No worries, no stories

Stories are only stories because something happens in them and because whatever happens is either for good or for bad. Seemingly neutral events may serve only to prop up the story or keep it going in the right direction, like the railroad track for a train. But then even that is either positive or negative, depending on the direction.

To use electricity as an analogy – an electrical stream can only flow between points of differing electrical charges, e.g. from negative to positive. Similarly, a story line flows from problem to solution to new problem, etcetera. No story can exist without a problem. No worries means no stories.

Crime novels need crime, otherwise what would be the sense? Solving the crime is what makes a great story. Murder She Wrote has no raison d’etre without murder.

In the same way, romance novels owe their existence to the most basic of mathematical problems: one plus one. Does it make two? Is there another one? What if you add one and subtract another one? It is a simple mathematical proposition that can be expanded and expounded, philosophised, tied in algebraic knots, embroidered and unravelled to the heart’s content. The essence of a story.

Tragedies and travels, adventures and adversities, they are all the building blocks of storytellers. Whether it is the world that needs saving or merely a damsel in distress, no hero has a right to existence if nothing ever goes wrong. It may not be altogether true that artists need pain and suffering to drive their creative machines, but it does contain a drop of wisdom.

So cheer up, dear hearts! You may just have found another answer to the questions that have kept philosophers, theologians and existentialists occupied for aeons.

Why is there suffering in the world? Why do bad things happen to good people? To give storytellers something to do, of course! Because if there were no worries, neither would there be any stories.