Stories are everywhere! Just about anything with a beginning, a middle, and an end has the potential to be a story. Even in the microbial research laboratory where I work, we work with stories!
One of our goals in the lab is to get our graduate students thinking of their research projects as stories. We develop a research hypothesis from previous studies so that we have a potential end in sight. After the hypothesis, we design the experiments based on known data which is the equivalent of the beginning of the story. Next comes the middle, where the experiments are performed, the data collected, and then analyzed. The conclusions drawn from the data are used to either support or deny the hypothesis giving us an end.
Even molecular research has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Okay, maybe you don’t think doing science is telling a story. I can understand that.
But what makes a story?
I’ve had several talks with our local high school language arts teachers about story. One of the things they find is a fairly consistent problem with high school writers, especially in their journal free-writing, is the difference between a story and a sequence of events.
Story vs. Sequence
This is a nice, simple comparison to help distinguish what a story actually is. A sequence of events is just that—things happen to someone or something in chronological order. Here’s an example I used a few months back talking to a freshman language arts class.
- I woke up.
- I got ready.
- I drove to school
- I talked to the ELA-9 class about stories.
If you read that, it’s pretty bland stuff, right? The reader won’t care about my morning at all. They’ll think I’m the biggest hack in the writer-world. You know what? They’ll be correct.
But what would make that sequence of events a story?
In a story, there’s also a beginning, a middle, and an end. But over the course of the action, the main character or the main situation shows a change when confronted with story hurdles/problems.
- I woke up confident about my talk to the ELA-9 classes.
- I got ready.
- I went out to the car. Two of the tires were flat!
- I panicked. I was going to be late.
- Searching frantically through the garage, I found my daughter’s dusty, old, pink Rainbow Bright bicycle. The one with the broken training wheel.
- I strap on my backpack, pedal like a crazed giant attacking the Color Castle, and arrive breathless just as the bell rang to start ELA-9’s first hour period.
See? I completed the same events as in the sequence but I was derailed by a problem (flat tires), overcame the problem (Rainbow Bright pink bike with training wheels) and won the day. The main character was a better, if not more stressed, visiting author than he was at the beginning of the story. He successfully cleared the dramatic hurdles and became the hero of his own story.
Sequences are universal. Wherever there are time and activity, there are sequences of events. They are constantly happening. Every sequence of events has the potential to be a story. The writer’s job is to pay attention to the sequences in life, mark the details, and be able to tease out the story.
Stories are everywhere if you pay attention.
