“No one is free until we are all free.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
It is human nature to search for absolutes. Joe is a liar, while Helen is trustworthy. Abe is punctual, while Ruth is always late. Absolutes give us the illusion of security, but they also lead to lazy stories because they simply aren’t true. When we employ absolutes, we are trading in generalities, and that leads to cliché.
It is the curious writer that scratches the surface of their characters’ actions to investigate the impulses that informed them. And it is the brave and empathic writer who investigates where those impulses live within themselves. This is what provides their characters with true humanity. If we don’t do this, we may miss the true lesson that our story is offering us.
There’s a certain distance that gets created when you write off a character’s actions as anomalous — it lacks curiosity. If you are to write a compelling conclusion to your memoir, you must explore a true resolution that doesn’t wrap your story up into a neat bow. In memoir, a tidy conclusion is rarely a satisfying one.
For example: While it may be obvious to say that a drug czar’s actions are heinous and evil, it is also reductive. What is far more frightening to consider is how he is able to persuade thousands of others to do his bidding. We hear stories of the Mexican drug cartels who take men living in poverty and force them to commit violence in order to survive. While these men are perpetrators, they are also victims. It is the same, perhaps, for some of the Mexican police who fear they cannot afford to take care of their families, and so they accept bribes. There are customs agents and politicians who are on the grift. And what about the otherwise law-abiding citizens who purchase the narcotics? While they may not be guilty of murder, without their financial involvement, the violence may likely not have occurred.
There is a cause and effect, a ripple that travels throughout the world that connects us all to each other. By examining the circumstances of your characters and exploring their backstories, you will begin to understand their motives. Perhaps you may even gain greater compassion for them. As human beings, we are all connected. Therefore, on some level — on some level — we are also complicit. This is not to say that we are, each of us, responsible for the drug trade. Of course not! But until we recognize that we are all connected, we tend to judge the actions of others without being curious about the circumstances that drove them. Until we empathize with the circumstances, we will fail to see our story as clearly as possible.
When your protagonist focuses solely on freeing themselves, notice how they move further into bondage. When their focus is on happiness, notice how it leads to misery. But when their focus shifts outward toward curiosity of others, notice how, ironically, they move in the direction of fulfilling their inner need.
Learn more about marrying the wildness of your imagination to the rigor of structure in The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, or The 90-Day Screenplay workshops.
