A Story of what I want
I was listening to an interview this afternoon from one of my favorite writers, Donald Miller. His new book comes out this fall called “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years”. In the interview, Miller spoke of the importance of story and the study he’s done on the literature genre called story. His insights were very interesting, but one of the most interesting things he said dealt with the main character in a story. Your story. My story. It doesn’t matter. He said that, in literature, the main character has to want something, or there’s no point in reading or participating in the story. He also went on to imply – though he didn’t actually say this – that what the character wants says something about the character of the person, and how interesting the character is or isn’t going to be. So I took a look at the things I want and the things I will do (or not do) to get what I want, and hopefully this will give me a good feel for what kind of story I make.
One of the things I want is to see my community transformed with the love of Christ.
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I’m really looking foreward to this book. I think that Miller is taking a riff from a dude named Joseph Campbell. (No relation to me.)
The thing that Campbell emphasized was that heroes go through these processes of gaining new powers, ability, or allies. What they find is that the key to getting what they want isn’t really about those powers, abilities, or allies at all, it was within them the whole time.
Though Luke Skywalker finds his force-powers helpfully, it’s really his conviction that his dad is save-able that Return of the Jedi turns on; though James Bond is helped by all the gadgets Q bestows upon him, it’s really his own cleverness that wins the day. Though Harry Potter learns all kinds of cool spells, it’s his mom’s love, and his own love, that ultimately lead to his victory.
I think this means that the methods we choose to achieve our goals, the things we learn about the world works, the allies, powers, and abilities we pick up along the way may appear important. But it’s Christ in us that really does the work.