What Does It Mean To Craft A Better Story?

When I was young I wanted to be a Jedi when I grew up.

And then a firefighter. And then a pilot. For a while I was convinced I was going to be a wealthy computer guru. I think there was even a season where I hoped to be a orchestral conductor someday. In hindsight, that was one was a little odd since I failed repeatedly at playing Chopsticks throughout my childhood. Teacher, jewel thief, surfer, doctor, and for the longest time the next Indiana Jones galavanting across the world to find ancient treasure, woo beautiful women and vanquish Nazis. That life path still sounds good, actually.

And then I grew up.

Instead of living out one of the dozens of possible futures I imagined for self throughout my elementary years, my story unfolded in an entirely different fashion than I could have predicted. Less in the vein of First Astronaut on Mars, and more in the ballpark of “What the hell is even happening right now?!” Life, as we now are all acutely aware as adults, rarely turns out the way we think it will.

But if you asked young David why he wanted to be any of those things the heart of his answer would have been roughly the same at any point along the way.

Because that’s the kind of life I want to have.

I wanted to be the hero. Fight the bad guys. Save the girl. Make stupid amounts of money. Live on a ungodly giant yacht. Be on the front page of the newspaper. Escape certain death. Overcome impossible challenges. Defeat my monstrous inner demons. Crush an interview with Barbara Walters. And for each of us, there’s this idealized lifestyle we imagine when we are young that we would choose for our adult selves if we could. Party like a rockstar. Marry a supermodel. Live in a mansion. Have an enhanced cyborg body capable of flipping cars with ease.

Where fantasy hits that sweet spot of our own personal vision of the American Dream.

But if you take any of those ideas, any of those things I wanted to be or why I wanted to be them, and you probe them further...that’s where things start to get really interesting. I wanted those ways of life for my future self because they all sounded better than anything else I could imagine.

Being a renegade cop with cool sunglasses policing the streets of Hollywood in a 1967 Impala sounded far better than working as an accountant. (No offense to accountants but you had, and still do have, my sympathy.) Traveling the globe to exotic locations raiding tombs sounded much better than always staying in the same city. Dating a supermodel straight off the cover of a fashion magazine was more appealing than imagining how Suzie from my 3rd grade field trip with the braces and acne was going to look in 20 years.

You get the idea.

We want many things because we think it would be better than the alternatives we can imagine. Because we think that of all the options, those choices will make us the most happy.

As we begin exploring crafting a better story, we have to start by looking more closely at what it actually means to craft a better story. In other words, we need to define this idea a bit more. Now, if I was to offer an outline for us to start from and distill this thought into one sentence i’d hand this off to you:

Crafting a better story is to intentionally choose that which makes you and the world around you better.

There’s far more to explore in this idea, of course, but this is a simple enough place to begin. As you can imagine, there are many ways we can make better choices. One way is by examining stories and learning from them so we can in turn make better stories of our own. Remember the greatest stories you’ve heard from those you’ve encountered in your own life. Those which rise to the top as great epics we glean from, enjoy the most and enrich our society are the stories which follow a handful of themes.

The Elements of Story is a excellent cursory glimpse into a 50,000 foot view of how to tell a better story. All the great stories of our lives involve only a handful of ideas. The characters are dynamic and intriguing; more Aragorn and less Cartman. The setting is captivating and draws you in - good stories rarely take place alone in a dimly lit back room with Netflix on in the background. The progression of the plot resonates with your soul; you can identify with the hero’s struggle, the challenges of the narrative or suffering of those involved.

Once we adopt that kind of big picture view of life it also means if we step back and look at the story arc of our lives, questions begin to arise.

What kind of story are you telling?

Is it a good story?
Is the plot of your life going somewhere?
Does it draw you in, and put you at the edge of your seat?
Are there heroes, villains, challenges, adventures, tragedies, and celebrations?

If we were to retell your story, as it is today, would it be a blockbuster hit or put the audience to sleep? How we approach these questions as we take an honest assessment of the arc of our lives is a good indicator of where we may need to press into changes in the future. For example, if your story has no unique and imminent challenges, maybe it is overrun with comfort. Perhaps limiting comfort would present opportunities to grow and tell a more compelling story.

As we plunge deeper into this rabbit hole, here are a few of the methods we’ll examine to help us tell a better story with our lives:

Asking meaningful questions - One of the most potent ways we can engage our lives as Storytellers is to stop, take a step back and ask pointed questions about...well...everything. Asking questions in many ways is akin to drawing out a map of our lives; it reflects on where we have been and sets the course of where we are going. All the while considering the place in our journey we currently are. Questions are one of the most powerful tools in our quest to build better lives. They allow us to begin healing from old wounds, plot out our next adventures, examine feelings as they crop up, help take our relationships to greater depths of intimacy and provide invaluable insight into every aspect of our journey. So, as we move forward, we’ll be asking all kinds of questions about everything which comes our way.

Looking at other stories - Inspiration can be found anywhere, but one of the best sources is from other compelling stories. You know you’ve found a great story when it grips you; it won’t let you put the book down, or makes you want to binge watch the whole series. It keeps you up at night or comes out in all your conversations. When we hear a story like that, we have a ripe opportunity to learn what is valuable and ingest it further. There are countless stories to examine, and we would be remiss not to seek out quality tales to wrestle with and study.

Take an honest look at ourselves - This is perhaps one of the most difficult challenges we will face as we seek to forge better stories. There’s something about being human which makes it hard to assess ourselves honestly, isn’t there? We could spend a lifetime here talking about ego and bias and environmental structures and how culture shapes how we view ourselves. But I think we can all agree we rarely have an objective outlook of Us. Our vantage is skewed and the lens we see ourselves through is cloudy, at best. An honest look at the various parts of Us is critical to taking what we have gleaned from asking questions and delving into others’ stories and then applying practical change to our lives.

Practical changes - Change is the rudder by which we we steer our lives. If we don’t constantly enact change, we drift off course from the hopes, dreams, passions and callings of our lives and into less beautiful and healthy seas. At the same time, the winds of life...that which happens to us...have a way of blowing us away from the shores we wish to visit, and without intentional effort we can end up far away from the lives we want to lead. So as we consider what we find in this journey of discovery, we will also take care to not only learn but also apply practical changes so we can tell better stories as we sail forward.

By no means is this an exhaustive list. Like I said in the beginning, I don’t have this all figured out. These are just a few ways to craft a better story, and I’m sure as we press further into our journey we’ll discover many others. The beauty of a good story is not that we have everything figured out from the start, or even that we’ll ever have it all the answers. The beauty of a good story is found along the way in it’s telling.