One word and you have a story.
It may sound tongue in cheek coming from me, but that is all you need. One word and you have a story. At least a writer has a story.
We’ve all heard the old newspaper motto “who, what, when and where” but in journalism who tends to be boiled down to name and address. In rare cases you will also get a person’s occupation but little more.
Think about all of the great stories you were forced to read growing up. Many will say “Moby Dick” was just a story about a white whale. Others will say it is a story about obsession. People able to view it as a body of work will tell you it is a story about who. Who the white whale, who the captain, who the story teller. The story takes us on a journey discovering who.
Many years ago when Bravo was a channel worth watching, before it was consumed by a large corporation and began spewing the same fake reality feces which currently consumes the airwaves, it was a channel worth watching. Besides the great works celebrating the stories of who, it had a show called “Inside the Actor’s Studio” hosted by James Lipton. On that show both great and less great actors and musicians would not only be interviewed but would engage with the student body audience. Most of the actors who had been to some kind of acting school, if not alums of the New School, all came around to talking about one of the very first exercises in one of the first year classes. The exercise started with the instructor holding up 3 masks and stating “These are not props, they are actors.” The exercise involved each of the students placing the masks some place comfortable for them to see and staring at them. While they were staring they were trying to determine who was behind the mask.
What could possibly be the point of such an exercise? Writers will provide a script for the actor. The script will have words, action and timing, but it was up to the actor to provide the who. Each mask in the exercise was representative of a script. The script could paint and shape the mask, but only the actor could put a who behind it.
When writing fiction, you are the actor. It is your job to put the who into the story.
Who.
One word and you have a story.
