Storytelling is pretty cool. You’ve got the whole English language at your disposal, and with that pile of words, you couldn’t not come up with a story, right? It’s like a deck of cards. If you shuffle a regular deck of 52 playing cards, statistically, you’ve just created something completely original. Something that the universe has never seen.
Those are cards, not words, but the same concept can apply. It’s why we’ll always have more stories. Sure, people say that there are only two stories ever told, or maybe three or five and that all other stories are just those two/three/five recycled. But can that possibly be true? Because the words and the voice and the intent change, are made individual just by a new person creating them. Like shuffling a deck.
Is this an excuse to go re-write Star Wars and call it Spar Doors and say it’s a different story because you’re not George Lucas? Well, of course not. That’s dumb. Why would you do that?
What I mean to say is that your voice is unique to you, and you shouldn’t be worried about telling your own story. Unless you make a point of blatantly copying someone else, word-for-word, your product will be your own.
Well, I meant to write this post on Orwellian prose and purple prose, but it isn’t really that at all. Oops.
Oh, and as an allusion to the title, I was writing a very cold scene where the main character’s hands are slowly freezing. I wrote that his fingers were getting number. I blinked at my computer, deleted the word. Wrote ‘more numb’ which sounded more dumb. Reverted to number, but number is like number, and that’s just confusing. So….. I ended up trashing the line entirely.
English, what the hell, man?! What did we ever do to you?? But thanks for being cool.
Signed, Zach
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Don’t steal my words. They’re mine. ©
