The Body and Soul of Story

Stories are like people. They have a body, and a soul. The body is the plot, the actions that happen. And the soul is the character, the protagonist, the key person (or persons) bound by the circumstances of the plot and forced into decisions.

Like the body and soul of story, skiing requires a unification of body and soul

The Body and Soul of Story

I thought about this body and soul relationship last month while skiing with my family. In a normal winter, we ski often. The season has an arc as the snow conditions change from December to January, temps drop below zero, wind chill can be a killer. In February the snow tends to soften. The conditions become more favorable, we’re able to drop a layer of clothing, the sun feels warmer and lasts longer. And in March we might see another big storm followed by sunny skies, and conditions where we unzip our jackets and make sure to put on sunscreen. Over the course of the season, we get into better shape, we get more runs in, we sharpen our technique. By March, mind and body feel like one.

This was not that year. With all of the restrictions and quarantine rules, and our priority to keep our kids from missing in-person school if at all possible, we were unable to ski until mid-March. The mountain had followed its traditional arc. On our first runs, my mind went right to where it normally is in March. All the conditions felt as they should be. Except my body, which screamed at every turn, and then laughed at me as I recovered on the lift, looking down at trails I normally loved but now seemed like maybe they might be too much. Maybe the risk outweighed the reward. The mind wanted more than the body could deliver.

As I groaned and strained on the last lip of a trail midday, wondering why it was so long and the lift still so far, I thought of how the mind-body relationship is similar to storytelling. So often as writers we have one part that’s much stronger than the other, and we strain to unify them. Sometimes we start with a solid premise, a what-if question that we know will bear out of the course of 50-70,000 words (depending on genre). Other times a quirky character pops into our heads with more going on than we ever had in our own pre-pandemic lives. And then we’re faced with the challenge of populating that premise, or giving that character something to do, a journey of change. And just like our mind-body existence, you can’t have one without the other.

 With our bodies, we’re often faced with circumstances beyond our control. What makes us who we are is how we handle those circumstances. We have physical choices, like diet and exercise, or how we control our appearance, but I’ll never grow another two inches no matter how much I’d like to not be the shortest person in my family. Our attitudes toward these circumstances develop our character. We recognize that there’s only so much we can do about physical conditions, so we shift our focus onto parts of our life where we can affect change. For many of us, that’s partly what brought us to writing.

So what does this mean for stories?

Your character exists within the world of the story. The condition of the world is unchangeable. At the opening, the character faces a set of circumstances that they must react to and make decisions about that will affect the course of the story. The character has no control over the external events that affect them. However, the character has complete control over how they react. Even in desperate situations, they have choices. (Generally they avoid the choice of certain death, because that would potentially end the story, but it’s an option nonetheless.) External circumstances create opportunities for critical thinking, and how the protagonist employs critical thinking determines their character.

How do you get your story’s body and soul to become one?

Ideally it will happen over the course of the story. The sooner the character recognizes the parameters within which they exist, the sooner they’re able to demonstrate critical thinking. How this critical thinking changes over the course of the story creates the character’s arc, particularly if it leads to an increase in their self-awareness. And as they respond and react to each plot point, they become intertwined with the story’s action.

 Critical thinking is possible (and encouraged!) from the beginning. Characters need to make decisions for stories to be engaging. If the plot involves things happening to the character, and the character being swept along, this leads to more division of body and soul. The more the character thinks through what’s happening, the more we see emotional reactions and understand why they feel the way they do, the more memorable the story will become.

Generally around the three-quarters mark of your story, the character recognizes the mistakes they’ve made, how maybe their reactions to the external events could have been different. Their self-awareness crystallizes, and they shift their energy to show what they’ve learned. As the plot climaxes, so does the character’s learning curve. Mind and body become one. No matter what the external pressures say, your character is ready to ski the entire mountain. And, hopefully, the story wraps up and the reader walks away satisfied, carrying the body and soul of story with them.

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