This I Believe

A dear friend recently sent an email from a different part of the country, describing how the full moon and fireflies reminded her of childhood summers. Upon looking out my window, I sensed our connection in the tiny yellow lights, floating and winking, earthly vanguards of the larger empyrean light. I grew up in a different time and place than she and yet we were connected through common experiences. In that moment, because of her words, any differences we might have had, disappeared.

Words have the power to connect.

When divining fiction, writers create characters to live in stories. The lifeblood of fiction courses through their veins and their viability can decide the success or failure of stories. Complex, layered characters are more than two-dimensional villains and heroes; they have hearts driven by universal human needs, they have cracks in their fatades. Their souls are battlefields, over which wars between the divine and mortal are fought, each winning their share. None are perpetually sinner or saint but at any given moment they can be either, or both, just like us.

Conversely, stereotypes render flat and lifeless characters that create distance between reader and story, a disconnection with larger implications. A flat, stereotyped characterization also reinforces prejudices and exacerbates the divisions growing among us. Our culture increasingly breeds instant judgments, instant categorizations, instant divisions. Governments have historically painted opponents with a different brush designed to dehumanize them, thus making it easier to rally citizenry to war, after which little, if any, remedial work is done. Closer to home, we form neighborhoods, and build fences to create comfort zones, disconnecting ourselves from all who certainly don’t look like us, and perhaps, don’t think like us either.

Words also have the power to disconnect.

In good fiction we may learn who the character is and what she is capable of. But it is through great fiction we discover who we are and what we are capable of. Great fiction reveals us, all of us, as saints and sinners, all of us as divine and flawed, each unique and yet all alike, all of us. Humanity. Connected.

Words have the amazing power to reveal.

Historically and universally, there is a fundamental need to tell and hear stories, something in our collective DNA that makes it as important to us as eating and breathing. All cultures, regardless of how advanced or how primitive, regardless of how recent its appearance or how ancient, have their stories and myths. As writers, when we create full, deep, real characters, the resulting humanity resonates across cultural boundaries, across religious differences, regardless of age and sex. Well-crafted characters provide readers the opportunity to look over fences, across oceans, around propaganda, into the eyes of one another and still see ourselves, to feel the connection of humanity.

We write not to educate, nor to preach; instead we write to discover. And the more we discover the more we understand and the more we understand, the better we can be understood. Through our stories we begin to recognize the commonality, the humanity that connects all of our disparate, desperate lives. We all gaze up at the same moon, are warmed by the same sun, marvel at fireflies.

As writers, we craft stories using words, words that have power and impact sometimes beyond the worlds of our stories. Our words can build bridges, break down walls, help us to recognize and reconnect as people, real people, not caricatures. Our words can help us recognize and embrace the divinity and flaws within each of us, then maybe we can begin to accept it in others.

Ultimately we might grasp the commonality essential for our global survival.

Because, as writers, we ultimately choose the words that have the power.