Just What is The Power of Story? Nothing Short of Life-Changing

APPARENTLY, I HAVE BECOME ADEPT at stepping across the threshold from one world to the next. To be a bit more clear: I work in the world of story, and not only does it frequently follow me home, but I encourage it to do so. How this looks is that I think a lot about my students’ and clients’ work and their struggles; I frequently run their story lines in my head, and I am awash in the brilliant details of their lives. In this, I am constantly aware of the power of story. I live amid it all the time.  

Other people’s stories help me integrate knowledge of my own life, exactly in the same ways that good literary novels allow us to file and store large life lessons. Fine memoir does the same: We learn about the pernicious endurance of grief or guilt when we read how those large-spectrum emotions dog the lives of others; we recognize the particulate matter that creates personal growth and find the value of the small moments over those super-heroic-sized events of life. Sometimes I even hear myself using an expression I picked up from someone, and I remember who it’s from and where in the manuscript I got it. Here’s one of my recent favorites: “I’m down to my last nerve.”

I’m used to living in this world of story and grateful for how it makes me think. You might find it useful, even if it is sometimes uncomfortable.

Recently, and quite understandably, a rash of boiling emails have come my way. We are all under a great deal of global stress, and no one is immune. As a result, people are questioning everything right now, so why not question my methods, my edits, the requirements that go into writing an argument, an essay, an op-ed or a book? And when one of my family members recently remarked that those angry, challenging emails must drive me crazy, my response was apparently surprising.

“Poor man,” I said. “He’s trapped in his own Act Two.”

And he is. In fact, angry emailers are frequently and specifically trapped in the first half of their own Act Twos. And recognized as such, and acknowledging the power of story, might liberate them.

The way I teach structure, every piece of memoir can be broken down into three acts. Simply put, each of these acts covers specific territory in your tale. In short, it’s this:

• Act One: What’s at stake
• Act Two: What I tried
• Act Three: What works

Those people who are fighting the obvious solutions that life offers, as well as the hard work laid out before them to get to those solutions, are, in fact, stuck early in an Act Two of their own creations. They know they have a problem, but they have yet to engage in the truly hard work to remedy the issue. And seeing life in this way is one of the benefits of living on the planet of story. Join me, if you’d like. I actually love this approach to sorting the world. It’s far more accessible than many other therapeutic models. And analyzing the power of story is free and open to us all.

So consider this: Where on your story line are you? Are you still unaware of the real help you need to battle the effects of some form of family damage? Do you remain unwoke to the systemic racism of the world and, as a result, are you angrily defending some failed model of power? Do you cling to some form of inherited familial loyalty, whether that be political or personal, that makes you terribly uncomfortable, even as you still resist making your own decisions and alliances in the world?

Then you are trapped in the beginning of your own Act Two, where you know you have a problem but are doing little or nothing to transcend it. My suggestion? Move on.

When did this awareness come to me? I was watching the gorgeous documentary, My Octopus Teacher, whose three acts portray a man in crisis (Act One), what he did about that crisis (Act Two) and what worked for him (Act Three). It’s a perfectly written piece of memoir whose power is in its ability to show change.

Have a look. And consider living in the world of story. It’s a compelling planet.

 

Want to learn how to write a memoir in any form? Come study with me. Classes begin all the time.

• Memoirama: The everything-you-need-to-get-started-writing-memoir class. Live, online memoir class with Q&A. 90 minutes. This is the class to get you started writing what you know.
• ​Memoirama 2: Book structure. Period. No one is born knowing how to structure a book and no book can exist without structure. Book structure was taught to me by four of the best editors in NY publishing for my four published books. This course gets your structure up and supporting your story. Two hours. Live. You and six other writers.
• ​How to Write Op-eds, Radio Essays and Digital Commentary: Live. Ninety minutes. Co-taught with a former Pulitzer Prize juror, newspaper editor, weekly newspaper columnist and host of a nationally syndicated public radio show. How to write memoir in the form of commentary. Get your voice our into the world.
• ​The Master Class: How to write memoir at book length. Seven writers. Six months. Once a month. All live. Get your first draft written.

And don’t forget to listen to my podcast. It’s called QWERTY, and it’s by, for and about writers.