Why We Read Stories
My writing teacher Laurel Yourke recently recommended that those of us in her novel workshop read Robert McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting (HarperEntertainment, 1997). She said it’s perhaps the best book she’s ever read on writing fiction of any kind.
I’ve just started it, and agree with Laurel that it’s profound, and an excellent complement to Truby’s The Anatomy of Story. Truby works with shaping a story; McKee seems to address the problem of fully imagining a story in the first place.
But there’s a wonderful quote in the introduction to McKee’s book that made me smile as both a reader and a writer. McKee says we, as human beings, crave stories because they allow us to
“…enter a new, fascinating world, to inhabit vicariously another human being who at first seems to unlike us and yet at heart is like us, to live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality. We do not wish to escape life but to find life, to use our minds in fresh, experimental ways, to flex our emotions, to enjoy, to learn, to add depth to our days.”
Even more to the point, McKee says, “Deep within these characters and their conflicts we discover our own humanity.” That statement neatly sums up why I have been, since before I could read for myself, drawn to stories. And why, for so many years, I’ve been trying to write them.
But the best part of this quote for me, at least today, is that it reminds me of the joy of reading great stories, and the nobility, the grace that can come through a story. On days when I wonder if I’m just being utterly self-indulgent as I sit at my computer and play with the characters in my mind, I’ll try to remember this quote, and why stories are needed.