What Are Stories: An Essay

What are stories? They are written expressions of the soul. A story emerges from lived experience, carrying within it something of the person who gives it expression. It is not quite a transcript of the inner monologue, but perhaps a sampling of it: thoughts, memories, longings, fears, and questions given form through language. Even when an author writes about people and places far removed from themselves, something of the author remains. It can be found in the characters they love, the villains they understand, the questions they return to, the details they notice, and even the things they leave unsaid. The storyteller is there, subtly reverberating through syntax and syllable.

Perhaps this is why telling a story can be such a vulnerable act. A story is an invitation, but it can also be a test. We reveal something without explicitly announcing the revelation and then wait to see how it will be received. Do you understand? Do you see what I am showing you? Can I trust you with more? In this way, a story offers a chance to glimpse the inner mechanics of another person’s being. It does not reveal everything, and perhaps the author does not even fully understand everything being revealed, but it allows something ordinarily hidden to become visible.

Yet a story is more than an expression of its author. Though its life is derived from its source, once expressed it begins to take on a life of its own. It is not disconnected from its creator, but neither does it remain entirely under the creator’s control. The author releases it into the world, where it encounters the imagination of the reader. There it risks being misunderstood, misrepresented, or misconstrued. The reader may discover exactly what the author intended, or the reader may find something the author never consciously knew was there.

Still, the story can never entirely escape its source. However far it travels, something of its maker remains within it. The voice may be subtle, buried beneath characters and metaphors, plots and places, but it continues to reverberate through the work. Creation carries the imprint of its creator.

Perhaps this is why stories have always mattered so deeply to us. We are creatures who create, and in the things we create we leave traces of ourselves. Every story leaves its storyteller, but no story leaves empty-handed; it carries something of its maker into the world.

And perhaps there is something even deeper happening. Beneath all our stories may be an older story still: the story of creatures who have wandered from their Source and spend their lives trying to find their way home. Perhaps, whether the storyteller recognizes it or not, every story is in some sense the soul remembering its Source.

Every story bears witness.