Write your own story.

I want to tell you a story.. it’s a multiple choice story. It’s starts the same, it’s the story of two kids who feel in love. It’s a dumb story, the type that would illicit eye rolls if it was put on the big screen. But that’s only the first act. It’s the set up. It cliche to a fault, it’s the set up that makes the rest of it interesting.

See, act two of any good story is conflict. No conflict, no story. For a story to be interesting, the main characters need to be put through a challenge or trial. That makes the audience appreciate the first act and get invested. What are they going to do? How will they get out of it? Will they get out of it?

They say there are only a few true stories to be told, and that every book or movie is a different telling of one of these.

In one of these, best characterized by the telling of Icarus, there is a rise followed by a fall, and the fall is hard, and the story ends in despair. These are stories of lost potential, of over reaching. Still told in three acts, you might see the rise, the fall, and the resolution and lesson that results.

But another is perhaps best referenced in Cinderella. In her story, it’s a rise, followed by a fall, but they the third act is a redemptive rise. But see the story of Cinderella, it’s nothing if there is not trial in the middle.

So, we return to the story of our kids who fell in love, hard and fast. They enter the second act holding hands, still starry eyed as they grow up together and follow through in their love. But as any compelling story, there is a struggle. The beauty of a rise-fall one two act is the drama it creates. It’s interesting. A steady high, the charmed life with no struggle, that movie wouldn’t get made or watched. These two kids, now all grown up, they buy a house and have kids, and some bad shit happens. Nothing goes to plan, shots being taken everywhere, and the audience, they are genuinely conflicted… will they make it? How will they get out of this one? Is this a story of Icarus who flew to close to the sun and fell forever, or of Cinderella, who started to lose what she had, but pushed through and found it again?

In this story, because it’s not on the page yet, there is no turning to the last page to find out, though wouldn’t that be nice. See, in this story, the kids, they are not the actors, they are the authors. And like any writer or storyteller, sometimes, you get writers block. But it is still thier sorry to write, thier tale to tell, and no one else’s.

So what’s the story? How long is the second act? What does the third act have in store? We can’t know for sure, but it’s our story to tell, our decisions to make. Fight through, keep faith, and make it to the ball, or collapse in ruin and fall from the sky. Our choice. We are not victims, we are not actors. We are authors.

What story do you want to write?