What is a story, anyway? Is it defined by incident, or meaning?

We hear and tell tens of stories throughout the day, in full or in part. Some of them amuse, others provoke thought, others give insight into the teller. We define ourselves to others, and ourselves, by the stories we tell.

There’s an outfit called the Landmark Forum which grew out of a seventies therapy movement, est. I know a couple of people who’ve had run-ins with Landmark, and though they practice some pretty dubious habits such as locking people into seminar rooms and refusing to let them go to the toilet (which takes me back to junior school if anything) they also have some more interesting things going on. Such as, getting group members to tell the defining stories of their lives and, gently or otherwise, pulling those stories apart.

Why would behaving so impolitely to someone’s stories be useful? Well, when it comes to the stories that define us, we often choose to play archetypal roles. Whether we’re hero, victim, fool or survivor, we’ve identified with a particular stance on life that, arguably, we play out in other aspects of our life, whether or not they’re the most appropriate ways to deal with the situations we’re confronted with. Challenge that role, by bringing other perspectives to the stories people tell, drawing attention to the necessary omissions or weighted descriptions, and that can help people rethink not just the content of their story, but the meaning they made of it and have carried forward since.

So, allowing a bunch of killjoys can be good for you, huh? Actually, done well — and I’m talking about the kind of interaction you can have with a caring friend rather than some of the clodhopping accounts I’ve heard from Landmark — and it can be a very useful experience. Realising that the cherished story in which you broke your mother’s favourite vase didn’t mean she no longer loved you, but was the start of a journey in which by paying for a new one you became a provider for the first time in your life, can be a therapeutic experience.

I’d suggest that one of the things writers do in creating their professional stories is, sometimes, reexamine some of their own fundamental stories. Which would explain the recurrence of particular themes in a given writer’s work. And, knowing that it’s possible to do so, would it be worth asking yourself what your own fundamental stories are and seeing how they relate to the scripts and prose you’ve already written, and the projects you aspire to tackling in the future?

Eek, we’ve finally got onto ‘writing as therapy’ some 90 posts in to this experience. Apologies if I’m coming across a bit Dr Phil — greater apologies still if I’m all Oprah. And mum…sorry about that vase.