The story so far

I love a good story.  I am in awe of the humans behind each and every great story told. Stories help people. Stories make us laugh and cry. Stories lift us up. And Storytelling is one of the few human traits that is truly universal from time immemorial. When the cavemen picked up that piece of charcoal and scraped on the walls of those caves, little did they know they were writing one of the first stories, ever! (Or maybe they did and were just acting cool about it)

In the early 20th century American writer Ernest Hemingway made a bet with a friend who told him he couldn’t write a story in under ten words. It’s impossible, they said. Not one to give in, Hemingway came back with this one-line tale:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn

It really did have it all — an introduction, multiple characters, an emotional turn. Spinning a yarn seems to be a universal human instinct.

Think about your favourite teacher at school or the stories your grandparents would tell you for hours.’Just one more story,’ you’d demand. Why did you want more? What makes a story so appealing?

People in societies of all types weave narratives, from oral storytellers in hunter-gatherer tribes to the millions of writers churning out books, television shows and movies. But the best stories—those retold through generations and translated into other languages—do more than simply present a believable picture. Call it a script, plot, book, gossip or anything else; stories make everything interesting. How and Why do we remember great books or movies? It is for their brilliant characters, the one's that lived that story, it is for the emotions that we felt while watching/reading them. You can tell a story is great when you can put yourself in it, immerse in it whole and feel it as it progresses. Stories in a way are like 'flight-simulators' for life, a means of putting you in different situations. Cause when it happens for real, you know what to do.

In 1979, before the movie 'Alien' was released, a brilliant man Steve Frankfurt wrote a line to promote the movie- "In space no one can hear you scream". The sheer brilliance of this one line never ceases to amaze me! It allowed the audience to put themselves in the story and co create its own sense of claustrophobia thus capturing the idea of the movie and aligning every experience with it. A story in its own right!

For all the years that we've lived, each of us have been introduced to new characters. From the pesky elder brother who dragged you off your mothers lap to your best friend, without whom you wonder what would you be, not to forget your doodhwalaa and of course Batman. All of them have once central character and that is you. So now that you feel all special and important, the least you could do is make you story a little more interesting, isn't it? Imagine watching a movie or reading a book that rambles on without making a point. You'd be like just another Tushaar Kapoor movie or one of the books from the Twilight series. Nobody wants that, nobody.

And no Tushar Kapoor is not the note I'm not ending this post on but on this one.

"We all want to meet someone who will tell us more about ourselves".