What is a Story? - Part 2

We began this journey by taking a look at the story definitions provided by dictionaries. These definitions introduced us to actors who are defined by their ability to choose and perform an action, not by being a human character. We’ve talked about events, which are things that happen to these actors, or things that happen because of their actions. And we’ve talked about creating a plot by arranging these events in a logical order.

Our example is not yet a story:

Because a ball hit the ground, a dog barked next to it, while the moon shone above.

What is missing?

Drama

Merriam Webster mentions “dramatic work” in one of its definitions for story¹. Drama, according to Merriam Webster, is²:

a composition [i.e. an intellectual creation] in verse or prose intended to portray life or character or to tell a story usually involving conflicts and emotions through action and dialogue and typically designed for theatrical performance
dramatic art, literature, or affairs
a state, situation, or series of events involving interesting or intense conflict of forces

This is getting a bit circular. But we have some new avenues to explore. We have conflict and emotion. We have art and literature.

Descriptions and reports have no emotion. This sounds promising.

Emotions

Emotions are what we feel when something happens. That is how they are associated with events. The problem is that things happen to the actors, not to us. Actors who may not even be real. We are just experiencing a story that rarely reflects our own life experiences.

And yet, stories make us cry, laugh and sit at the edge of our seats. Why?

Because we empathize with the actor and that makes us feel something when something happens to them. You’ve probably heard of empathy if you’ve ever studied storytelling or other forms of effective communication. According to Merriam Webster, empathy is³:

the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another

Empathy means that we are able to identify with someone else and their situation. We put ourselves in their shoes, know what they know, and feel what they feel. It does not mean that we lose our own perspective. It means that we gain someone else’s perspective by comparison. I will write more about this in a future article.

For now, the question remains, how we create empathy for an actor? Certainly not by describing feelings.

Because a ball hit the ground, a dog barked next to it, while the moon shone above. The dog was so bad at catching balls that he always missed. And yet, every time, you hoped that just this once, he would not.

Why would I hope that? I do not know the dog. He does not even have a name. We should fix that.

Ruddy barked as the ball hit the ground, the moon shining above. He was so bad at catching balls that he always missed. And yet, every time, you hoped that just this once, he would not.

No feelings, except perhaps some sympathy for the storyteller or some annoyance with the text. No hope for the dog. Even though Ruddy seems more approachable now that he has a name.

But if we do not describe the feelings, what do we do to evoke them?

We show them. We do what empathy requires. We put ourselves in the moment, we observe, and we add context as needed for understanding:

Ruddy barked as the ball hit the ground, the moon shining above. He always missed. Sometimes he was too slow, sometimes too fast. Sometimes he jumped too high, sometimes not high enough. He tried every time. He ran. He jumped. He stretched towards the ball. But he always missed. Just like he did now.

This is one of the most important lessons of storytelling: “Show, don’t tell”.

Does it make a story? Not yet. We are given some context and we empathize with Ruddy or his owner, getting a sense of what it feels like to try against all odds, to hope, only to fail. But something is still missing.

Conflict

It is suspense that keeps us glued to the pages of a good book. What will happen next? How will this turn out?

But how do we create suspense?

Ruddy always misses. This is the information we are given, and the first sentence already implies that Ruddy has missed again. The last sentence confirms this. Despite what we know, we feel a kind of hope that Ruddy will catch the ball, but he does not. Nothing interesting happens. No change. It is just a long form of Ruddy always misses, and he just did it again.

There is a “but” missing. Something out of the ordinary. Some kind of conflict.

Ruddy barked as the ball hit the ground, the moon shining above. He always missed. Sometimes he was too slow, sometimes too fast. Sometimes he jumped too high, sometimes not high enough. He tried every time. He ran. He jumped. He stretched towards the ball. But he always missed. And then he would bark and wag his tail and turn to look at me with his ever-smiling face.

Only this time it was my damn cousin he was looking at, and I froze in mid-step as the shutters of the upstairs bedroom banged against the wall.

There is a storyteller now, and this storyteller knows that Ruddy never catches a ball and starts barking instead. However, it was not the storyteller who threw the ball. It was a cousin who did it out of ignorance or spite. We do not know which. All we know so far is that the storyteller curses the cousin for their actions. Why? Well, from the banging of the bedroom window against the wall, we can guess that Ruddy’s barking has just woken up someone who is all but happy to be awake. The storyteller knows this and freezes in fear of what will happen next. Mid-step. This probably means that the storyteller tried to prevent what happened; and failed.

Will Ruddy be in danger? Is that why we have learned so much more about him than about the storyteller and their cousin?

Why does the third person have such a problem waking up to Ruddy’s barking? Is their anger justified?

Is the cousin an antagonist of the storyteller? Is the one banging the window? Is Ruddy?

By leaving things unsaid (for now) while introducing conflict, we trigger the audience’s minds. Questions arise that they need to know the answers to. They read on, forming their own answers and wondering if they guessed correctly. Anticipating the end of the story when they find out.

Conflict drives the action in the audience’s mind. Conflict mixed with emotion is a suspense cocktail that is almost ready to be served.

Almost?

Resolving the Conflict

We just left the audience in a state of suspense. That is not nice. Do we have to be nice? No. But we do need to resolve conflicts at some point.

Why is that? Because we want to satisfy our audience. An audience that is constantly disappointed will leave before the end and not look back. Dissatisfaction may be part of the experience, but it should not be the only one. And it should never be the one the audience leaves with if you want them to come back. This is why the climax is called “the obligatory scene”.

So how do we resolve the storyteller’s conflict here?

… I froze in mid-step as the window shutters of the upstairs bedroom banged against the wall. Shouts wafted out the window. I breathed. It wasn’t about Ruddy after all.

No. We can’t take such an easy way out, because it would invalidate the first paragraph. Unless we could find some reason why it would be necessary to talk so much about Ruddy when this is not about Ruddy.

… I froze in mid-step as the window shutters of the upstairs bedroom banged against the wall.

“BOY!”

I flinched. I saw Ruddy tug in his tail. Even my cousin paled.

“I told you - if I hear one more bark from that flea-ridden excuse for a hunting dog, I’ll -”

“Sorry.” My cousin looked up at the window with those big eyes that seemed so innocent to everyone but me. “Sorry for the noise. Jeff told me but I didn’t listen. I snuck out.”

Silence. My dad could not see me. I had only just reached the corner of the house. It was probably what saved Ruddy and me.

“Oh.” The goggle eyes had done their job. His anger had cooled enough for him to get it back under control. “It’s you. Well, what are you standing there for? Get back to bed and leave that useless shit outside, mind you. You have no business being with it anyway.”

Thus, the situation is resolved. For now. There is an underlying conflict that will carry the story forward. The knowledge that at some point, whatever was barely prevented just now, will happen.

And that is not the only conflict. Apparently, the storyteller does not like the cousin. While he is treated harshly, the cousin seems to get away with everything - a fact that the cousin takes advantage of, creating dangerous situations for both Ruddy and the storyteller.

Such creation and resolution of conflict engages the audience and carries them from event to event, from the beginning of the story to the end. From the edge of the seat to moments of sitting back, breathing in relief, and back again. Only then is the main conflict resolved.

Is that enough to define story? Yes and no. We’ll talk about the missing details next time.

• Story Theory