Reconnect to Your Creativity through the Universal Story

None of us were born yesterday. If you believe the past shapes the future, then the life we live right now was decided a long time ago.

We make up stories in our imaginations about each other to explain what causes people to act and say what they do. We make up stories about our own lives and behavior, too, stories that motivate us to do what we do.

Memories of the past, whether five minutes ago or fifty years, come to us in the form of stories. The stories we tell ourselves define the emotional stakes of our lives. In storytelling, a character’s backstory refers to events and emotions that take place earlier than when the action of the story is taking place.

Understanding your own backstory allows you a glimpse into why you act the way you do, what prevents you from reaching your goals and better appreciate the road you took to get here.

If you've ever looked at your life and wondered how you got to this point and how ever will you get back to where you truly want to be, if, that is, you knew where exactly that might be, by shedding the stories you tell yourself decides what happens next in your life.

Every backward-glance in our lives is an invitation to add to or subtract from the general narrative we tell ourselves, often obsessively, until our mind believes the story as the truth and becomes the story we live by. Some stories we make up about events in our lives have beginnings, middles and ends. Other stories we listen to are fragments. Sometimes we become so close to the stories of the past that any little reminder: a crude gesture, a withering glance, the whiff of perfume, and we again relive a past that is always present.

We can go back in time and fix and change what haunts us today. Turn to the Universal Story and create a new story. Discover the stories you tell yourself and rediscover emotions and pieces of yourself you’ve forgotten or thought were lost forever. Lift yourself out of the past. Seize the life you've always dreamed.

For more about the Universal Story: Read The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master.
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 Transform Your Creative Life through the Universal Story: Seize the Life of Your Dreams. Reawaken your creativity and make your life pop with possibilities in this online workshop divided into 7 weeks of videos and exercises.

Same Old Story

Just like the protagonist of your story, you, too, have a story behind the story of your life.

We explain things that happen to us, justify our feelings and relive the past through stories rich with emotion that we tell ourselves. We bring our stories into every relationship and fit them around every experience.

Memories about the past and fantasies about the future run in our minds behind the living we’re actively engaged in the present moment and emerge in conversation as we interact with others. Stories that originate in our past grow as we repeat them over and over again until they become the truth we live by.

The lucky ones have wondrous memories to savor and hopeful futures to imagine. For some of us, the stories we've locked ourselves in limit and hurt and keep us small and wounded.

In reality, stories are merely a collection of words we string together and weave with emotion to make sense of our lives and life around us. Our stories now influence every choice and belief about ourselves and life itself. While following tradition and society’s expectations into one dead-end moment after another, blundering into detours and wandering aimlessly, a map comes in handy.

The Universal Story is that map.

Let the Universal Story guide you into unraveling the crippling words that haunt you and form them into a full understanding of the true power that resides in you. Transform the stories you tell yourself from limiting to expansive. Break free from all the stories, relationships and beliefs holding you back. Transform your everyday life.

The Critique

(When I was asked to participate in a segment on criticism (literary/film) for the CBS Sunday Morning Show, my friend Luisa Adams, author of Woven of Water, sent me this poem she had written after receiving a particularly negative critique.)

The Critique
by Luisa Adams

Barbed wire
Words,
The artist's soul
dangles.

Opinion's hoarfrost
Icy,
The creative helix
tangles.

Devouring egos
Flay,
The tender skin
mangles.

Critic's cord
Encircles,
The artist's soul
strangles.

When does criticism cross the line between "the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work" to "the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes"? Writers often have difficulty separating self from their work.

When creating something out of nothing, which is what a writer does daily, constructive criticism can help grow brighter a writer's light. Negative criticism and voicing objection to something, only with the purpose of showing what is wrong and generally suggesting disapproval is often interpreted as a personal attack and usually serves to dim a writer's light (especially if the comments touch off a sensitive backstory wound and trigger self-loathing and the inner critic's crippling and negative self-talk).

I find writers benefit from a critique that is balanced between what is working and why and what isn't working and why.
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For more: Read my Plot Whisperer and Blockbuster Plots books for writers.

How Character Emotional Development Merges with Thematic Significance

A character's belief system directly influences the choices she makes.

The following are three different reactions to the same experience based on three different belief systems or three different character emotional developments. Each example offers its own thematic significance or deeper meaning.

The protagonist is a single mother. With children to feed, she is grateful to be hired on as a night watchman. Once on the job, the woman hears screams and pleads come from the warehouse on the property she is responsible for.

She witnesses the boss zap the workers with a cattle prod. Workers beg for mercy as they are held against their will. The boss instructs the woman to throw the switch to electrical fence if any of the workers try to escape over barbed wire. They will be electrocuted. The boss leaves.

Up until this point, the woman has shown disbelief on her face and discomfort in her body language. Even so, she does as she is told. With the electric fence in play, the character must make a decision when the workers plead for mercy as they try to escape.

3 Different Emotional Development Reflecting 3 Different Meanings to the Story
The workers pleads with her:
1) If the protagonist believes that to keep your job, you do what you are told, no matter how inhumane you believe it is, she throws the switch.

2) If protagonist believes that when someone is down kick him, she not only throws switch, she also kicks the workers as they wither on the ground in panic and pain.

3) If the theme of the story is that there comes a time in everyone’s life when you have to take a stand, the protagonist refuses to throw the switch and restrains the boss from using the cattle prod, frees the workers and quits the job.

In each segment, the protagonist’s emotional development based on her belief system and developed directly from her backstory wound, plays directly into the deeper meaning of your story.

(Excerpt taken from:  Blockbuster Plots Pure & Simple: Take the Panic Out of Plot.)

For an in-depth resource to all the questions to ask about conflict when writing a novel, memoir, screeplay, refer to  The Plot Whisperer Workbook: Step-by-Step Exercises to Help You Create Compelling Stories.

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1) Track Your Plot at the Scene Level Webinar
Learn to Maximize the 7 essential plot elements in every scene (one of 7 essential plot elements in every scene is CONFLICT) from the comfort of your own home.

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Knowing what to write where in a story with a plot allows for a more loving relationship with your writing. Whether writing a first draft or revising, if you falter wondering what comes next in a story with a plot, follow the prompts inThe Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing

Today, I write.

To familiarize yourself with the basic plot terms used here and in the PW Book of Prompts:

1) Watch the plot playlists on the Plot Whisperer Youtube channel.
2) Read The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master
3) Fill out the exercises in The Plot Whisperer Workbook: Step-by-Step Exercises to Help You Create Compelling Stories
4) Visit:
Blockbuster Plots for Writers
Plot Whisperer on Facebook
Plot Whisperer on Twitter