Stories are a strange thing. Both as the writer and the reader, the pull to immerse myself in a good story has always been irresistible. Even from the earliest age I was pulled towards stories, writing them in pitiful form and soaking in every source I could. Later, stories became a refuge, safe from the rest of the world.
There is a tendency towards escapism in both writers and readers, because it is a way of helping ourselves work through things we aren't strong enough to face head on. This happens not only conscienceless, but subconsciously as well. We are pulled towards the stories that speak to us, sometimes not knowing what it is that calls. As a writer, this is even stronger; the amount of possibilities, tied to the flow and drive of the story can confuse a me even in the middle of a story and send me veering off the storyline.
The story begins in a rush, the images so vivid, and the characters so real you can smell the salt in their tears. But as it progresses I begin to lose my grip on them. Characters, like young children, pull away, getting more defiant as they get older and stronger. The desire to mother hen them into a particular storyline overwhelms the original inspiration. It overwhelms the truth that cried out to be heard, and my desire to write something that conforms to a preconceived theme derails the very story I was trying to bring to life.
In parenthood there is a impulse to guide your children. It is a natural impulse and not wrong, but as the children get older they need freedom. This too is natural, yet fraught with wrongness. The job of the parent is to walk the tightrope: guide their children but allow them opportunity to grow. A child who is given free reign from the moment they are born will grow up wild and spoiled, yet a child who is caged from their first steps will be stunted and dull. Children need to experience their own faults and their own destinies, their paths must be their own or they will lose the desire to keep moving, but without guidance from their parents, they will flounder rudderless looking for meaning. I'm speaking in generalities of course because there is exceptions to just about everything, but this analogy translates to writing almost perfectly.
Just as a parent may spend the first decade getting to know their child and he or her personality, a writer may spend years writing but not understanding their story. And the crux of both cases comes down to ourselves. Children are products of their parents, both genetically as well as habitually: We inherit the sins of our predecessors, and we endow them as well to our offspring. We may not recognize it, in fact we may refuse to admit it, but truthfully we share as much of our bad habits with our children as we do the good.
Likewise in writing, we often drag more than just inspiration into the stories that we write.
That's what I ended up doing during this last project. I've always had a soft spot for extravagant fantasies. Floating cities, daring heroes overwhelming sinister enemies, mythological monsters, and exaggerated stories. I've always wanted to write a story like the St. George and the dragon. Dragons always having been the pinnacle of monsters in my mind; physically powerful, sly and crafty as they come, fundamentally greedy and jealous: In classic (western) mythology they play the part of the perfect villain. Yet as I began to write my story, I could already tell was deviating from my own ideal dragon story. Firstly, there was no damsel, no great trial, only a single hero with a goal which even early on only seems ambiguously moral. Even the first chapter was robbed of the common whitewashed heroism of classic romantic dragon hunting stories. Tsorn finds himself not fighting a worth foe, but a weak and unworthy one. He is forced by circumstances to a result which immediately afterwards he regrets. The end hints at themes of pride bringing him to this end, and his own stubbornness which drives him forward even though he knows he has passed a point of moral cleanliness.
The next chapter the he continues to move, haunted by his own pride and stubbornness. But in a filtered perception he, and by extension the audience, begins to brush aside the doubts they had earlier, and plan an assault against an enemy who seems to deserve Tsorn's hunting.
The third chapter then I danced between a current Tsorn and his scheming self, and again there's a torn nature. In the current, there is no room for half measures, there is no time to rethink a plan of action, so there is no moral deficit. But in reflection Tsorn clearly had time to plan, time to execute, time to retreat if he wanted, yet he continues to push forward. He again pushes into the moral grey area, using tactics which seem dubious in the extreme, yet justified by a unexplained end goal which the audience can only assume is righteous and worthwhile.
Then the final stage: Immediately the audience is hit with a grim scene. There is an impulse to doubt Tsorn's methods, even his motives. We rely on faith that its in line with his previous tactics, and an assumption that the ends may justify the means, but there is a nagging wrongness to the whole story. They way he manipulates the dragon, makes him seem more the villain than the story's protagonist. But as the final confrontation plays out, even Tsorn wakes up to his own sins. In the end Tsorn looks around at his own actions and asks, "what was the goal that could justify this cost." And at the same time, so did I.
The entire time I was writing these chapters, I continually asked myself 'how'. How does an inexperienced hunter fight an apex predator? How does he distract it? How does he trap it? How does he kill it? And in the few months I was working on the story (between other projects), only a few times I asked myself 'why'. "Why would a boy go to such lengths."
I wanted to make a character who the audience could root for. Not one that was perfect, so to speak, but certainly someone who was good in a relative sense. But even as I wrote the previous chapters I did not mean to write a morally driven piece. I was not intending to include so many morally ambiguous actions on the part of the protagonist. I had planned a completely different ending to the story that I wrote. The way that Tsorn acted, the tactics he used seemed logical, and the morality of it never really dawned on me until I came to that very same scene that Tsorn did, I looked back and I realized Tsorn was not a hero. I looked at his actions and through them my own, and I saw something ugly, something twisted. He could not be called a good person, and through him, neither could I.
I could not end the story with him walking away with a trophy of his hunt after so many hideous actions and still hold his head high. Certainly having a morally good character is not a requirement for my writing, but for this story, I wanted Tsorn to be a good guy. Yet after having written the former three pieces, I could not go back on the forth and re write it and more than I could the first three. Because Tsorn would have acted like that. At that point, I could only look back and regret what I had done, the same as Tsorn, because in a true sense that's exactly what would have happened to Tsorn. No one can rewrite their past either. There was truth there, even if ugly.
As a writer I could not truthfully un-write Tsorn's history. It would have been as dishonest as trying to lie about my own past. But at the same time, I could not in good conscience write a story so close to praising trophy hunting. Personally, I detest trophy hunting. Hunting in general is fine, as long as the hunters are aware and responsible for their actions. But killing an animal for a single piece, which serves no function other than to elevate one's statues is wrong and hideous. Animals are not playthings, they are living creatures who experience pain and loss the same as we do. As the pinnacle of our habitat it is out responsibility to act appropriately. Tsorn's goal, though not wholly for status and in the end turned out to be for a selfless cause, could not justify what he'd done.
Tsorn then faced a dilemma that everyone has faced at least once in their life. It is innately human to be flawed. From the moment we are born we amble forward instinctually. We learn to talk and we learn to walk without thinking, and in the same way we learn to sin without thinking as well. We hurt those around us as a matter of nature. It is not generally intentional that we wrong those around us, it is just that life is predisposed to chaos, and often we find ourselves the agents of woe. But at some point after the fact, we wake up and realize what we have done. And that is where our caliber shows. Do we choose to make things right, to do the hard thing and work to fix the sins to reign the chaos. Or do we turn a blind eye, ignore our own actions out of defensiveness or selfishness, and thus continue to walk in it. The thing is, it is never one decision, these points hit us everyday. They are small, usually imperceptible unless you're looking for it. Thus it is a step by step fall. Often it is not until we hit the bottom or near bottom that we wake up and see the devastation left in our wake. That is the point we witness Tsorn wake up to; his rock bottom. We saw his step by step, we saw his willful ignorance, and we saw him face the consequence of his actions, only because desperation gave him no other option than to stop and look. I could not go back and 'fix' Tsorn because I cannot go back and 'fix' myself, I can only keep walking forward, meeting each of those evil-impulsed moments as they come, doing my best to step rightly, praying I have the strength to do the right thing the next time, and the next, until my end.
That is the beauty of writing. The art of writing both informs us of the world, but also of ourselves. I didn't know I was writing about trophy hunting until I looked back at my own stories and saw the evidence there. But the story speaks about so much more than trophy hunting as well, it is a cautionary tale of walking blind. That is the truth that stories can show us. Waking us up to the cause associated to effects. There are so many things in our lives and in the world that we can willfully ignore, but doing something so nuanced as writing reveals those things to us. Anyone who tried to write better, can and must become aware of these issues playing inside of them. The more you write the more aware you become.
The act of imitating life requires close observation and insight. As you stare at these things, you cannot ignore the contradictions and flaws as easily as in normal day to day life. Just living sun-up to sun-down, its easy to turn off your mind and live on autopilot, but you do not grow that way. You don't get stronger, if anything you atrophy. Writing and in a lesser extent reading, helps me become more aware of my life. It helps me to be intentional about how I live.
I know I'm biased but I urge everyone I meet to write. Not necessarily for an audience, but for themselves. Because the awareness you gain helps you to live intentionally, to awake to those moments in your life before you reach a destination of desperation.
If you were walking towards a cliff, wouldn't you want to know?
