Why Do We Write?
By Lisa Cron | January 14, 2016 |
photo by Tim Sheerman-Chase via Flickr
We spend so much time delving into our writing, working at it, thinking about it, that it’s easy to lose sight of why we’re doing it. I’m not talking about our own personal reason for it (which would no doubt be a revealing exploration in itself), but about the effect what we write has on our readers once it leaves our laptop and ventures into the world on its own. Because at the end of the day, that’s why we’re writing: to affect the lives of those who read our work.
And it turns out we have way more power to do that than we know.
It’s just that focusing on that power may feel, you know, a tad egotistical — I shall change how my readers see the world! Plus since writing is hard, we tend to spend much more time sweating over why on earth our protagonist would want to juggle chainsaws for a living, than on how the answer will change our reader’s worldview.
But it will change it. That’s the evolutionary purpose of story: to allow us to vicariously experience difficult changes without risking life and limb (or, um, heart), so that should the situation arise when life and limb are in jeopardy, we’ll know what to do. And, just as important, why we need to do it.
But that’s something only noble stories teach us, right? Literary novels, high-minded films, that sort of thing. Certainly not action movies like Delta Force, or frivolous comedies like Ghostbusters, or romantic fluff like Dirty Dancing. Those things are just “mindless entertainment” and so easy to dismiss as nothing but time wasters, thus of little consequence. It’s not like that kind of “drivel” could ever help a nation, say, topple a dictator. Could it?
In the 1980s one country’s secret police didn’t think so. And they were wrong.
Witness the moving, revelatory documentary currently airing on PBS: Chuck Norris vs. Communism. No, it’s not about Norris ranting to Glenn Beck, turns out (blessedly) it’s not about Norris at all. It’s about his movies. In fact, it’s about all the Hollywood blockbusters in the eighties, and the seminal role they played in the fall of what was believed to be the most rigidly Stalinist regime in the soviet bloc. Yes, we’re talking about the 1989 Romanian Revolution and the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu.
If you’re as history-challenged as I am (which, I shamefacedly admit, would be difficult), here’s a bit of helpful background by Jonathan Crow from Open Culture: “Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime was notoriously brutal and oppressive, even by Warsaw Pact standards. In his mad efforts to eradicate all foreign debt, he impoverished his people while building a massive, opulent palace for himself in the heart of Bucharest. He shut down all radio stations outside of the capital and restricted all television broadcasts to a mere two hours a day. And what was programmed was, by all accounts, pretty dull unless you’re a fan of Communist propaganda.”
Needless to say, no movies. No “mindless entertainment.” And so the people’s hunger for stories grew.
Until, against all odds, one man, Teodor Zamfir, began to smuggle blockbuster American movies into the country, and hired an intrepid young woman to translate them in a secret soundproof room hidden in his house. Her name was Irina Nistor.
Zamfir then distributed bootleg VHS copies of the movies via a covert drug-dealer style network to those who had VCRs – which were illegal and cost as much as a car. By 1989 Nistor had singlehandedly dubbed over 3000 movies, and by one estimate there were 10,000 VCRs in Romania.
And so whole families, neighborhoods, crowded around grainy black-and-white TV sets from dusk till dawn watching Rocky and Flashdance and Rambo and The Thorn Birds and Delta Force and The Karate Kid over and over again.
The movies changed them. And then they went out and changed the world. Here are some of them talking about how they were affected by the films:
“It was a window into the West from which I could see what the free world was like.”
“After the film ended, the street wasn’t just a street, a rock not just a rock, they were challenges. . . we started to want to be heroes.”
“The seeds of freedom planted by the films grew.”
But here’s the thing. The secret police knew what Zamfir was doing. They watched the movies themselves. Irina’s day job was translating for the government, and every evening when she left work the secret police officer assigned to their department followed her into the elevator and said under his breath, “I heard you last night.”
It was a threat, and an admission. And yet she was never arrested, never stopped.
Because the secret police, the members of the Central Committee, were just as enthralled as everyone else. Zamfir claims to have even supplied videotapes to Ceaușescu’s son.
The point is this: while the regime officially censored just about everything for ideological reasons, it never seemed to occur to them that, uncensored, the films had the power to spark real change in the people who watched them — change that would lead to action. Big mistake.
As Zamfir says, “During a dictatorship which had controlled everything, they lost control of something that seemed insignificant, the videotape. The videotapes set the whole communist system off balance. . . During the 1989 revolution everybody was in the streets because they all knew there was a better life out there. How? From films.”
As Nistor so eloquently says, “People need stories, no?”
We do. All of us. Stories aren’t simply for “entertainment,” mindless or otherwise. Stories are entertaining so that we’ll pay attention to them. It’s not a choice. When a story has us under its spell, it’s hacked our brain, and is mainlining meaning directly into our belief system, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not. That is the purpose of story, and all stories do it, regardless the genre. And when the story ends, we emerge changed. And sometimes we then go out and change the world.
And that, my friends, is why we write.
What about you? Don’t be shy. How do you want to change the world?
Lisa Cron is the author of Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers From the Very First Sentence and Story Genius: How To Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste 3 Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere). Her video tutorial, Writing Fundamentals: The Craft of Story, can be found at Lynda.com. Her TEDx talk, Wired for Story, opened Furman University’s 2014 TEDx conference, Stories: The Common Thread of Our Humanity. A frequent speaker at writers conferences, schools and universities, Lisa’s passion has always been story. She currently works as a story coach helping writers, nonprofits, educators and journalists wrangle the story they’re telling onto the page; contact her here.
I love this and needed the reminder, Thank you Lisa!!! I didn’t know that historical fact and it helps to keep going in my own endeavors writing. =) It’s very inspiring and awesome to think that no matter what genre we write in, that it can have an impact on someone anywhere.
I always keep in mind that I write in the hopes my or anyone’s books get into the prison system where so many people are depressed, oppressed and have little to no chance of getting out. I have done prison work and it’s very cool to see someone be “changed” or get some positive motivation just from reading a book! =)
Thanks, Emily! Prison work is so meaningful on so many levels — I’m in awe. Great story!
I take heart not just in this lesson, but in the size of the hearts of my fellow writers. If stories can, and will, change the world, I like the look of things to come. Thanks, Lisa!
So true, Vaughn!
I recently re-watched ‘Flashdance’ and got so pumped by the audition scene that I can only imagine how the oppressed people of Romania felt after watching any these movies. To me. ‘Footloose’ is a rebellion tale of the highest order, as are many of the so-called kid movies out there. Young people standing up to bullies, defying the status quo, kicking down walls! This post made my day (might have to watch Footloose tonight). My daughter recently told me that something I wrote made her want to get re-connected with nature. I’m still reeling from that.
Yes! Footloose is one of my all time favorites too! And changing how your kids see the world? Doesn’t get better than that!
Thanks for the reminder.
I don’t know when I’ll get my opportunity to change the world, but people fascinate me. It’s the reason I became addicted to books and movies, why I started writing and why my first career was as an actress—I wanted to figure out how each character was built from the inside. I wanted to discover their pain, which for me is the reason they behaved the way they did. I think my idea of ‘pain’ is your ‘misbelief’, Lisa. The more we expose the inner workings of a character, the easier it is for readers to understand the behaviors they’re currently blind to. When the blinders come off change happens.
Here’s a recent understanding of the Power of Story I heard from my son. He left home over two years ago to live in Asia. Over the last year he’s been telling me how he’s lost his interest in movies. (Our family is as addicted to films as we are to books. Books always win but films are breathing over their pages.) During last week’s Skype chat he said he figured out why films no longer interest him…
“When I lived at home I watched movies that were set in places where I wanted to go, or were about people doing things I wished I could do, or wanted to do. Ever since I left home I’m doing all the things I talked about and I’ve seen all the places I used to watch on film. Whenever I miss a place, I go there for a visit. If I want to do something, I do it.”
All those films/stories inspired my son to pursue his dreams and happiness. And that’s a mother’s dream come true.
Yes, I’m a believer. Stories change lives!
Thanks, Lisa, for reminding us of how important it is to write our stories.
How do I want to change the world?
One. Person. At. A. Time. :)
Great post, Lisa!
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
So true, Dee. One person at a time, one story at a time. Thanks Lisa for opening our eyes to our power as writers.
Pen is mightier than the sword.
Yup, stories change the world. When I was asked to write a biography for a writing class, I found myself sharing the books that helped me grow and mature. So I aim to do the same for others. Making the world a little better, even if it’s just for one person. I find that letter-writing accomplishes this at a very personal, one-on-one level. Books, of course, reach a greater number of people. And so I strive to make good art.
Thanks for a lovely post and reminder.
A great story, Lisa. Popular entertainment is called popular for a reason: it has mass appeal. That’s what Romanians were hungry to experience: what average Americans got to watch, and they couldn’t.
I, too, am challenged in my knowledge of Iron Curtain history. I hadn’t heard about Zamfir and Nistor. I would say another good reason for making this story known to us is to dramatize the lengths to which people who aren’t free will go for a taste of what we don’t even take for granted. Taking freedom for granted would require being aware of it to some degree. But the only ones who truly appreciate freedom are those without it.
Last year, I wrote a post for WU. It had in part to do with inviting writers to risk writing about politics. But writers never truly write without some political content in their work. Your great story today shows how true that is.
P.S. Look at your first paragraph, and then, faster than a speeding bullet, please correct your first use of “affect.”
Thanks, Barry!! And done! It’s maddening — I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked up the difference between “effect” and “affect” and yet I STILL get it wrong. And don’t get me started about “lay” and “lie”! Um, I did change the right “affect” to “effect,” didn’t I?
Thank you, Lisa, for this powerful post. It nearly brought tears to my eyes and I might have to print it out and frame it.
As a new novelist, I struggle with the point of it all. What is the point of writing books for mere entertainment, when there is so much entertainment already in this world? People are starving, poor, etc and I think why bother?
Now, I can continue with inspiration and confidence. Story does matter. If parables work for Jesus, why not novels for us?
Thank you!
~~Michelle Connell, author of Cookie Encounter
Popular is popular for a reason: It speaks to people. “Mindless” is a misnomer. If an entertainment is popular then it’s affirming a value, even if it’s not immediately easy to see.
Well stated, Benjamin. To entertain and reaffirm, even to provide escape for a time, these are noble writing pursuits.
I come from a large, multi-cultural, multi-racial family. I know first-hand how hard the outside world can be, and I’m not talking the obvious racial/cultural discriminations, I’m talking the shadowy discrimination often perpetrated by a society of well-meaning people. With these well-meaning people the focus of our conversations often turned from school events, or soccer games to things like “Your children are mixed?” To which I would reply, “Everybody in the whole word is mixed. Are you not both Irish and German?” Too often if you’re a person of color, or alternate sex orientation, or another cultural persuasion, that difference is spotlighted rather than our similarities as human beings.
So, when I write stories, I deliberately set an accepting and casual multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-sexual background to my stories that stays accepting and casual. The spotlight stays on the events that unfold, for the characters, regardless of their race, creed or sexual orientation. And, if I can perceive a world that is more accepting of our differences, maybe my readers will too.
A wondrous reminder that “mindless” does not mean “emotionless.” And while stories may indeed gain mass appeal, they very much start life with the intent to communicate and share those emotions with a single person, a single viewer, a single reader. Great post!
I know this sounds lame, but for me, stories are for nothing more than entertainment. I don’t want to read (or watch) anything that will try to push an agenda on me.
Entertain me. Don’t preach at me. And that’s how I view my own fiction. I just want to tell a good story and give the reader a quick escape from reality for a little while.
I suppose you could say that it my agenda when it comes to writing: to simply entertain a reader or two.
Lisa Cron,
Several years ago I watched a documentary about the violence in South Africa during the 1980s and 1990s. In the documentary, a white man said that he changed the way he saw the situation and the way he saw himself after he watched an American movie dealing with racism and violence. I think he watched “Mississippi Burning”. After he watched the film, he saw himself as the bad guy, admitted his guilt, and he changed his life.
In the novel Ethan Frome, Ethan tells his young lady friend a story that he heard about a couple who ran off together and were able to live happily ever after. The story almost convinced her that they too could run off and live happily ever after. But, in the end, they chose to ram their sleigh into a tree.
What a terrific post, I am as historically-challenged as you are and did not know about the role that films played in the liberation of the Romanian people. How cool is that!
In my Seasons Mystery Series, I focus most of the subplot on issues of racial discrimination to invite readers to consider alternatives to their attitudes. This is a police procedural series, so I also offer a glimpse into the difficulties of the job. I interviewed a lot of officers, from patrol to detectives, so I could give readers a glimpse of what officers go through that is not always shown in news reports.
The revolution against the Ceaușescu regime was as brutal as the dictator himself…which was why, on Christmas Day 1989, mobs ambushed his residence in Snagov, Romania and dragged out both Ceaușescu and his wife. They were hurriedly tried in hastily-gathered court, found guilty of genocide and illegal wealth gathering and executed by a firing squad. Benito Mussolini and his mistress met a similar fate 44 years earlier. I feel a similar demise awaits North Korea’s Kim family and Syria’s Assad.
How would I personally change the world? Hm…I would start by abolishing most religions; particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam – what I call the trifecta of evil. Those 3 ideologies have collectively killed and injured more people throughout history than natural disasters. They also bear great animosity towards the arts. How many times has religion been used to justify censorship? In the U.S. alone, the true-life examples are innumerable.
It’s a natural inclination for people to want to write and perform theatrics. Much of it recounts how they feel about their world and function within their own universe. We writers are the ambassadors of such desires – needs actually; translating the visions and hopes of everyday people into grand stories. Self-appointed political and religious leaders may snuff that out for a certain period of time. But humanity eventually always wins out. Painful and bloody, sometimes, but it always wins.