A lot of us become inspired before we create. We use our creativity as an outlet to release that something inside of us to share with others. With some creative outlets like music and art, the piece can be considered good even if there’s no point to it. If the beat is good, or the art is pleasant to the eye, people will like it. With storytelling, it’s difficult to write something that is considered good, with no point to it. When a story is outstanding, it stays with you, sometimes for the rest of your life.
We may want to write about this fantastical world we have envisioned. Maybe we want to tell a love story, or we want to write a thriller. Regardless of what route we take when writing a story, there is one thing that should be sorted out first. Why?
What’s the point of this story? It must be more than just this amazing world you built, or these cool characters with these relatable personalities. In this world you created, there is a vast of possibilities in characters and different perspectives you can explore in your world, just like amount of people and perspectives in the world you already live in. You take that perspective or experience from our world and then stick that in the world you created.
One of the best examples I can think of is from Hook, directed by Steven Spielberg.
How would you describe this movie? It’s about Peter Pan as an adult who starts a family in the real world after he completely loses his memory of Neverland. Captain Hook finds him in the real world, and then kidnaps his children.
So, what is the purpose of this story, other than entertainment? Well, you can say that this story reveals that this adult Peter Pan’s real problem is he no longer had his child like essence anymore, and was now a workaholic, Peter needs to tap back into who he used to be to save his kids, and be the father his children deserve. That is something everyone can relate to and hits home for a lot of people. You could take that story of a father needing to be there for his kids and put it in any genre. You can replace Captain Hook with someone else, and change the world, but you still have a story. Without this there is no story. It’s just an adult Peter Pan returning to neverland for shits and giggles.
What about Hunger Games? You can say that Hunger Games is about a girl who is put in a reality show where she must kill other young people to survive. She stands up against the system and starts a revolution. Now most of us haven’t been on reality tv or been a part of a revolution… well not yet.
So, what’s the point, why is this happening to her? You can say Hunger Games is about a girl who sacrifices her life to possibly dying on a reality show in exchange to save her younger sister’s life. Everyone can relate to the love we have for someone in trouble in which their wellbeing puts us in jeopardy, maybe not like in the Hunger Games, but it’s easy to connect to that story.You can take the sacrifice one sibling will make for the other and build a story and world around it. It may not be as great as the Hunger Games, but you have a story.
So, what is a bad example? I would say The 2018 movie A wrinkle in time. You can say the movie is about a girl name Meg whose scientist father learns how to travel through space quickly to planets light years away, but he gets lost, So Meg has to search the universe for him with the help of three women.’
So, what’s the purpose of this story? Well, according to the movie, Meg has to get rid of her negative ideas so she can tesser properly, and not be overtaken by the IT. The movie kept making a big deal over the fact that meg wasn’t tessering properly, but they never mention why, just hoping we got it. It was hard to see what the point of this story was. Based on its new age theme, and Oprah being in it, I guess it’s about ….um. getting rid of evil with love. It seemed like they relied more on the world building and not the story. And that is why it did so badly with critics, and audiences.
The book’s purpose was to show that things aren’t always what they seemed. Just because something is different doesn’t mean it’s bad, and just because something is familiar doesn’t mean it’s good. This is something we can all relate to. I’m sure there where times in your life when something was familiar, but it ended up holding you back. Then there are times when things where unfamiliar, but it made you to be a better person, setting you free.
These little parts in a story that gives a story purpose is somewhat the spirit of a story. You never want to read something or watch a movie to get to the end wondering what the point was. Some stories maybe boring, but you don’t feel like you wasted time when you got something out of it. You never want to leave people feeling like they wasted their time.
If a story was a body, the purpose or the point of the story would be its soul. Because its deep in our soul where we desire a purpose
So, don’t forget the purpose of your story.
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