The Meaning of Meaning
By Donald Maass | May 6, 2020 |
What does it all mean?
There is nothing like a time of crisis to provoke us to ask that most profound of questions, isn’t there? Oh, wait…we’re in such a time right now. Lucky us. So, let’s take a day off from baking gingerbread loaves, helping the kids with online learning, second draft revisions, and searching for toilet paper. Let’s look at the very idea of meaning and how it arises in stories.
Do stories have to mean anything? Isn’t the point to simply capture the human condition, or entertain? Stories can, of course, do only that but when that’s so their impact is lower. They are easier to dismiss. Think back to prior seasons of generic TV crime dramas. Pick one. Remember Season 3, Episode 7? Wait, you don’t? It kept you watching for forty-four minutes back then, but now it’s forgotten. Why? There wasn’t much meaning in it.
Now, by contrast, what is your favorite scene in To Kill a Mockingbird? Miss Maudie’s house burning down? Visiting Calpurnia’s church? Atticus shooting the rabid dog? Mrs. Dubose’s gift of camellias? The lynch mob shamed by Scout? Atticus’s summation at the trial of Tom Robinson? The Negroes in the courtroom balcony standing in respect? Boo Radley behind the door? It can be hard to pick. So many moments in that novel stay in mind. Why? Because each one means something.
Breaking Down Meaning
In Man’s Search for Himself (1953), Rollo May wrote, “the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness.” People not only don’t know what they want, they don’t know what they feel, except powerless. That’s as good a place for us to start as any. Emptiness is good because it is a vacuum to be filled and you have plenty of things to fill it with. You are a storyteller.
What is the purpose of a story? What vacuum does it fill? I believe we spend time consuming stories because they address what we most profoundly need to deal with. Conflict and problems. Facing our fears. Elevating our spirits. Delighting in our folly. Affirming our faiths. Validating our values. Challenging our misconceptions. Forgiving our failures. Finding hope. Overcoming our aloneness. Reconciling to death.
We want to understand. We need to order the chaos. We seek to explain the inexplicable, most especially our suffering. The psychological roots of our despair are many: the trauma of birth, separation from parents, conflicts inherent in sexual desire, social isolation, political oppression, alienation, loss of faith. Stories give us a way to understand, order and explain. When we’re lost, they can tell us what to do.
In our era, we are suspicious of moral purpose. We’ve been sold it too many times. We’ve signed on to too many schemes, believed too many lies, and have found that the platitudes on motivational posters do not actually change us. We’ve learned that our destinies are an illusion. Our decisions are made before we think and our opinions are baked into our genetics. We are less self-determined than we think and more subject to manipulation than we would like. We are helpless in the face of terrorist bombs and microscopic viruses alike.
Given all that, why should we trust stories to tell us anything of value? The fact is, though, that we do turn to them. Stories are our lifelines, medicine, scripture, hope. If they didn’t give us something essential to our living, we wouldn’t bother with them. In a world we mistrust, we can trust stories. They take us somewhere. They tell us the truth. They don’t feed us our thoughts; they force us to think. They show us a way to overcome what worries us. They assure us that we can prevail. They show us a way to live well.
Great stories don’t preach, but they do have a moral purpose. They don’t divide us, but connect us. They don’t instruct; they illuminate our behavior. They don’t promise us anything except the possibility of achieving wholeness, healing, courage, compassion, reconciliation, forgiveness, and selfless love. They fill the vacuum with what we need more than anything: meaning.
Three Components of Meaning in Fiction
Fiction presents meaning first of all by imposing order on the disorderly. We see that when story worlds break down into dichotomies, the most durable of which is good versus evil. Good is a dubious concept in our morally relativistic times, just as evil is an easy label to pin on what we don’t understand. Not too many novelists nowadays would embrace that dichotomy in an absolute way. Even quasi-Medieval fantasy epics have grown more sophisticated than that.
Still, organizing our world in ways we can grasp is useful. Every story, in essence, says that things are this way or that, maybe both, but there’s an easy way to think about it. People break down into camps. (Optimists versus pessimists.) Society sorts itself into strata. (Rich versus poor.) Dilemmas can be boiled down. (Chose this or that.)
One thing may cancel out the other but, happily, there are only two things to consider. Even morally gray tales—think Jodi Picoult—in the end force a choice. What is right must be decided. A conclusion must be reached. The story ends and, when all is said and done, one outcome is indisputably better than another.
Thus, if you are telling a story then you are—sooner or later—reducing the essence of your story to a dichotomy. You are also, finally, making a judgement. You are showing a truth, taking a stand, and showing a way. Conflict has two sides—and only two. No novelist wants to write an unsophisticated story, but the effect of novels is strongest when the dichotomies they enact are clear. Understanding and defining your novel’s underlying dichotomy is good story craft.
The second major way in which fiction achieves meaning is through what its characters represent. We like to think of characters as being realistic. Much work is done to make them so. Humans may be a mess, but we want for stories to make sense of that. We want to know that the characters about whom we’re reading can tell us something about ourselves.
It is perhaps no wonder that the first identifiable characters in the history of storytelling are heroes. (Odysseus.) Second, they are us. (Everyman.) Literature is rich with types; types which often highlight one dimension or another of human nature. (Scrooge—miserly. Gatsby—tragically romantic. Bridget Jones—fucked up.) No one is in favor of stereotypes, obviously, but everyone pays attention when characters reflect something that we recognize about ourselves.
The third major way in which fiction achieves meaning is that the problems that protagonists face are either problems that we all face, or that we all fear. Far-flung times and faraway cultures nevertheless can be settings for fascinating stories, partly for their differences from our own world but also because of the similarities that we see. Simply put, human problems are universal and universal stories are profoundly human.
Genre stories endure because they touch things that we all feel and desire. Justice must be done. Love must win. The world isn’t safe. Dark cellars are scary. Mainstream and literary stories may aim at less obvious feelings and desires, but nevertheless get to truths we can believe. Secrets must come out. Home is where you make it. Crazy people are actually sane. People suck. People are great. Existence may seem meaningless, but how you get through it is not. Great stories are ones to which we can strongly relate.
Meaning Made Practical
Right. Time to turn all that into something you can use. Here are some reductive questions to consider, and a simple suggestion for employing your answers.
What is the essential dichotomy in the world of your story? Who are the haves and have-nots? What’s the biggest social or political issue causing conflict? What historical struggle is taking place? What religious issue does your story raise, or what philosophical question does it pose? What necessarily divides everyone in your story into two categories? How can you make that more obvious?
What is your protagonist’s human flaw or weakness? What is his or her strongest belief? Who in the story is strong in the way that your protagonist is weak, or who believes the opposite of what your protagonist believes? What human quality does each of your secondary characters represent? How does each stand in contrast to your protagonist? How can you make that more obvious?
Boil down your story’s central problem to its essence…what is its root human difficulty or fear? Why would you not want to be in your protagonist’s position? What is the most horrible, hideous, ugly, cruel, or inhuman thing that you can imagine happening? (It happens, right?) Why is your story one that everyone should pay attention to? How can you make that more obvious?
One of the most common pieces of advice I’ve seen in our quarantine times is an old—but good—saw: Don’t chase happiness, seek meaning. Great advice, but what does it mean for fiction writers and their fiction? What do we mean when we say meaning? What we mean is the ways in which stories help us to understand, to identify, to face up and to cope.
Stories have a purpose and pinning it down in your own work is, above all things, a matter of grasping your story’s meaning.
What does your story mean? How does it order the chaos, portray what is universally human, and enact what we all fear and hope for?
[coffee]
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
Thank you Don, for this meaning making post.
In each draft of my story, I add more layers as I get to know my characters and their world. But at the same time I “boil down,” which you suggest in your questions, because the piece I’ve struggled with has been the stakes. It’s easier to know the stakes if I know the essence of the story and which pieces of the story world I want to make obvious.
Though my story contains issues of racism, classism, xenophobia, and characters who respond variously out of a dual world view and a spectrum world view, plus they deal with differing levels of insecurity and self-judgement–the main external plot I try to keep front and forward is a censor and the silencing of voices (by self and by others).
And now I need some breakfast after that brain spurt!
What a great dichotomy your comment suggests: 1) add layers, 2) boil down. Ha! So true.
I’d add this: The farther you get into a WIP and the more complex it becomes, the easier it is to see the simple, universal meaning of the story.
Such an intelligent, articulate post! (No surprise.) The discussion of meaning brings me back to what (for me) is the key to a story: its premise, or “aboutness.” What is this story about? What does it say about what it means to be human or how the world works? If the author doesn’t know, the reader won’t either. That premise has to be there, behind the scenes, the whole time one is writing. Characters, motives, conflict, all of that—arises from and serves the premise. Anyway, that’s how I see it … What do you think, Don? Would you agree? (And thank you again!)
I love “aboutness”. That sums it up!
Don, are you saying that a story’s meaning lives in the protagonist’s inner conflict, somewhere between her misbelief and her redemption (or downfall)? I’m halfway through a first draft and this is really what I’m scratching for. The why, why, why? Asking that for every character. I also had this side-trip vision as I was reading this, of our ancestors re-enacting the hunt around a fire, re-telling the story so the people could take away the meaning of it, which could be joy or relief or the hope of living through another winter. You also got me thinking about levels of meaning, which I recognize when I re-read a favorite. Thanks for starting my day with all this delicious brain-food!
I’m saying that meaning arises from certain ways in which a story is organized.
When a story world offers a clear dichotomy, we can easily grasp two conflicting truths about our existence–and we must make up our minds about which is the more true.
When a character represents a strong, singular human trait, we can easily see ourselves in him or her–and we then must accept that the character’s behavior is, in fact, our own.
When a story problem touches something we all have experienced, or fear, then the author’s tale becomes our story too.
That last point explains why certain novels speak to us more than others: Those novels remind us of things we ourselves have been through.
Which is why I think that identifying your story’s universals for yourself help you to shape it in ways that connect with more people.
Good point, Susan. That image of our ancestors telling stories around a fire is a good touchstone for keeping a story on track: Is this story’s meaning so urgent that people would re-tell it, over and again, as if their listeners’ lives depended on it?
Something I will keep in mind as I craft my story:
“Is this story’s meaning so urgent that people would re-tell it, over and again, as if their listeners’ lives depended on it?”
That is HUGE!
Good point, Susan. The image of our ancestors telling stories around a fire is a good touchstone: Is the story’s meaning so urgent that people would re-tell it, over and again, as if their listeners’ lives depended on it?
Hey Don, wonderful time to seek meaning, isn’t it? I woke up to the fact that this journey is about seeking meaning some time ago, but it’s funny how I continually need to be reminded of it. Also, I continue to be amazed how often the meaning only comes clear in hindsight–after we’ve got something on the page. It’s so often like a cosmic cuff to the head.
Your prompt about boiling down the central problem to its essence reminded me of something I don’t think I’ve ever asked you about. I know you’ve read the Song of Fire and Ice books, but did you watch HBO’s Game of Thrones through to the end? It got ahead of the books, but I’ve been scratching my head about the rabid outrage the finale provoked.
I mean, I get that the final season seemed rushed. But it seems to me that the show’s writers boiled the show down to its essence. Dani, who represents the inevitable culmination of authoritarian power (power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely), callously burns down the town to achieve her political ambition. Jon Snow sees the inhumanity of it, and in spite of his love for the persona–perhaps even the heritage and tradition his aunt represents–kills her. She’s gone mad, as all who achieve the Iron Throne inevitably do. He rejects it. Bran–who, though he lacks charisma, is metaphorically the most visionary and well-studied person in the realm–becomes the new leader. And Jon finally goes off to wander the woods with his loyal dog… er, direwolf.
And people lost their minds! I mean, there was a petition sent to HBO to reshoot it (with 1.8 million signatures!). Did people really want a beautiful monarch figure, no matter how cruel or corrupted (the scion of a family that willfully inbred to keep themselves “pure”) to prevail? Did they seek another meaning? If so–if they didn’t get it from this particular story–why couldn’t they just shake their heads and walk on? I mean, I know they had a pretty substantial investment (8 seasons worth). But the reaction just seemed so visceral, so vehement.
Not that I’m at all concerned about “getting the meaning right” for a sprawling epic story or anything, lol. Apologies for the side-track if you didn’t watch, but I couldn’t help wondering.
Thanks, as always, for helping me find the meaning, even if I don’t see what’s right before my eyes. Or perhaps especially then. Hope you and yours are well, and well-stocked these days.
Yes, I did watch GOT all the way through to the end of the eighth season. I was not disappointed. In fact, for me the finale’s outcome left us with a profound question…
…do we wish to be governed, or do we wish to be ruled?
The reaction of upset fans was depressing. They wanted a winner. They wanted a king, or queen. They want to be ruled.
Really? They would have preferred a Dani, a narcissist who believes that she has total power? Who burns an entire city of innocents who displease her? What was their problem with rational Bran? He’s…what?…boring?
Here’s what’s boring to me: an idiot king who thinks he can do no wrong and because of that thousands and thousands of people die. Well, thank God that GOT was only a TV show.
Lol, thanks for satisfying my curiosity. Here’s to the possibility of waking from the nightmare of a world that embraces narcissism in order to get back to boring but humane leadership.
(Hmmm–maybe I should try writing a meaningful ending that reflects something similar? Just a thought.)
LOL. Yeah, maybe you should.
For the win:
“Well, thank God that GOT was only a TV show.”
LOL!
As always, you’ve given me much to think about. My story sprang from a true event–a child lost, a child dead. I wanted to rewrite that story, and in doing so I created a family in confusion and a family history that haunts my MC. I guess I truly piled on the sorrow, used my love of words to create the story world, but was recently told (after a coach read 35 pages) that I don’t have a POINT to my story. I’ve created this story world and she feels it lacks a point. I guess I haven’t answered WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? In this time of quarantine I think that is the question we are all asking. Maybe out of that angst I can bring forth some answers in my story. I know there are many, some part of the angst of human life. Others with seeds of redemption. Now which to focus on. In this time, I hope to find that light that I know is buried somewhere in all of those words!!
Beth, I agree, and I too am going through this quarantine wondering, “What does it all mean?”
As to your story, because it’s based on a true story (hopefully not your personal loss) it already has meaning for you. It touched you, changed you and compelled you to put it into words so it could never be forgotten. I’m wondering if maybe that’s where some of the meaning derives from.
Losing a child is my greatest terror, and I wonder how a family survives such a loss. Please keep digging and find your answer, because it’s story I’d like to read.
Ditto what Deb said.
That’s a story I want to read.
Thanks so much, James and Deb. You help me get back to the keyboard.
Hi Don
In my latest draft (that I emailed last night), my character learns that the love he feels is really selfish. He doesn’t love the other person, but is in love with how they make him feel. He becomes mature when he realizes this, marking the moment as when he becomes an adult.
I recently came across this quote and I think about it when I consider the meaning of meaning for myself.
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
Albert Camus
That quote from Camus gives me great hope.
To help myself in these times, I have been re-reading “Man’s Search for Himself” by Rollo May (quoted above), and “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl.
It turns out that writers who came before us have some words that still mean a lot to us now. Imagine that.
I’ve always loved that Camus quote.
Wow, there is so much to unpack in this post. The three sets of questions at the end of this post are essential for writers in exploring and ultimately delivering on the essence of story: its meaning for the reader. If the writer is not clear on the story’s meaning, the reader certainly will not be clear, either. I have used the questions you have posed in your workshops and books to help me to get to the root of my story. Often, the meaning only becomes clear after several agonizing drafts. A story’s meaning is everything and it must resonate with readers. As a writer, I write to make sense of the world, for me and for others. I have always been fascinated by family dynamics and that is what I have chosen to write about, though I have explored other genres as well. In today’s challenging climate, it is more important than ever for writers to try to make sense of a world in chaos. Thanks, Don, for sharing your wisdom with the WU community.
“Often, the meaning only becomes clear after several agonizing drafts.”
That is absolutely true! With Lorin Oberweger, I have been running a two-year story “lab”, a cocktail napkin to revised draft experience with tons of support. One thing I’ve noticed with our twelve participants is that at the outset they doubted the worthiness of their projects, but by the last (current) phase the meaning of their stories has become, for each of them, crystal clear.
I have wanted to participate in the lab so badly. It is just the residency requirement that stopped me at his juncture of my life. Maybe next time (or the time after)
This piece really hits the mark for me, Don. Thank you. The hunger to charge my stories with meaning that nourishes and satisfies without teaching is my reason for writing stories.
Your described avenues to explore and reveal meaning — the framing of the story setting, aspects of character, and the experience the characters have in that setting — offer an unlimited range of imagination-firing opportunity.
If I weren’t already in the middle of a project, this article would make me start a new one today!
Good morning, Don.
Meaning. Wow. That’s a heavy topic to wake up to. *smile* I’ve always put meaning and purpose into the same category, but you’ve defined some aspects of meaning a different way than I’ve imagined it to be. So, in the context of meaning bringing order to the chaos in the protagonist’s world, it’s not necessarily what we see as purposeful choice but rather what is driving the need to act?
It must be early in the morning. that doesn’t even make sense to me. (more coffee)
Let me try this a different way. This morning I read an article about a healthcare worker in NYC who is putting a yellow daffodil on each corpse in the refrigerated trailers that is storing the deceased. While the stated intent is to offer honor and respect those who have died, what caught me was the desire to know what sorrow, what peace, what meaning in this act has this individual going and buying flowers and then placing a flower on each? But the resounding impact for me was, I didn’t have to know exactly what specific meaning it has for this person, it made me weep to know those lost lives matter collectively to all of us. The meaning for me? Because it could be one of my loved ones. It took me way beyond the daily numbers to the individual reality and pain of loss.
My question is this. If the action evokes the emotion in the reader, do we always need to know the meaning behind what drove the action?
Thanks, Don. You’ve given me a lot to think about.
You pose an interesting question, Deb. Each reader brings her own concerns and experiences to our work. IMHO we don’t want to force them to accept our meaning in lieu of the one they see.
I was going to add that we as authors still need to know the meaning we invest in that action and how it relates to the story, yet I’m reminded of how many times I’ve put something in because it felt right and only much later understood the meaning it held for me and the story.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is a must read. I think we storytellers do this unconsciously–all my stories have come about because I’m wrestling with a question and in telling the story, I understand this world a little bit better. I’ve been working on some easy-to-read stories for beginning readers and one thing that shines through is the joy of simple living. I didn’t realize it until I was revising and putting the stories together.
Thanks, Don, for another beautiful essay.
Great food for thought, as always, Don! Since beginning my writing journey, I have chosen themes that I wanted to explore through storytelling. They are things that have worried, bothered, or puzzled me about our society, our world, and human nature in general. I write historical suspense and women’s historical fiction, both of which lend themselves nicely to these exercises. My favorite way to explore a theme is through dual timelines, giving both the historical and contemporary perspective on what underpins the plot.
As a college student, one of my English courses used as its text John Ciardi’s How Does a Poem Mean? It provided far more than the usual introduction to style and thematic analysis. It got to the very heart of experiencing and gaining personal meaning from the written word. My favorite quote from that text, and one which I believe applies to all literature, follows:
“What one must always comprehend of poetry is that it is an experience the reader must re-live. There is no other comprehension of the arts.”
Thank you for taking us back to this very core principal!
Don,
as always your posts leave me thinking about it hours later. And this post is so timely for me. Being a pantser I needed first to get the story on the page. Which thankfully is now done
Now I am working on integrating layers, meaning and depth your three points are such great guideposts to work through.
For today, here, I want to explore the concept of dichotomy. My story has a natural dichotomy – past vs. present, was life better in 1860 (simpler = better) or is it today (amenities = better). And if today is better then what from the past could we bring in here to enrich our present. It coincidentally dovetails with all the questions floating in my head about the quarantine and everything (for and against) going on about it.
As I think though it, there is another part which is a struggle. In the interest of wordcount (debut authors must not defy the wordcount guidelines) my struggle is how do I answer even some of the questions without nuking parts of the story which are plot driven and take the story from one step to the next. And should I delve deeper into the emotional layers by sacrificing parts of the plot to keep within the word count.
This is my struggle and any advice would be so appreciated.
Priya, I of course have been reading with interest your homework in the current online WFWA workshop that I’m conducting. I get what you’re asking. I don’t think you need to worry about bloating your word count. The meaning you want in your story is infused, and when it rises to the surface (say, in dialogue) not that many words are involved. Think of it this way: If your readers don’t have to think at all, because you’ve laid out the meaning for them, then you may have said too much on the page.
Does that help?
That’s great advise, Don. Thank you for that. It helps and is a great guidepost. The meaning needs to weave through the story and all it’s elements.
Thank you for a great workshop. I am armed with so many tools (not just from the work I put on my writing and your comments on it, but also from the comments on everyone’s writing). Now back to my writing cave.
Wonderful, actionable post, Donald. Thank you.
THIS needs pinned to the board, stuck on a hundred post-it notes, and possibly tattooed on my forearm:
“Great stories don’t preach, but they do have a moral purpose. They don’t divide us, but connect us. They don’t instruct; they illuminate our behavior. They don’t promise us anything except the possibility of achieving wholeness, healing, courage, compassion, reconciliation, forgiveness, and selfless love. They fill the vacuum with what we need more than anything: meaning.”
That’s one of the best “in a nutshell” explanations I’ve ever seen. Thank you.
Thank you, Donald, for another challenging and helpful post. It’s so good to be reminded in this way of the Larger Picture: The stories we like best, no matter how different from each other, all carry us along a familiar and favorite (and meaningful) journey — into a world like our world, with characters who are us, facing conflicts that are ours… and who travel the pathway to journey’s clear completion at “The End.” Your insights and questions are helping me see ways to accentuate and deepen the meaning I recognize in my current project.
I had to ponder your post for a while because there’s a lot to think about. If I had time, I could write an entire essay based off of different paths my brain took while reading it. Lucky for you and the Writer Unboxed community, I don’t have that much time to untangle all those half-woven threads! :D
Instead I’ll just comment to the one cohesive thought, and bit of an a-ha moment, I had about meaning and my own current story. Probably my biggest sadness about the state of society today is the drift away from community. We are becoming more and more divided from each other, unwilling to meet in the middle and prizing the individual before the many. Personally I think this was happening way before 2016, but it has been amplified since then, for obvious reasons. My current story is set in a fictional senior living center, where community and communal living is a key issue (and amplified by a protagonist who is compulsively independent.) After reading, and ruminating, on your post, it seems pretty clear that since the world around me feels horribly chaotic and self-centered, choosing to write a story with this kind of setting definitely helps me bring some order into at least my world. Also, if I ever do have readers for this story, maybe it can be a reminder that community is important and that we are stronger together.
Interesting. Now my cozy mystery has even more meaning than justice being served! This is why I love your posts. :)
Thanks to all for commenting! To my astonishment, quarantine has been far busier than freedom ever was. Sorry not to reply to all comments, but they are appreciated. They’ve given meaning to my day.
Late to the party, sorry. Just this:
We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage and resolution were most important, into that more difficult time when it is a man’s duty to understand his world rather than simply fight for it. —Ernest Hemingway, Introduction to Treasury of the Free World (1946)