How Stories Effect The Way We See The World

Every writer has a different voice, and some can maintain several different voices at once, such as nonfiction and fiction, or switch from style to style depending on the project the writer is working on and the intended effects.

The easiest way to describe this is with the window analogy.

Imagine that each writer, and as I said, this can depend on the project, has chosen the point from which the reader will look into a story, much like a point of view.

They can choose to make the reader sympathize with the monster of this world and ask the question, is this really the monster, is this the villain that everyone should hate? Or the writer could take another wall and place the window there, this time looking out from the perspective of the obvious hero as they slay the dragon and save the day. This matters on levels of incredible magnitude, but for the purposes of my story I will leave it at that.

Now, when a writer chooses the view from a window, they have a few different things to consider: (1) the window frame, and (2) the glass that keeps the wind at bay (though this may be a desired effect, to throw the reader's hair back and remind them that the veil is thin in places like this, within the magic of stories).

This is where the analogy begins to explain the differences and similarities between a writer's poetic style from project to project. This is where a writer chooses how the reader will see the chosen events and point of view.

They can have the frame carved out of mahogany, polished, and etched with symbols of the lore of the fictional world, sometimes distracting from the story the window looks upon, and yet supporting the experience in some way.

And the glass is even more important.

Stained glass for the writer who likes to leave the interpretation to the writer, colored glass to reveal a theme, and plain glass to simply give the reader a crystal clear view of the events of the story.

Worldview is very, very similar to this analogy for proetic style.

When someone has an experience, it is like a new piece of glass being added to their own window through which they see the story of their current situation and the entire world.

Each experience is like a new piece of glass added to that window, filling it in, making the pain whole again, even though it is made up of shards from a thousand different windows gathered from the ground. From experiences.

And this is where stories become even more important. Stories are, at their core, seemingly inexpressibly magical experiences. We turn to them to enjoy the exhilaration of living the lives of others, to add those experiences–whether conscious or not–to their own worldviews. And when we reach the end of a book or story in almost any form, it creates a new pain of glass that our mind unconsciously adds to the window of our worldview. You look up at the geese flying overhead, and your mind flashes back to a surprisingly insightful moment in the movie Migration. You see a spider crawling around in the corner, and instead of finding the familiar terror or the creature, crushing it under a handkerchief, you remember Sharlet and her web, and gently carry the animal outside and set it down on the porch.

Stories are, as C.S. Lewis once wrote, one of the few things that can: "steal past watchful dragons," slipping through the mental barriers of humanity, their guarded understanding of our world.

That is why we must be so careful with them. And that is why we must write them.