How do you start a story? With an event?

Once upon a time. . . In the beginning. . .

Can something just happen with nothing else involved?

I think it’s good to start a story with a perspective. A unique way of looking at the world.

You need subject and object.

No. You need a place and characters.

Shakespeare always started off with either a fight or something spooky to grab the attention of the audience. Movies do this today.

Suddenly … something happened, then something else happened, then end. Do you like my story?

It’s short. Is it a story?

It needs details. It’s more like a news ticker. Indeed, it isn’t a story yet, so we have to pick characters. How do we do that? Can you pick the characters?

Often we use those around us. We pick characters by focusing our attention, focusing our spotlight. Then you have to have a scene don’t you? Does anything happen if there isn’t a place for it to happen?

We create places because they are defined by our set of characters. We don’t pick just one character, not usually. If you met someone who had just one character, they couldn’t actually speak to you or recognize your speech. They call that solipsism. So the set of characters you have trained yourself to pick out, to identify as significant, that matter to your story, also set the scene. Now can I tell a story about cooking in a kitchen while insisting the characters are in the bathroom?

I don’t think I’d want to eat that food.

Maybe a comedy.

It wouldn’t make sense, because first I insist that they are cooking in the kitchen, a defining element there, but then I insert that they are in the bathroom. People actually do this. It’s the first delusion and why they feel they can’t tell their story. They pick characters while denying the context created by that set of characters. If you pick thieves for your characters, can you tell a story about solving world hunger? Would it make sense?

They’d have to be Robin Hood types which really don’t exist. How would stealing solve world hunger? Any amount of stealing?

Rob from the rich and give to the poor. Which would make the rich poor. It wouldn’t address the world hunger issue. Nothing would change there. World hunger would not change.

Or the thief has a double nature. Multiple personality thief who steals from himself. Batman stealing from Bruce Wayne. Yes, martyrs wind up giving nothing. By being consumed by their virtue they deny the world of that very virtue.

So you would need new characters, no? How would you recast your story then?

I’d cast the citizens of the starving countries. They are tired and sick, even fearful for their lives. How would that solve world hunger?

Well, I think they would grow enough to be able to solve their own problem.

First to find new characters, we would have to broaden our search, no? Plants don’t grow without food, neither do people. We have to look at a bigger theatre. No small venue would give you much choice in characters would it?

No. Which means we would have to look at things that don’t have much meaning for us yet. We have to look beyond what we already understand, otherwise it would just be the same old story with different players. Can we choose where we look? Can you choose to look at what doesn’t matter to you right now?

You can…but people usually don’t. Do people usually change? Do situations usually change?

Not willingly. Situations change people. Kids go off to college, or military service, and come back as someone different.

I think you need to see how it matters first.

So we have our spotlight, our characters and our way of choosing new characters. How do we set a scene? What does it mean to make a scene?

Describe the scene, the physicality, as well as the community. The physicality would be more characters. The death star was a character and those on it were supporting characters.

Bring in conflict? Mood. Can you have a scene without mood? Does a situation matter if you aren’t moved by it?

I agree. You have to have some sort of emotion for the scene to matter. Can you set your own mood? Can you set a mood for someone else?

I think you can change someone else’s mood easier than your own, and they can change your own then also. Actually, you set your own also by picking characters.

Isn’t that what is done in movies? Movies do it too, yes indeed.

There is the mood of guilt and frustration when we talk about world hunger. Add in a story about someone who was starving making it big in, say, Hollywood and the mood changes.

And by defining your role with those choices, that is how you get involved in life, engaged. A life with no life in it is what?

Boring.

Unlife?

Last months TV guide, useless.

Zombie life.

Dead, and how much of that is going on lately? How much killing? How much mindless adherence to hateful and toxic views?

Too much. It is humiliating.

Sometimes the adherence is because you get stuck and miss out on learning about other views.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~