In The Garden Living an RPG Life

I am starting another blog with another friend.  While he is quite bright, he is also quite inexperienced. Thus, he is not comfortable with complex explanations of some things.  Like analyzing stories.

This blog I have started is about reading and writing short stories and when I was thinking of how to explain the basics of story to him, it occurred to me that all the characters in a story want only one thing:  They want to be happy.  They pursue the things they believe will make them happy.  This is true no matter which side of the story equation the character is on.  Using a story Richard and I know in common, Harry Potter, I can ask what Harry wants.  In the first book, The Sorcerer’s Stone, the first thing we can be certain of is that Harry wants his family to–at the very least–stop picking on him.  That will go a long way toward making him happy.  What will make the Dursley’s happy?  Either that Harry will go away, or that he will be just like them.  And Voldemort.  What will make him happy?  Absolute power over life and death.

This idea, that all the characters want is to be happy, is a quite simple one and surprised me when I thought of it. The concept itself comes from Huna, from the principle of Aloha–love is to be happy with.  It’s also the result of a syllogism: God is love, love is happiness, therefore God is happiness.  It makes sense in that context also, since being loved usually is accompanied by being happy.

I don’t know where this concept is going.  There are other parts in my new analytical structure that are also from the Huna system as I’ve come to understand it through Serge Kahili King.  The importance of planning is one.  How does the character’s plan to achieve happiness succeed or fail?     It seems so simple when I say it that way.  It’s the simplicity of the statement that is deceptive.  Happiness isn’t always planned for.  What happens when it is planned for and the plan fails? How does the character respond?

So, I ask myself, where does all this come from?  Ah… Almost forgot about that.  When I decided that my retirement plan was to become a writer who teaches writing, the focus I committed to was the principles of Huna.  Following Martha Beck’s program, though, I focused more on how I wanted to feel when I had achieved that goal and not on the details of how I would get there.  I also didn’t let the lack of an MFA get in the way of the feeling of achievement.  I’ve been surprised by how my idea, my desire, is manifesting itself.  This analysis rubric seems to be an aspect of my goal.

I was pleased at how well the whole concept flowed together for one.  For another, since my purpose is always to use whatever tools there are available to empower the user.  This way of analysing a story lets the reader see how the story might apply to his or her own life.  There is no “moral” to be found in the story.  It’s not set up to be a lesson but a way of telling a story that relates to the emotion of an ordinary life.  Daniel Pink, on his PBS show mentioned a definition of story as fact, context and emotion.  Happiness, as I see it, is all three.  It is a context, a place to find oneself, an environment to be surrounded by.  It is a fact of life: either you are happy or you are not.   It is also an emotion, something we feel, something our bodies react to.

This may not make much sense now.  It will as I go on.  Richard may not participate in the blog as I expect him to.  I will put the lessons here, as pages, so that I can at least investigate the story analyzing process on my own.  The plan is to use public domain stories from the Gutenberg Project and Librivox.org.  I will be creating the rubric and applying it myself.  Lets all see how it turns out.