Weak stories lack gravitas. They lack substance. As one limp, dull page blathers into the next, the nothingness drags on exponentially, wasting the reader’s time and the whole miserable experience ends in disappointment and failure for all involved. To avoid this fate, you need to confront risk.
Risk as in the possibility of loss. To appreciate the essentiality of risk in your story get clear on how much human beings hate to lose. Anything at all. We hate to lose time, energy, status, money, our health and most of all, loved ones. Whether a loved one dies or abandons you the loss is devastating.
We hate to lose status. For thousands of years, we lived in smaller bands and tighter communities. Loss of status meant getting cast out of the tribe. And being cast out onto the plains meant certain death due to disease, the elements, wild animals, rival tribes, etc.
This is why public speaking terrorizes people. The fear of being kicked out of the tribe to die alone is seared into our consciousness. In the modern world, if you get up in front of a crowd and make a fool of yourself, it’s not fatal. But it feels like the end of the world.
Fear of Feeling
Here’s the thing. Writers talk so much shit about procrastination that it’s important to realize what’s really at the heart of it. What exactly are we avoiding? The first thing is the fear of failure, the fear that we’ll be exposed as frauds, of facing the truth that we suck.
But there’s an even bigger fear no one talks about – the fear of feeling the hurt and the shame that comes from loss. It’s a terrible feeling. In our bodies.
So, to avoid this feeling in ourselves as writers, as human beings, we avoid making our characters take any risk that might make us feel the feelings most people will do anything to avoid.
Master Writers Confront Risk
The great writers – Junot Diaz, Toni Morrison, Alison Bechdel, Samanta Schweblin – faced what they fear most. In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Beloved, Fun Home and Fever Dream – the stakes are as high as one can fathom. Let’s look at Oscar Wao.
There are two main characters. They are Yunior and Oscar. Yunior is a muscular ladies’ man. But though he has sex with countless women, he goes out of his way to hurt the one he loves most. And loses her. The title character, Oscar, is a fat, homely “ghetto nerd” who longs for love. But though he would give himself fully to any woman who would have him – none will have him.
The book is infused by the idea that love leads to ruin. The characters risk being hurt. They risk spending their lives alone. They risk being destroyed spiritually or physically. They risk learning that they are unworthy of love.
Author Junot Diaz spent eleven years writing the novel. It was published in 2008. But ten years later, in 2018, he wrote a New Yorker article entitled, The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma with the subtitle, “I never got any help, any kind of therapy. I never told anyone.”
After you read this article and compare the author’s defining life experience – being raped by a trusted adult as a child – to Yunior and Oscar, you see the perfect alignment between the author and his characters. Diaz risked feeling all these feelings and having his darkest secret exposed. This vulnerability – and the courage he showed in facing his deepest fear – was, without doubt, a major reason the novel is so revered and won a Pulitzer Prize.
How Much Are You Willing to Risk?
In researching my book, 27 Essential Principles of Story, I played video games, read, watched, listened to and studied countless stories. Every single great story I read was infused with risk – to both author and their characters. This is true even in children’s stories. In Where the Wild Things Are, Max unleashes his anger and is cast out by his mother. At risk is his mother’s love. What makes the story so moving is that after his rage dissipates and he returns to the real world, he finds a hot meal waiting for him. It’s not food. It’s a mother’s love. And she give it to him knowing full well who he is.
So, here are some questions for you to consider. What’s the biggest loss you’ve ever experienced? How did that affect you? What do you fear losing most? Money, a job, bodily functions, your life, a loved one? How hard will you work to avoid loss, pain, shame? How well do you handle loss?
These are difficult questions. But it’s the ability to confront the truth of our experience that most separates successful from unsuccessful writers. Look at the story you’re writing. Or thinking about writing. Be fearless and really look deep into the heart of what is at stake – or could be at stake for both you and your main character.
What’s at risk in your story? The intensity of your response to this question is the best indicator of whether or not your story’s worth telling.
To learn more about Daniel Joshua Rubin click here. To get the Story 27 Newsletter click. And let’s connect on Twitter – @DanJoshuaRubin.