In “School Lunches”, on page 37, the author wrote something that related back to “Shitty First Drafts”, which really stuck out to me. The author said, “Now, who knows if any of this is usable material? There’s no way to tell until you’ve got it all down, and then there might just be one sentence or one character or theme that you end up using” (Lamott, p. 37). This has been something that stuck with me since last week when I read the other chapter like this one. My mind, like some others, runs at 100 miles an hour all the time. It is hard for me, especially when trying to write my first draft, to think of one specific theme I am going to write about. With that being said, I most often choose to write about the smallest element I touched upon in my first draft, and is a complete 180 from where I first thought I would go with my paper. Especially with the story I am writing right now, I had trouble trying to think of one specific route I wanted to take with my characters. I knew I wanted to have two different high school characters – one extremely smart, and the other who made bad decisions – and have the two fall in love. What I found especially interesting in Lamott’s “Character” chapter, is that she actually talks about characters like mine. Towards the end of the chapter, she says, “Bad things happen to good characters, because our actions have consequences, and we do not all behave perfectly all the time” (Lamott, p. 45). This is starting to make me think about where I want to go with my characters. Should I have the bookworm fall down the wrong path, being influenced by my other character? Will there be a relationship that forms between them instead? At this point in time, I am still unsure, and this chapter definitely had some new ideas stick with me, and might just make me change the entire ending of my story.
I agree with much of what the author stated in “Character” about how to get ideas and how to portray characters. Regarding the former, I find that it is much easier to base characters off of people I know in real life rather than try to make up a character whose personality I do not understand. In addition to being clumsy in general, I have come to realize that a potential reader would be likely to see the fakeness of a character the author doesn’t understand; perhaps a character is portrayed as having a similar background to a reader, but does not do any of the things that the reader generally does, making the character unrelatable. I also agree that the narrator has the power to portray aspects of life that many would ordinarily find boring in an interesting way. I see this done well when authors note some unique detail or way of thinking in the process of a “boring” activity. Furthermore, hope in novels makes things interesting for me. Even if the ending portrays a major failure, which is rare, I believe the story to be a good one if the characters were displaying optimism by putting up a good faith effort to do what they believe is right every step of the way.
Although the author does a reasonable job attempting to relate to the reader throughout the novel, I think that the author turns the relatability burner up a couple of notches in the “School Lunches” chapter. She really expresses thoughts and opinions in such a way that I want to join the conversation with her. Her technique of asking students about their school lunches when they are stressed about a writing assignment also appears to be very helpful, for the same reason it is helpful when someone asks a detailed question in conversation. If when the students called the author in Bird by Bird, she instead asked them how their day was, the student’s reply would probably be something like “Fine, how about yours?”, and the conversation would end there. In asking something targeted, and likely different from the day to day conversations students have, the students are given the opportunity to explore the depths of their experiences, which will ultimately help them in their writing and also make them feel better in general.
After reading pages 31-52 of “Bird By Bird” I really loved in the “School Lunches” chapter how she wrote about school lunches and how she was able to make something so interesting about a topic that isn’t necessarily interesting to read or write about. But she was able to make it interesting. While continuing to write about the school lunches I loved the way she captured the essence of being a kid at school whose only worry in the world was that their lunch wasn’t embarrassing. I think her writing about that reminds me of being that kid. In the next chapter “Polaroids” she writes about how at first she was going to a special olympics and having no idea what she was going to write about. But, then at the end of the special olympics she had such a perfect image in her mind of what she could write about. The quote she used in this chapter I really loved “You would have loved it, I tell my students. You would have felt like you could write all day.” and I love that line because it shows the change of not knowing what you could write about to being able to write all day.
Describing school lunches you can find a sense of wonder and questions that can give more to your writing. And just writing it down so that you can shape it and edit it and make it into what you wish. You won’t know until you slap it down on the page. Things from your past and spark something to write about in fiction writing. You can come up with characters and traits of them from just free writing down things for everything. Staying open with your characters is a good thing that resonates with me.
Anne Lamott amazes me at how well she uses her words to teach us how to write. The descriptions and anecdotes she uses are easy to understand and apply to our own lives. While I liked the ‘School Lunches’ chapter, the chapter, ‘Character’ stood out to me more. The first sentence of the chapter is engaging and tells you that it is a process to learn about the characters in your story. I think that character development is trickier than developing the plot sometimes because no one likes a flat and boring character. If the character remains stagnant throughout the story, the reader will not enjoy the story.
I have always heard people say that they base their characters off of themselves or even people they know in real life. This person can maybe even be someone they saw once in their life and never again. What I am getting from this chapter, I think Lamott is saying that to create a good character, you need to know them.
A type of character in stories is the narrator. Sometimes the narrator is just a voice talking about the characters in a story in third person. They know all and everything, but there is no actual connection to the narrator because that is all they are. A first-person narrator is the one that people usually develop some type of relationship with, whether it be like or dislike, the reader knows things about them that other characters in the story probably don’t.
This chapter helps me think about how I am developing my characters and whether or not they are likeable.
The chapter on School Lunches felt a bit more abstract than any previous readings. I understand that it probes information from writers, and everyone’s experience is different yet similar, but I am failing to connect this to my writing in this class. Creative nonfiction writing may be the intended audience here with this personal experience. The chapter stresses the perfectionism mindset again, allowing your story to unfold like a packed or bought lunch. I felt more connected to the second chapter on characters. Immersing yourself into the lives of your characters and seeing the routines they build and how they interact with their world is more concrete in crafting fiction. I actively attempt to employ the “show, don’t tell” method, and I need to work on it more in this class. Lamott informs us that we cannot know as much about our characters as they do, thus requiring us to listen to them so they can share their story — or at least guide us to do so. Lamott advises writers to loosely base characters around real people if in need. She says to squint and paint, a concept that may benefit me when devising these characters. Also, when it comes to the development of these characters, it often happens like a polaroid, but right now, I feel as though it is like a developing film. Typically, this is a long process where one mistake can ruin the image you are trying to create. I would like to get to the point where it is merely like a Polaroid.
Journal #5: While reading the chapters of Bird by Bird assigned to us for this week I particularly enjoyed the way these the chapters flowed, where one minute the author mentioned a boy she met in childhood who she wanted to turn into a character in one of her stories; and then directly transitioning into the next chapter we were told to flip to which was about writing good characters. I have always been a person whose writing is character lead, in that, the character comes first. That person, whoever they may be, appears out of the darkness and they tell me all their thoughts and feelings and so we write a story together that way. This chapter on the writing of a good character emphasized getting to know your characters. It asked questions about what your characters would write in their journal or keep in their pockets, which I got very excited about as a thought exercise. This chapter also spoke about basing characters on the people you know and see, from people you know as well as you know yourself, to the complete stranger who stood in line in front of you yesterday. I finished reading the chapter about characters thinking about what an interesting character Anne Lamott would make. This book in particular has so many interesting places which set it heavily not only in the time that it was written, but also in the time that the author grew up in. Her stories make me wonder if this is how my grandmother lived as well. Today I don’t think you would need to explain that you were a Christian just because you made a reference to the Buddha, and yet the author makes this distinction clearly. Her stories too about her school lunches really gave you a feeling of a time passed.
Journal #5
I thought the character was an especially helpful chapter in the realm of short fiction. Not only is it important to have likable and unlikable characters, but one must also know their characters inside and out. They must let the characters carry the narrative of the story. A story where the individuals involved have no real effect on the plot is hardly a story. Lamott quotes Andre Dubus who wrote, “I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live.” He is of course correct. A short story has much more in common with something you would tell a friend or your mom than with a novel. It is driven by emotion and by characters. By people experiencing human things and reacting in human ways. Nothing could ruin a story like a character suddenly changing in a nonsensical way. Character development is one thing and inconsistency is another. I think what Lamott is telling us in this chapter is much as you must simply allow yourself to just put pen to paper, you also must allow the characters you create to lead you to the story they want to tell. This is true even when we subject the characters we love to unpleasant or cruel things. This is not a crime. The crime would be doing this while not staying true to your characters fundamental being. Know who you’re writing about.
School lunches was the chapter that really got through to me. At first glance, you’d think the exercise of writing about your school lunch experience is useless and a waste of time. But after finishing the chapter, it’s clear how helpful sitting down and writing about it can be. Being able to dive into your school lunch experience can bring to light the way you grew up, the way you were raised, and more about yourself that you don’t tend to think about. The reason this exercise is so helpful in getting your creative juices flowing is the way that, even years later, you can still remember how school lunch was for you. You might’ve forgotten other elements of school, but something the generally tends to stick with a person is the displeasure of school lunches. Whether you bought it or brought it, the food always ended up being less than ideal, definitely not suited to helping a growing kid get through the rest of their day. Despite how wonderful (unlikely) or terrible (more likely) your school lunch was back in your school days; you can always seem to remember it. Personally, I always have a rant saved up for when someone asks me about how school lunches were for me. As far as the characters chapter is concerned, it helped open my eyes to the fact that I don’t know my characters as well as they know themselves. I think that’s going to be important for me to remember as I continue to edit my short story.
Both chapters emphasize a kind of creative openness and humility that I find deeply resonant. In School Lunches, Lamott shows how even the seemingly insignificant parts of our lives contain layers of meaning if we’re willing to look closely. And in the chapter Characters, she reminds us that stories are about discovery, that characters can surprise us, and that it’s okay if they evolve in ways we didn’t expect as learnabout them. These ideas have stayed with me because they offer a permission slip for imperfection in the writing process—an acknowledgment that writing, like life, is messy, full of trial and error, and utimately about uncovering truths we didn’t know were there when we started. One theme between both chapters that resonates with me is the idea and concept that writing comes from paying close attention to the small, concrete details of life and allowing them to blossom into something larger and more meaningful. Lamott encourages writers to look closely at their own lives for material, to find the universal in the personal, by using small and vivid observations make the writing feel alive and human bringing the characters to life and really placing the reader in the lives of the characters.
What stuck out to me during this reading was the author’s ability to find a story in every aspect of life. For example, the short write-up about school lunches, specifically the bags a school lunch was packed in, had a variety of social commentary and fantastic imagery. I enjoyed seeing how a small moment could be expanded to tell such a multi-faceted story. I also really enjoyed the author’s emphasis on collaboration, such as calling a friend to discuss jam or having her students work together to write something in class. It reminds me of the workshop structure of this class and why collaboration is so important in writing.
After the reading I thought the dive into character was very important in terms of my development as a writer in short fiction. I think that understanding that you as the writer need to know your characters like they are actual people is an element I could work into my writing because I have characters, but they aren’t fully developed yet. I also have continued to enjoy the way that Lamott teaches us as writers and how she helps us improve because she uses anecdotes, and she just makes her writing easy to follow along with. I think another strategy that I ‘ve already loosely been following that Lamott talks about is in a way loosely basing the characters off of real people because it makes it easier to write about those characters and be able to understand them from a writer’s point of view. I think as a while that being able to understand the characters will be able to help the writing flow as a whole.
I really assumed this chapter wouldn’t be all that important to me in my writing. As someone who knows how to navigate story telling with gritty details, I wasn’t expecting too much. But I love her emphasis on a need for those gritty details. It’s truly something not many appreciate. Because in my experience, when you want to write, you do two things. The first is that you write from experience- what better to go from? The second is from the heart. People want that connection, people want that detail and that real-life emotion that only comes from reading someone’s raw work. The other thing she emphasizes is the need to get it all down. It doesn’t have to be perfect, if you have a fleeting idea, a relatable experience, a quote you like, you write it into your work. It’s good to keep the brain flowing, and pulling from experiences helps with that.
Based on what I have read on this chapter, the analogy between writing a story and the idea of school lunches is really fascinating to me. More specifically, when she started talking more about types of jam. At first glance, it seemed like a really stupid and silly analogy, but for me, I interpreted the dislike of one certain food item and liking of another makes sense in the world of short fiction. I interpreted as not thinking about “apricot jam” as putting one idea automatically to the side because you personally dislike the idea, but then realizing that it is a good idea once you hear others talk about. Basically, the jam is glue that can hold your story together, and just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean you can’t use it. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do things outside of your comfort zone and take risks if you want to succeed. I don’t know how others interpreted this part of the book, but for me, I interpreted this part just like this. Furthermore, characters and character development are in my opinion the two most important things when writing a story, and if your characters don’t mesh well with your plot and setting, it makes the reader feel isolated because they don’t know what is going on. So overall, I want to put characters first and have them lead the way of the story and match the tone of the conflict, and that is how I will create my story.
14 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 5”
In “School Lunches”, on page 37, the author wrote something that related back to “Shitty First Drafts”, which really stuck out to me. The author said, “Now, who knows if any of this is usable material? There’s no way to tell until you’ve got it all down, and then there might just be one sentence or one character or theme that you end up using” (Lamott, p. 37). This has been something that stuck with me since last week when I read the other chapter like this one. My mind, like some others, runs at 100 miles an hour all the time. It is hard for me, especially when trying to write my first draft, to think of one specific theme I am going to write about. With that being said, I most often choose to write about the smallest element I touched upon in my first draft, and is a complete 180 from where I first thought I would go with my paper. Especially with the story I am writing right now, I had trouble trying to think of one specific route I wanted to take with my characters. I knew I wanted to have two different high school characters – one extremely smart, and the other who made bad decisions – and have the two fall in love. What I found especially interesting in Lamott’s “Character” chapter, is that she actually talks about characters like mine. Towards the end of the chapter, she says, “Bad things happen to good characters, because our actions have consequences, and we do not all behave perfectly all the time” (Lamott, p. 45). This is starting to make me think about where I want to go with my characters. Should I have the bookworm fall down the wrong path, being influenced by my other character? Will there be a relationship that forms between them instead? At this point in time, I am still unsure, and this chapter definitely had some new ideas stick with me, and might just make me change the entire ending of my story.
I agree with much of what the author stated in “Character” about how to get ideas and how to portray characters. Regarding the former, I find that it is much easier to base characters off of people I know in real life rather than try to make up a character whose personality I do not understand. In addition to being clumsy in general, I have come to realize that a potential reader would be likely to see the fakeness of a character the author doesn’t understand; perhaps a character is portrayed as having a similar background to a reader, but does not do any of the things that the reader generally does, making the character unrelatable. I also agree that the narrator has the power to portray aspects of life that many would ordinarily find boring in an interesting way. I see this done well when authors note some unique detail or way of thinking in the process of a “boring” activity. Furthermore, hope in novels makes things interesting for me. Even if the ending portrays a major failure, which is rare, I believe the story to be a good one if the characters were displaying optimism by putting up a good faith effort to do what they believe is right every step of the way.
Although the author does a reasonable job attempting to relate to the reader throughout the novel, I think that the author turns the relatability burner up a couple of notches in the “School Lunches” chapter. She really expresses thoughts and opinions in such a way that I want to join the conversation with her. Her technique of asking students about their school lunches when they are stressed about a writing assignment also appears to be very helpful, for the same reason it is helpful when someone asks a detailed question in conversation. If when the students called the author in Bird by Bird, she instead asked them how their day was, the student’s reply would probably be something like “Fine, how about yours?”, and the conversation would end there. In asking something targeted, and likely different from the day to day conversations students have, the students are given the opportunity to explore the depths of their experiences, which will ultimately help them in their writing and also make them feel better in general.
After reading pages 31-52 of “Bird By Bird” I really loved in the “School Lunches” chapter how she wrote about school lunches and how she was able to make something so interesting about a topic that isn’t necessarily interesting to read or write about. But she was able to make it interesting. While continuing to write about the school lunches I loved the way she captured the essence of being a kid at school whose only worry in the world was that their lunch wasn’t embarrassing. I think her writing about that reminds me of being that kid. In the next chapter “Polaroids” she writes about how at first she was going to a special olympics and having no idea what she was going to write about. But, then at the end of the special olympics she had such a perfect image in her mind of what she could write about. The quote she used in this chapter I really loved “You would have loved it, I tell my students. You would have felt like you could write all day.” and I love that line because it shows the change of not knowing what you could write about to being able to write all day.
Describing school lunches you can find a sense of wonder and questions that can give more to your writing. And just writing it down so that you can shape it and edit it and make it into what you wish. You won’t know until you slap it down on the page. Things from your past and spark something to write about in fiction writing. You can come up with characters and traits of them from just free writing down things for everything. Staying open with your characters is a good thing that resonates with me.
Anne Lamott amazes me at how well she uses her words to teach us how to write. The descriptions and anecdotes she uses are easy to understand and apply to our own lives. While I liked the ‘School Lunches’ chapter, the chapter, ‘Character’ stood out to me more. The first sentence of the chapter is engaging and tells you that it is a process to learn about the characters in your story. I think that character development is trickier than developing the plot sometimes because no one likes a flat and boring character. If the character remains stagnant throughout the story, the reader will not enjoy the story.
I have always heard people say that they base their characters off of themselves or even people they know in real life. This person can maybe even be someone they saw once in their life and never again. What I am getting from this chapter, I think Lamott is saying that to create a good character, you need to know them.
A type of character in stories is the narrator. Sometimes the narrator is just a voice talking about the characters in a story in third person. They know all and everything, but there is no actual connection to the narrator because that is all they are. A first-person narrator is the one that people usually develop some type of relationship with, whether it be like or dislike, the reader knows things about them that other characters in the story probably don’t.
This chapter helps me think about how I am developing my characters and whether or not they are likeable.
The chapter on School Lunches felt a bit more abstract than any previous readings. I understand that it probes information from writers, and everyone’s experience is different yet similar, but I am failing to connect this to my writing in this class. Creative nonfiction writing may be the intended audience here with this personal experience. The chapter stresses the perfectionism mindset again, allowing your story to unfold like a packed or bought lunch. I felt more connected to the second chapter on characters. Immersing yourself into the lives of your characters and seeing the routines they build and how they interact with their world is more concrete in crafting fiction. I actively attempt to employ the “show, don’t tell” method, and I need to work on it more in this class. Lamott informs us that we cannot know as much about our characters as they do, thus requiring us to listen to them so they can share their story — or at least guide us to do so. Lamott advises writers to loosely base characters around real people if in need. She says to squint and paint, a concept that may benefit me when devising these characters. Also, when it comes to the development of these characters, it often happens like a polaroid, but right now, I feel as though it is like a developing film. Typically, this is a long process where one mistake can ruin the image you are trying to create. I would like to get to the point where it is merely like a Polaroid.
Journal #5: While reading the chapters of Bird by Bird assigned to us for this week I particularly enjoyed the way these the chapters flowed, where one minute the author mentioned a boy she met in childhood who she wanted to turn into a character in one of her stories; and then directly transitioning into the next chapter we were told to flip to which was about writing good characters. I have always been a person whose writing is character lead, in that, the character comes first. That person, whoever they may be, appears out of the darkness and they tell me all their thoughts and feelings and so we write a story together that way. This chapter on the writing of a good character emphasized getting to know your characters. It asked questions about what your characters would write in their journal or keep in their pockets, which I got very excited about as a thought exercise. This chapter also spoke about basing characters on the people you know and see, from people you know as well as you know yourself, to the complete stranger who stood in line in front of you yesterday. I finished reading the chapter about characters thinking about what an interesting character Anne Lamott would make. This book in particular has so many interesting places which set it heavily not only in the time that it was written, but also in the time that the author grew up in. Her stories make me wonder if this is how my grandmother lived as well. Today I don’t think you would need to explain that you were a Christian just because you made a reference to the Buddha, and yet the author makes this distinction clearly. Her stories too about her school lunches really gave you a feeling of a time passed.
Journal #5
I thought the character was an especially helpful chapter in the realm of short fiction. Not only is it important to have likable and unlikable characters, but one must also know their characters inside and out. They must let the characters carry the narrative of the story. A story where the individuals involved have no real effect on the plot is hardly a story. Lamott quotes Andre Dubus who wrote, “I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live.” He is of course correct. A short story has much more in common with something you would tell a friend or your mom than with a novel. It is driven by emotion and by characters. By people experiencing human things and reacting in human ways. Nothing could ruin a story like a character suddenly changing in a nonsensical way. Character development is one thing and inconsistency is another. I think what Lamott is telling us in this chapter is much as you must simply allow yourself to just put pen to paper, you also must allow the characters you create to lead you to the story they want to tell. This is true even when we subject the characters we love to unpleasant or cruel things. This is not a crime. The crime would be doing this while not staying true to your characters fundamental being. Know who you’re writing about.
School lunches was the chapter that really got through to me. At first glance, you’d think the exercise of writing about your school lunch experience is useless and a waste of time. But after finishing the chapter, it’s clear how helpful sitting down and writing about it can be. Being able to dive into your school lunch experience can bring to light the way you grew up, the way you were raised, and more about yourself that you don’t tend to think about. The reason this exercise is so helpful in getting your creative juices flowing is the way that, even years later, you can still remember how school lunch was for you. You might’ve forgotten other elements of school, but something the generally tends to stick with a person is the displeasure of school lunches. Whether you bought it or brought it, the food always ended up being less than ideal, definitely not suited to helping a growing kid get through the rest of their day. Despite how wonderful (unlikely) or terrible (more likely) your school lunch was back in your school days; you can always seem to remember it. Personally, I always have a rant saved up for when someone asks me about how school lunches were for me. As far as the characters chapter is concerned, it helped open my eyes to the fact that I don’t know my characters as well as they know themselves. I think that’s going to be important for me to remember as I continue to edit my short story.
Both chapters emphasize a kind of creative openness and humility that I find deeply resonant. In School Lunches, Lamott shows how even the seemingly insignificant parts of our lives contain layers of meaning if we’re willing to look closely. And in the chapter Characters, she reminds us that stories are about discovery, that characters can surprise us, and that it’s okay if they evolve in ways we didn’t expect as learnabout them. These ideas have stayed with me because they offer a permission slip for imperfection in the writing process—an acknowledgment that writing, like life, is messy, full of trial and error, and utimately about uncovering truths we didn’t know were there when we started. One theme between both chapters that resonates with me is the idea and concept that writing comes from paying close attention to the small, concrete details of life and allowing them to blossom into something larger and more meaningful. Lamott encourages writers to look closely at their own lives for material, to find the universal in the personal, by using small and vivid observations make the writing feel alive and human bringing the characters to life and really placing the reader in the lives of the characters.
What stuck out to me during this reading was the author’s ability to find a story in every aspect of life. For example, the short write-up about school lunches, specifically the bags a school lunch was packed in, had a variety of social commentary and fantastic imagery. I enjoyed seeing how a small moment could be expanded to tell such a multi-faceted story. I also really enjoyed the author’s emphasis on collaboration, such as calling a friend to discuss jam or having her students work together to write something in class. It reminds me of the workshop structure of this class and why collaboration is so important in writing.
After the reading I thought the dive into character was very important in terms of my development as a writer in short fiction. I think that understanding that you as the writer need to know your characters like they are actual people is an element I could work into my writing because I have characters, but they aren’t fully developed yet. I also have continued to enjoy the way that Lamott teaches us as writers and how she helps us improve because she uses anecdotes, and she just makes her writing easy to follow along with. I think another strategy that I ‘ve already loosely been following that Lamott talks about is in a way loosely basing the characters off of real people because it makes it easier to write about those characters and be able to understand them from a writer’s point of view. I think as a while that being able to understand the characters will be able to help the writing flow as a whole.
I really assumed this chapter wouldn’t be all that important to me in my writing. As someone who knows how to navigate story telling with gritty details, I wasn’t expecting too much. But I love her emphasis on a need for those gritty details. It’s truly something not many appreciate. Because in my experience, when you want to write, you do two things. The first is that you write from experience- what better to go from? The second is from the heart. People want that connection, people want that detail and that real-life emotion that only comes from reading someone’s raw work. The other thing she emphasizes is the need to get it all down. It doesn’t have to be perfect, if you have a fleeting idea, a relatable experience, a quote you like, you write it into your work. It’s good to keep the brain flowing, and pulling from experiences helps with that.
Based on what I have read on this chapter, the analogy between writing a story and the idea of school lunches is really fascinating to me. More specifically, when she started talking more about types of jam. At first glance, it seemed like a really stupid and silly analogy, but for me, I interpreted the dislike of one certain food item and liking of another makes sense in the world of short fiction. I interpreted as not thinking about “apricot jam” as putting one idea automatically to the side because you personally dislike the idea, but then realizing that it is a good idea once you hear others talk about. Basically, the jam is glue that can hold your story together, and just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean you can’t use it. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do things outside of your comfort zone and take risks if you want to succeed. I don’t know how others interpreted this part of the book, but for me, I interpreted this part just like this. Furthermore, characters and character development are in my opinion the two most important things when writing a story, and if your characters don’t mesh well with your plot and setting, it makes the reader feel isolated because they don’t know what is going on. So overall, I want to put characters first and have them lead the way of the story and match the tone of the conflict, and that is how I will create my story.