The Power of Story

When I was young, my sisters decided to get rid of a lot of the dolls they had that they didn’t play with. Some of them were gently used, some more scruffy, as children’s toys will be. We came up with stories for each of them, giving them a name and a back story. I remember one had blue hair and the story was that she got blue hair because someone dipped her into a bucket of blue paint.

We had no problem giving them all away.

That’s the fascinating thing about stories, they make things more real. An old doll is just that until we know about her. Then she’s a character with personality and history.

We’re surrounded by nameless things all day and most are simply utilitarian. I’m sitting at Panera with a coffee mug next to me, but the only value it has is to let me drink coffee. If it fell and broke, it would be thrown away without a thought.

Let’s say I tell you, though, that the mug was used by a famous person. That’s interesting but there isn’t enough detail to make the story really stick. We might mention it when using it but that’s probably it. Now how about this:

Back in the summer of 1992, Queen Elizabeth was on a tour of Canada and while on the way to Toronto, one of the cars in the entourage broke down. They decided to visit a Tim Horton’s coffee shop nearby. The Queen got an apple fritter and a cup of coffee, and this is the mug that she used.

In three sentences, the mug has changed from a normal mug to an heirloom (if you believe it, of course. Without evidence, history and legend are the same thing). The story would go so much beyond the original function of the mug that you would probably never use it again, just keep it in a display cabinet and show it proudly to visitors.

So what’s the point? Besides being an interesting observation about stories, this is important for writing since it shows the difference that even a small amount of back story can make. We don’t need to know the personal history of everyone and everything in the story but a few judicious additions that fit the story can really add a lot.

For example, the book A Clear and Present Danger, by Tom Clancy, is about the US waging a secret war against the drug cartels of Colombia. At one point, a fighter plane drops a bomb that they later pretend was a car bomb. In the movie, you just see the plane fly over and drop the bomb but in the book, we learn the pilot’s name and that his sister died of a drug overdose and that is why he is motivated to fly this particular mission. It’s not crucial to know this for the overall plot but it gives depth to the story because it goes with the story (knowing his father used to work as a fisherman would not).

Summary: even a small amount of back story can give depth and meaning to incidental parts of a story, making the whole story more vivid and real.