When Your Truth Becomes Fantasy: Christy Theodoulou, author of Godless Cosmologies, on finding the best way to tell your story . . .
I believe all people are stories. We are walking through the world, forging a narrative which may (or may) not come to a natural end. When our stories become bigger than ourselves is when they are shared. Then, they are powerful. They can transcend time, carry hearts, perhaps even incite change. I feel the job of the writer is to choose how they want to tell that story—how to translate it into a world of more languages, cultures and experiences than I myself could ever fathom. So, how do we do that?
The practical answer is it depends on what you want to achieve with your writing. Consider the following:
- Do you want to write to express yourself? If so, then tell the story in your language. There are so many of us and your voice is an important one, which many others may align with if not feel intrigued by.
- Do you want to connect with readers? Here, you can think about your audience. Who do you want to reach? What language do they speak? What experiences may they have—what settings do they walk around in everyday—that would make them read themselves into the pages of your story?
- Do you want to express yourself and connect with readers? Well, the answer here is do a bit of what is said at one and two above. Sometimes you may feel a deep urge to write a scene that you have an overwhelming sense of urgency about—it is something you just have to say and your reasons for expressing it feel beyond your reach. Other times, you may want to write into an experience you feel many may relate to. Of course, these are examples of substance. It may be ideal to keep your technical language consistent regardless of subject matter.
When working on my own forthcoming novel, I must confess that I did not consider any of the above questions. I really did have an urge to write; there was something inside of me that needed to speak and, curiously, it chose to speak as fiction. Why? Well, stories, for me, lend magic to the world. It is no coincidence that for some of the most profound questions of life we humans have turned to explanations that modern science cannot explain: religion, of course, is the key example here.
A Story Unto Yourself
This leads me to your story. You are, as I have indicated, a story unto yourself. A neatly packaged tale in skin and bone. As a writer, you have everything you need inside of you. All you have to do is translate that according to one, two or three above (or you could, of course, do away with those altogether too). The beauty of your role is that you can make that story bigger than you. It can break free of your mortality and choose any form you’d like. So what form will that be?
- Think of people. Who could speak to your story? Who would find themselves walking the halls of your veins and pluck at your heartstrings? They don’t have to be you. They just have to be someone you can conjure and understand. Because they are people too. Just like you.
- Think of places. Where does your story manifest? Is it grounded in reality—a shop corner, a local park, a school? Or is it set upon some ancient land populated by evil spirits?
- Think of emotions. You have your people and your places. Now, how will they (yes, settings warrant such a pronoun) feel in your story? When something happens, will they feel frightened, angry, overjoyed? When something happens again, do they feel differently?
Your Story: What do you hope to achieve?
In elaborating on the above you want to bear in mind the key question: what do you want to achieve with your writing? Because if you want to express yourself in words, then say what feels most intuitive. When writing Godless Cosmologies, I really did write with my heart. I was unfettered and, quite frankly, unrestrained. A key setting in the novel is an asylum—an unsurprising development given that I myself have had experience as an inpatient when I was having a mental health hiccup (or Gordian knot, you may better say). That was an unconscious translation, or so I think. However, if you want to connect with readers, you may want to try to think beyond your own personal experiences—you may want to explore what it is like to be someone you have never encountered, from a place you have never visited.
I fear the above lacks practical timber. But I take comfort in knowing that, at the start of your writing journey, it is important to know why you are writing. Finishing a work is a rewarding but time (and emotion)-consuming task, and what may just keep you going is not the literary technicalities, a narrative architecture or even the feel of fingers on keys (or pen on paper, should you follow that admirable habit), but why you want to put words down in the first place. With that in mind, spend some time considering the above. Recapitulate your thoughts. And hold true to that why.
(c) Christy Theodoulou
My website: https://christytheodoulou.com
My Substack page: https://substack.com/@christytheodoulou
My instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/christytheodoulou/
About Godless Cosmologies by Christy Theodoulou:
When young Pear arrives at Kopolka’s mental asylum on the day of his mother’s death, he is summoned to a cavernous midnight rendezvous where he meets Mystery, an enigmatic patient with a penchant for philosophy. He is soon tricked into her service which, at first, requires little more than helping her torment a school tyrant and retrieving a shipwreck for a seaboard shelter.
All seems well, particularly during his sojourns to the mollifying Water, a fantasy, underwater world in which he finds himself a whale in the company of erudite octopus Mr Octaveley. Soon, though, he discovers that Mystery harbours dangerous delusions of her own and, as the price of replacing his mother becomes ever more challenging for his shy, quiet nature, the lines between reality and fancy begin to shake. The question is, will Pear let them crumble or can he fight back?
Order your copy of Godless Cosmologies online here and here.
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