We used to think story-telling was for children. Now we realise it is for everyone. AI will teach us that it is one of the few ways we can retain our humanity through the process and technology tsunami we must comprehend if we are to manage it. Learning what stories are and how to tell them has always been useful. Now it is vital.
Here’s a slightly different view of stories from the one you will get from dictionaries and academics. It begins in your mind’s eye.
If you sometimes dream you will know that the stories you sleep through are jumbles of real life events and imagination. They are pizzas of the mind with good doughy foundations and sprinkles of wishful and wistful thinking. They are nearly always circular though you may not see or remember that. Their format represents the longing we have for an assurance of eternity. The circle is humanity’s concept of ‘forever’ expressed in symbols of many kinds. If you look closely you can see the circle in all the stories you will hear or tell. “What goes around, comes around.”
As with most things in life, purpose is the anchor part of the skill.
Unless we know – or at least seek to discover – what stirs us to be, to feel, to do, to develop and to think we miss one of life’s greatest gifts. I call it the Gift of Internal Diversity, the pot pourri of contradictions that turns Flesh and Blood into Fathoming and Building. John Steinbeck called it “the last, clear, definite function of man” in his beautiful soliloquy in The Grapes of Wrath. It is at the heart of every story and at the root of every tree. I’ve tried to capture it in a little simmering song:
Sameness be gone
and let the leaves of autumn
fall as a carpet new for wary tread.
The state of living is but sample plying,
to learn the pleasures of a state we dread.
Do not see your storytelling as a process, marshalling the rules of good behaviour for literature. Rather see it as a recently ploughed field, grasping for seeds to fertilise and grow. Guides to writing a good story will tell you about characters, setting, plot, conflict, theme, point of view and style. All these are useful but they won’t make your story unique.
Only you can do that.
I believe you will.
Good morning
John Bittleston
Please write something beautiful for [email protected].
We will always appreciate it.
27 April 2026
