Quote of the Day: My job is to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable. -- anonymous bumper sticker
Invariably (I think it's on a time schedule of every two years), someone sneers and says you shouldn't waste your time with something made up. (For the latest example: Iria's message). It forces you into an examination of why you do what you do. One of my creative writing teachers said these thoughts should be put down in a credo and updated frequently. Since I really don't know where my credo has ended up (though something tells me I will find it as I clean), here's the thoughts I've had so far since the topic has surfaced.
The above quote sums up what a book and by extension what a writer does. It is getting a story out of your head, and reaching out to touch someone else. You've been touched by books, TV, movies before; made to laugh, made to cry. (And if you haven't don't tell me, I'd rather not know a sociopath is reading my blog.) The first book to make me cry: well, it was a movie Edward Scissorshands.
The theme of a story is its lesson, the moral of the story. The earliest stories have always strived to explain how the universe works in relation to us. Myths, Aesop's fables, Jesus's parables are all true. Modern stories are no different, the lesson is more subliminal. Not that all writers have such a lofty motivation, but when you chose to write an adventure story in which good triumphs over evil because that is what the genre requires, you are choosing to support that morality.
The market for fictionalized true life stories holds true too. Schindler's List, Seabiscuit, Titanic (okay that may be a cheesy example), have a moral at the heart and must be shifted to become entertaining. The truth (i.e. something that happened in real life) has been the basis of many a story. There really was a Sam Shepard, and his wife was murdered before the invention of a one-armed man for the Fugitive. Other writers have used that case as well.
How does all this relate to fanfiction? A topic for tomorrow.
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The BookWorm
