now, to craft more meaningful interactions.

Here are a few examples of how this External-Internal-Philosphical framing reveals more of a character, enough that we might actually start to care about them a bit:

CONFLICT:

What is the external problem?
"I lost my job, I've lost my cashflow..."

What internal discomfort is being caused as a result?
"I’m frustrated, afraid, anxious..."

What is the philosophical base of all this?
"I care about what others think of me... Status is important to me."
"I don't know if I am enough? Do I have what it takes to choose a new path?"
"Being fired for good morals was wrong, and unjust!"

AMBITION:

What is the external desire of the character?
"I want to exercise and get fit."

What is their internal desire, the subtext, the “why”?
"I want a particular person to find me attractive."

What is the philosophical base? Why is that “why” so important to me, or to the world?
"I believe appearances contribute to attraction."
"I don't think I have anything else of value inside me, so how I look matters."

CHANGE:

After everything, what has changed externally?
"I’ve lost weight, I’m fit now."

What has changed internally?
"I’m confident, I can trust myself with my choices, I actually like myself now."

What has changed philosophically?

"I believe I am loveable and valuable. Appearance doesn’t matter as much as I thought, but self-worth, that’s the big thing!"

—

Obviously these answers can go in so many directions, but hopefully you can see the potential in asking the questions. We uncover more about a character, and eventually we will land on something that resonates with us. I may not care at all about your job, but I totally understand the tension around "do I have what it takes?" I don't really care about what actually happened at recess, but I do care about how it made my child feel, and what he believes about that interaction.

Whatever is going on in another's life, asking questions from all three layers can help us find the common ground, and make their stories matter.

Where boredom can't touch us

To be alive is to be in perpetual conflict. We are always lacking something, we always desire things.

When we LACK the lacking, when we are comfortable and have no desire, when there is no conflict, we become bored.

So, if we were in a story, our writer would add some complication to the story, on one of three levels of conflict:

  • Internal (thoughts and emotions)

  • Relational (relationships with others)

  • External (external places and activity)

    *read more about multi-level conflict in Robert McKee's epic book "Story: substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting (1997)

And that's a brilliant thing to do, because conflict infuses meaning into stories. The writer must introduce some conflict into our story, or nothing meaningful can happen.

But where should the conflict go? Internal? Relational? External? (spoiler: I'm encouraging all three, simultaneously...)

If the writer chooses to only work on one of these conflict levels, she would need to employ a big cast of extra characters, or have a huge amount of locations, just to keep the boredom at bay. To keep it interesting for our audience.

  • Our Internal conflict would need so many people to populate memories and imagination.

  • Our Relational conflicts would require a soap opera full of different relationships, in different places.

  • Our External conflicts would look like a big action movie, full of travel and movement, but with nothing happening internally.

It’s story, and there is conflict, but it’s still a huge struggle against boredom.

Let's be honest, we do this in our lives, don't we? To avoid the boredom. We dive into multiple relationships, surround ourselves with friends, facebook, community. We try desperately to keep the excitement strong with spicy romantic upsets and best-friend fallouts. This is the soap opera of our lives, and we are scrambling to keep our lives interesting.

Or, we make up our own huge stories in our head - all the others who love us/hate us/have hurt us/deserve to be with us. All the locations we’ve been in or want to be in. Real or imagined, we just keep it all going, to avoid the boredom.

Or we live out the action movie and just get out there and DO. Go all the places, do all the physical things, stay busy, all the while avoiding any internal conflict negotiation. We become high-functioning robots. We look good on the outside, but to keep anyone’s attention we have to move even faster, do even more, keep performing. Our greatest fear is that if we stop, then we’ll be bored with ourselves. And others will be bored with us.

*Please know that I write this as someone who has often directed such a boring life scene for myself that I want to walk out of my own movie. It's common, and it's okay. But I'm learning to create better scenes in my life, hence these articles.

To truly write a meaningful story, that engages our audience and destroys boredom completely, we have to design our conflict better. We need to make things simpler, and more complex, at the same time. And that involves working with all three of the levels of conflict simultaneously:

  • Internal conflict - We courageously negotiate feelings of self-worth, love, compassion, mindfulness.

  • Relational conflict - We build relationships with a few great people, and don’t shy away from conversations and moments that are uncomfortable, and allow a deepening of the bonds of friendship and love.

  • External conflict - We exercise our internal beliefs and personal relationships in an external physical way - to do work that matters, actions with purpose and meaning.

If we aim to reduce all those extra characters, reduce all those locations, and simply concentrate on the richness of multi-level conflict , then our lives will fall into something deep and meaningful, where boredom can’t touch us.

You are an explorer

“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.”

- Terence McKenna, ethnobotanist (1946-2000)