Just Be There Blog

One

Marvelous...Fantastic...Awesome

Such words evoke positive emotional memory of awe, excitement, and glee, if declared in the right way. To aspire to the creative talents of a masterful storyteller with spoken and written language is to struggle against the shackles of one's own limitations of imagination and self expression. Limited personal experience isn't always helpful when describing internal angst of main characters caught in a maelstrom of circumstance; either good or bad. Is this to say that the good storytellers go beyond the rhythm and cadence of the words and actually feel the story they tell? I think so. When I write from a character's perspective, I am writing from an emotional wellspring from which I imagine the character is living at the moment. The wellspring is limited by what I have experienced in my lifetime.

I find I have little problem accessing painful emotions such as embarrassment, anger, fear, shame, etc.; but the lighter emotions of happiness, humor, peace of mind, etc., I find a bit more difficult to relate into a story. Elation, is hard for me to describe in word and action because I have experienced that emotion so few times in my life. I must really dig deep to tap into the wellspring of what I think is 'elation.'

And, what is love?

I know I have felt love, or so I truly believe; yet, the emotion I equate to love, may only be a coveting attachment toward another person. I have felt a strong need I've called love, but in truth was it really love or another expression of selfishness. I think I shall never know one way or the other. So, let it be said I have a basis to be able to describe the emotion of love, whether it was really that or no.

Given the premise that a story creator; a writer of stories, and the teller of stories, must feel the emotions of their characters and be able to express those emotions so others also feel what the character is feeling, expressing, emoting, etc. In a way, I think the trappings of the character's environment might become a tool for the storyteller to enhance or contrast a character's emotions. How many directors of a film scene have taken a character who was feeling the elation of love and have them 'singing and dancing in the rain;' or, have a stoic character in the depth of extreme emotional sadness simply walking away, with the rain on his or her face doing the crying on the outside while they hold everything tight inside? And then there are the endings to the stories after the emotional climax...Shane riding into the the sunset with the boy calling for him to come back. Of course there is more going on in that ending than the boy's expressed sadness that Shane is leaving.

This is what I have pondered today. I'm satisfied to be able to write it out and surprised, upon rereading what I've written that it has turned out more eloquent than I originally imagined.