Why Stories Matter

Stories are not meant to the change what people think. They are told to change what we are able to see.

Every writer has a different voice, and some can maintain several different voices, or switch style, style, and genre depending on the project, all with the end goal of being the purest, most enjoyable and powerful version of that story.

The easiest way to describe this is with The Window Analogy.

Imagine that each writer, depending on the project, has chosen the point from which the reader will look into a story.

They can choose to make the reader sympathize with the monster of this world and ask many questions: Is this really the monster, is this the villain that everyone should hate? Or the writer could take another wall and place the window there, this time looking out to see the obvious hero as they slay the dragon and save the maiden. A simple and small thing. Just windows. But I believe that this matters on levels of incredible magnitude.

When a writer chooses where to place the reader’s window, they have a couple different things that must be kept in mind: (1) the window frame, and (2) the glass that keeps the wind at bay (though this may be a desired effect, to throw the reader's hair back and remind them that the veil is thin in places like this, within the magic of stories).

This is where the analogy begins to explain the differences and similarities between a writer's poetic style from project to project. This is where a writer chooses how the reader will see the chosen events and point of view.

They can have the frame carved out of mahogany, polished, and etched with symbols of lore. Perhaps such things will distract from the story, but they may yet support the tale.

Or the author may choose a plane and bland frame to place the reader in front of, knowing that they are easily distracted.

Then comes the glass, and it is even more important.

Stained glass for the writer who likes to leave interpretation to the reader, colored glass to reveal a theme, and plain glass and crystal to simply give the reader a clear view of the story, as it happened from that view.

I have found, in many ways, that worldview is very, very similar to this analogy.

When someone has an experience, it is like a new piece of glass being added to their own window through which they see the story of their current situation and the entire world. 

Each experience is like a new piece of glass added to that window, filling it in, making the pain whole again, even though it is made up of shards from a thousand different windows gathered from the ground. From our experiences.

And this is where stories become even more important. Stories are, at their core, seemingly inexpressibly magical experiences. We turn to them to enjoy the exhilaration of living the lives of others, to add those experiences—whether conscious or not—to their own worldviews. 

When we reach the end of a book or story, it creates a new pain of glass that our mind adds to the window of our worldview. 

You look up at the geese flying overhead, and your mind flashes back to a surprisingly insightful moment in the movie Migration. You see a spider crawling around in the corner, and instead of finding the familiar terror or the creature, crushing it under a handkerchief, you remember Charlotte and her web, and gently carry the animal outside and set it down on the porch, where it runs soundlessly away, disappearing beneath the peeling paint.

Stories are, as C.S. Lewis once wrote, one of the few things that can: "steal past watchful dragons," slipping through the mental barriers of humanity, their guarded understanding of our world.

This is why stories carry a weight that arguments never can. You can reject an argument. You can fact-check any claim. You may dismiss a philosophy. You are permitted to close a debate. But you cannot unfeel the moments when fictional spider made you gentle. You cannot unsee the world through a window you have already looked through.

Stories do not tell you what to believe. They simply show you a view you had not considered, and leave you standing at the glass.

That is why, I think, we must write them carefully. Not because we are trying to change minds, but because we might, accidentally, gently, under the cover of glass, expand them.

And that is a responsibility, that I think, is worth taking very seriously.