Writing a Human Story

Of all the idea’s I wanted to talk about when I started this Blog, I think this may be one of the most important.  It’s about giving your story a universal appeal.  Once you’ve finished your story, and launched it into the world, you never know who is going to read it.  It’s a diverse group of readers you have out there. They will come from different races, and countries, and economic backgrounds. They may be gay or Buddhist or even Republicans. There is only one thing you can be certain of, and that is, excepting certain nosey cats with no respect for boundaries, every one of your readers will be a Human Being.  That is why it is important, when you are writing, to speak to what it means to be human.

                I remember very clearly the first time I really thought about what this meant.  A friend of mine had introduced me to a manga series called Maison Ikkoku written and drawn by a woman named Rumiko Takahashi.  This was many years ago, back in the days before the bookstores had become oversaturated with the stuff. I remember reaching a certain panel and being surprised.  I was surprised because what was happening on that page, I had felt exactly like that before.  The circumstances were a little different, but the way the character felt was me, and how did the writer know that? How did a middle aged Japanese woman from Tokyo writing about fictional Japanese characters offset from my timeline by a decade know how I felt well enough to put it in her story?  Of course she didn’t. She simply wrote a human story, and the essential humanity within me recognized myself within them.

                All of the labels that we use to identify ourselves such as race, religion, gender, and politics are really quite meaningless in comparison with what makes us human.  We obsess about these superficial things, but even though they have meaning and shape how we look at the world, they are not the most powerful things in our lives.

                Here’s an example of a human scene in a very human story.  Watch this and imagine yourself on that bench.  This is the moment, when the thing you hoped for, and prayed for, and poured your heart and soul into no matter how hard it was, and thought would never happen finally does, and the surge of emotion that rises up is so powerful you can only weep.

                                                                                    

                This isn’t just about someone getting into the college he’s been fighting for when no one believed in him. This is the same moment when a cancer test comes back negative after chemo. It’s a pregnancy test coming back positive when you thought you couldn’t, it’s finding out your brother wasn’t on the casualty list after a bad day in Iraq.  We have all felt what he’s feeling, and it binds us together.

             So think about this when you’re writing.  What about your  story is going to resonate with the reader? What will make someone in Tokyo ten years from now look at your story and say “That’s me.  How did he know how I felt?”