The Trials and Tribulations of Fix-It Felix: Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Storytelling (Patreon)

The Problem of Problems: What Is a Story?

I’m almost five years into this gig, and I have to say, parenting is a beautiful, precious, golden jewel of magic and love and time…wrapped in almost infinite layers of total fucking bullshit. But one of the wild things about it, one of the things that would definitely be in the magical precious golden jewel column if you didn’t have to do it over and over and over and over and OVER again, is explaining the world to a little adorable chaos goblin who knows like a few thousand words max and half of them are just different ways to screech MUUUUUUUUUM.

I’ve been teaching writing longer than I’ve been a professional writer (weird fact, but true), and as an instructor you go around and around and around trying to think of new ways to communicate the nuts and bolts of stories, voice, conflict, point of view, and so on and so forth. But never have I had to simplify these things so drastically as to explain them to a four year old who’s just barely, and only recently, accepted that he can’t make the moon come out with his mind. Begrudgingly.

And in simplifying way past the level of even the youngest writing class I’ve ever taught, much to my extreme annoyance, because you all know by now how much I prefer cluttering up every sentence with hefty doses of The Fancy…a bunch of wise shit came out of my mouth like I’m some kind of WRITER or MOTHER or OTHER AUTHORITY FIGURE OF VALUE AND EXPERIENCE.

Gross. How dare.

So Sebastian and I have started having movie nights every Thursday. He loves it, but your average Pixar film is significantly more emotionally taxing than sweet gentle children’s edutainment shows meant to teach you the color wheel or science concepts or how not to be a total dick to the other tiny animals in your classroom without stressing you the fuck out.

See, the small one is starting to develop that pesky little thing called empathy, and whenever anything goes wrong, or people are in trouble, or there’s any danger or tension in the slightest, he gets very upset. Jumping up on the couch and yelling through tears at Tamatoa the jewel-encrusted crab from Moana that he is NOT using safe bodies and NEEDS TO GO SIT ON THE BENCH AND THINK ABOUT WHAT HE DID.

But it’s more than that, really. He gets distressed whenever there are setbacks at all. Any kind of problem deeper than “ooh there’s an odd number of blocks, how can we make it even?” Even if he can’t necessarily understand the metaplot or consumption/climate change metaphor of WALL-E, he definitely understands that little robot has some issues that aren’t going to be resolved with improved math skills and the tears well up in his eyes and we have to stop and have a talk.

Every time.

And I wanted to share what I said last Thursday, because it felt A BIT DEEP, and as someone who once, when she was young and full of OPINIONS, only wanted to write pretty words and make imaginary friends and didn’t care too much about obnoxious shit like plot and rising action and, ugh, conflict. I GO TO THE FANTASY WORLDS IN MY HEAD BECAUSE EVERYTHING WORKS OUT THERE THANK YOU VERY MUCH I DON’T WANT PROBLEMS IN MY HEAD I HAVE THOSE IN REAL LIFE AND REAL LIFE SUCKS.

Ha ha. Twenty-two was such a special time. Buckle the fuck up, past-me, the next two decades are gonna be a real garbage ride.

Anyway.

I pause the movie and we calm down a little and he says he just doesn’t WANT anyone to be mean, ever. (You know, until he doesn’t want to share a damn toy with another kid. We’re still working on all this “empathy stuff” applying to others, not just a thing others should extend to him. And it would be SUPER NICE if that wasn’t a thing a WHOLE LOT of adults haven’t been working on AT ALL EVER.)

I almost said Boo! It’s fine! It’s just a story! It’s just pretend! But I managed to bite that one off. Because it’s NOT just a story. Not to a kid. Not even to an adult deeply invested in a story, or no one would ever name their kid after a character in a book or spend thousands of hours online speculating on the future plot of a television show. Stories are real, and they matter, and sometimes they hurt, and I remember what it felt like to have adults say ha ha you’re so silly getting so involved, it’s just a story, calm down.

Because they were never, ever just stories. They were my friends. They were my family. They were my world. Books were constant when everyone else abandoned me. Books were where the world made sense and I was okay. The characters in them were every bit as real and important to me as flesh-and-blood breathing people. As a child, stories are your first experiences with most things, and you have no real barrier between fantasy and reality, also no real psychological shields against the feelings those stories awaken in you. I felt The Neverending Story like it was happening to me (and I mean, that book is very postmodern so it kind of was happening to me). I lost Dan and Ann in Where the Red Fern Grows no less viscerally and personally than I lost my own cat to a passing car. Bambi’s mom getting fucking got felt like my mom could go tomorrow, like nothing could ever be safe again. Nothing is ever just a story to a child, and frankly, given how many grown-ass homo sapiens sapienses profoundly believe wholly fictional tales of every sort, I’m not sure they’re just stories to any of us.

And certainly, given what I do for a living, it would be borderline obscene for the words it’s just a story to ever escape my lips.

So this is what I did say, over the course of several conversations during several movies on several Thursday nights. Cleaned up and punctuated, obviously, I’m not gonna pretend it all came out with semi-colons and sub-clauses. Or that I'm always this decent at explaining things--but we all have our good moments.

“Honey. It’s gonna be okay. I’m not going to tell you it’s just a story so you don’t have to get upset. It’s ok to feel upset about stories. That’s kind of part of the point of telling a story, and part of the point of experiencing one. You’re supposed to feel worried for your favorite characters, because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t feel so happy when they make it through in the end.

Boo, in every story there’s a problem. Every single one. And in the beginning of a story, people come along, and see the problem happening to others or feel it happening to themselves. And they try to fix it. And usually, not always, but most of the time, the fixers are the heroes. And the problem, or the people who made the problem, or the people who don’t want the problem to get fixed, are usually, not always, but most of the time, those are the opposite of fixers, the breakers, the bad guys, and a fancy word for bad guy is villain. Even if they aren’t really that bad, or they didn’t mean to make the problem, or even want to, like Wreck-It Ralph, remember? Or thought they were doing a good thing, or even thought they were just fixing their own problems. And honestly that’s pretty often how it goes with villains. Most villains really do think they’re doing the right thing, they just don’t know or care how the right thing for them lands on others, or they do know and do care, but their own problems are so big they just can’t think about other people very well anymore.

And sometimes, especially if it’s a long story like a movie or a grown-up book with not very many pictures, the first thing the heroes try to fix the problem doesn’t work. Or it does work, but it makes more problems than they had in the first place. Or it would work, but because heroes always try to think of others, the problem getting fixed for the heroes would hurt someone else or have consequences way worse than time out or losing a toy, so they don’t want to do it that way. So they have to try something else. And maybe that doesn’t work either, or does but makes things worse or would but the consequences are bad. So they have to try a third thing and a fourth thing, sometimes even a fifth thing. And then sometimes they do fix the problem, but a new problem comes along and they have to fix that, too. There’s even stories where the heroes fixing the problem is exactly what causes the next problem, and that feels terrible, so they have to fix their hearts about what they did as well.

But it’s not just about the heroes doing things. The villains do things, too. To stop the problem getting fixed or to convince the heroes it really isn’t a problem or to get what they want. And in some kinds of stories, the villains are just trying to protect themselves because for them, the problem isn’t a problem, and they don’t think the heroes are heroes. They think they’re heroes, and the other characters are the villains. So then the fixers have to fix whatever the breakers are doing to keep the problem going before the story can go on.

And while all this is happening, the story is telling us all kinds of things about the heroes and the villains both, so that we know and like the heroes and we know and usually, not always, but most of the time, we don’t like the villains. Because you can’t like or dislike anybody if you don’t know anything about them. And it’s really, really okay to be worried for the people in the story that you like and upset when they get hurt. It’s okay to be angry at the villains and want them to have consequences. It’s okay to feel bad in your tummy when the story looks like it isn’t going to work out.

Because usually, not always, but most of the time, especially in the kinds of stories you’re going to read and watch and listen to right now, it is going to be all right in the end. In most stories, not all, but most, the problem is fixed in the end, which is how you know it’s the end. And that’s what makes a story. The problem, and trying to fix it, not being able to, but finally figuring it out and making the fix happen even if it’s the hardest thing ever.

And the whole point of making you like some characters and not like others and then giving them problems and putting them in trouble and taking them out of it is to make you feel things for them. To make you feel just the same as if the trouble was happening to you. To make you feel worried or sad or angry or want consequences, because if you feel like that, it feels so much better when the fixers figure out how to fix stuff and the breakers can’t break stuff anymore or at least understand why they shouldn’t and make better choices. If you never felt upset in the middle of the story, the end where it’s all okay wouldn’t be the best part. You wouldn’t feel so relieved and happy you want to run around in circles.

There have to be problems, baby, or you wouldn’t care so much. You care because there's problems in our lives just the same as in stories. Different problems, but the same feelings. And you know what it feels like when you can't fix something, so you don't want the characters you love to feel that way. 

If there were never any problems, there wouldn’t be any stories.

And sometimes, not always, not forever, not every story, but just sometimes, it can help you practice all those bad and good feelings so when trouble really does happen to you or the people around you, you can be a fixer in the real world.

So if you feel upset about a story, you can feel upset and that’s actually a good thing. That means it’s a good story. But just know that always, always in a story someone is working to fix the problems, and the more upset you feel in the middle, the more amazing it’s all going to feel in the end.”

Then, quietly to myself, I add: and hey, we’re just going to pretend grown-up life really does work like that. For now. While rainy days and mama having a meeting without you and not being able to find your rainbow shirt this morning are the worst things you know about outside of stories. Just for a little longer.

That’s about the closest thing to a Grand Unified Theory of Storytelling as I have ever managed in twenty years of doing this professionally, and if I’m honest, as close as I’m ever likely to get. Sometimes making it simple enough for a kid who still isn’t over the injustice of grown-up books not having pictures makes it simple enough for those same pictureless grown-ups.

And that kid called me Felix for three or four days afterward. Even when things got a little tougher in real non-story life than usual, and he asked me to make it different, and I said I couldn’t, I wished I could, but I couldn’t.

No, Mama. Stay Felix. Stay Felix, Mama.

Felix.

You know.

Fix-It Felix.