What’s in the story?

I find writer’s job not only to be lonely, but also to be of a loser. Let’s face it storyteller’s romantic art serves no real purpose in life. They don’t save our lives like doctors do or build bridges like engineers. Yet, nothing gives me a greater pleasure than a well told story.  It’s only because of these great writers and their stories that I’m still alive. Those carefully laid words to form a beautiful story motivate me to carry on, and just give me a hope, a hope against hope that there’s a better tomorrow, not just for me but for everybody. Take stories out of my life, and what I am left with is empty and meaningless dates and events.

I have said this before, and I say this again: I’m a madman. People often ask me why you are what you are, and I always plea my temporary insanity to perpetuity to them. But that’s another story. Surely, what you have noticed is how often I fumble and lose track of what I intend to say, and which certainly isn’t the right way to tell stories. A lousy storyteller would go round and round in circles, often go off at a tangent, miss the important facts or take forever to say some facts. Either such stories abruptly, or take forever to end. A bad story will always stifle a yawn, and smells boring from miles away.

It’s not always easy to locate lessons from a story. However, a good story always gives you a reason to ponder, to think over it. And to create a good story, tone is of prime importance. Get the tone right, and you get the story right. Turn this around, and the whole story becomes false even if it’s factually correct. A true story is not a chronology, that’s work of History.  

When we’re child we all used to listen to the stories from our grandparents and parents. Remember, how our grandparents would cite great stories of their times and imply its relevance upon us. Every inch of knowledge we gain from them was nothing but some boring redundant facts carved into a story. As we grow up we found those stories to be naive. But the fact remains that we need stories as much as we need it in our childhood.

We live on hopes, on tomorrows. The reason why it’s said that the world is for young people is perhaps because young people have more tomorrows stacked up than old people. As we grow old, piles of yesterdays outnumber our tomorrows. And, suddenly somehow we are entitled to tell embarrassing stories of our yesterdays. In that sense, our whole experience is actually nothing but our capacity to tell stories.Good, bad or ugly, again, is another story.

The old cliché goes: life’s is stranger than fiction. My word it is. There’s no greater fiction than life itself. May be why the stories that interest me are the stories of life, dreams, loneliness, love, fear, and thereabouts. And these stories that I believe in are more real to me than my life itself. And, that’s what in the story.

So,

What’s your story?