YOUR WRITING EXERCISES are a description of your journey, but they are also more.
These writing exercises are also a participation in a great(er) story. They chronicle your leaving home, your trials, the difficulties overcome, the fears put aside, the fears conquered, the gain in knowledge, the gain in personal understanding. In short, your journey is more than a trip from home to school: it is a quest.
At this point in your journey through the writing exercises you might not believe that it is so that even a simple trip like the one you make every day from home to school is in some sense a quest. You might believe it even less when I say that it is an heroic quest.
Every question implies a quest, a journey. Think about the questions you asked yourself before and during the time you set out on your first trip to this school. If you were to tell the complete story of why you made the decision to continue with your education, you would be telling a very interesting and valuable story. Why? It would be interesting for many reasons, but one thing that automatically makes it interesting is that it is a story that we all have some knowledge about because we have all made a similar journey.
And a reason it is valuable is that you may find that this story will turn into something that you want to share with your friends and family. I wish that I had a story from one or both of my parents that gave an explanation of why they continued with their education. Perhaps your story will be a legacy of sorts for your children. Who knows? You'll never know unless you write the story.
The road you set out on goes on and on. And it includes, or at least is connected to, the road that everyone sets out on.
One way to convince yourself that your (seemingly) simple story is a part of everyone else's story is to make a list of stories that you know. Think about every kind of story. Look at the stories that are on television and the movies. See if you can make out the pattern that underlies these stories. See if you can re-state what the story is about in its most simple terms. Look at children's stories, fairy tales. What else is Little Red Riding Hood but a story of a quest, a quest that follows this same basic pattern?
Remember the movie Star Wars? The movie was designed to appeal to children. And it was very successful. Children loved it. But so did adults. Many people have speculated about why this movie had such great appeal. Why was everyone cheering at the end when the good guys" blew up the Death Star Battle Station that the bad guys" were using? Take a look at the very basic elements of Luke Skywalker's story. Do they not compare to Little Red Riding Hood's?
If a story does not participate in a pattern that we are familiar with, why would we pay attention to it? How would we even recognize it? Good story tellers recognize that the audience already knows the basic underlying pattern and most elements of the story. Have you ever told a story to a child? The child wants to hear the story again and again. Good stories are like that. It's the form of the story that appeals to us as much as the content.
Most of the time we don't care about the form of things. Most of the time we don't recognize the form. But form is what so much of this course is all about.
| If a story does not participate in a pattern that we are familiar with, why would we pay attention to it? How would we even recognize it? |
BASIC NARRATIVE PATTERN (or why does a story do?)
Why would anyone be interested in your story? It is such a simple story. All you are writing about is the journey you have undertaken from home to school. You got up and you got yourself to school. It sounds simple, and why, indeed, would anyone want to read it? And why would anyone want to write it?
Is it, though, such a simple story? It is a common story (it expresses a pattern), but it is anything but a simple story.
What are the elements that make up this story? To use slightly different language to describe the basic pattern (Introduction, Body, Conclusion), the basic elements are that the story begins, continues on, and then ends. Every story does this. So in this most basic sense, your story will share the same structure as every other story. Is this enough to get someone interested in reading it? That's doubtful.
Why would anyone be interested in such a basic story? So your story must not only begin, it must begin in some specific manner, telling some specific information. In other words, your story must have a specific form and a specific content. And your specific form and content is your specific part in the pattern.
Once again, let's ask, "What is the story all about?" Answer: it tells your particular story of your first day of school. You begin when you leave home and end when you arrive at school. Simple? Perhaps. When did you leave for school? Are we talking about a specific time (like 7:30 in the morning)? Are we talking about the time when you decided to go to college (and in that sense "left home")? You are already at school when you begin these writing exercises. How can you remember exactly what you were experiencing when you left on your first trip to school? You have already re-written the story of your trip (admittedly a real simple account so far). How can you continue filling in details about this "first" day when so many of the details of your continual journey from home to school change. The weather is different; your daily routine changes; perhaps some family members are home some days when you are leaving and gone others. You wear different clothes. You may drive a different car. You encounter different traffic. Some days you easily find a parking spot, other days not, etc.
What you soon discover about your story is that it is anything but simple. Although what you are writing is an account of what happens to you, and is in that sense autobiographical, what you are also writing is fiction. You are constructing a story out of your memory and the accumulated experience of many trips from home to school, trips that will continue all the while you are completing these writing exercises. So now, instead of looking only for the basic elements of a story, we are also looking for the basic elements of fiction. Every writer is also a creative writer; you are creating your autobiography.
Now, an interesting question to ask is: how interesting, how full and rich and authentic, do you want your autobiography to appear to your reader, this reader who is in some sense your "dancing" partner?
I guess that the most common answer would be: I want to appear as interesting as possible, as interesting as reality.To be interesting you must write a lot of detail. You have to fill out your story with imagined details that are not "made up" but are based on what you remember about your initial trip.
These are a few of the questions that will provide details as you answer them. But these are only a few of the many possible questions. I thought of them, just as you could easily have thought of them, because I have experienced this journey and many like them. I have experienced the pattern that allows me to make sense of your journey even though I have not experienced your exact journey.
What, then, is this pattern?
The pattern is one of leaving, journeying, arriving. But it is more than that. It is leaving with a resolve. You are journeying with a destination. You are arriving for a particular reason, and all of this (the resolve, the destination, the reason) will enable you to embark on a new journey.
Just from this real basic pattern, you can see the outlines of many stories you are familiar with already. I mentioned Luke Skywalker and the movie Star Wars. Doesn't the pattern of Luke's story look like this?
On any significant journey, we begin for some reason that propels us out of our desire for things to remain the same: we overcome our lethargy, inertia, laziness, resistance to change, whatever you want to call it. For some significant reason, we do begin something new. We cross a boundary line, what in this diagram is called a threshold. Once we cross that line, it is impossible to return as the same person. We may return, but we are now a slightly different person. We meet a guide, a helper, a teacher, a counselor. We encounter many obstacles, have battles, struggle to succeed. With help, we overcome the obstacles, though maybe we have to begin the journey again; not every obstacle is immediately overcome. We receive more help. Then we are on our own. We re-cross the threshold, the line that seemed so formidable before. It doesn't look so threatening on the way back! And when we have returned, we are changed, significantly changed. This pattern, whether it is yours or some cosmic hero's, is one that we all are a part of.
Return to Writing Exercise Two