Oh, so that's why my story sucks.

And how I made it better

👋 Hey Everyone, It’s Mohammad. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I tackle life through a writing and storytelling framework. If you’re not a subscriber, here’s what you missed this month:

1. Week 032: Eternity in an Hour 

2. The Story I could Never Write

3. Treating Movies as Novels

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I thought I knew how to write a good story.

I was writing a central conflict, the characters had desires and obstacles, and a fulfilling payoff. I was a blind man at a bingo contest, copying others and hoping to win.

But my stories became paper in the wind.

Online, I’d get as many visitors as a deserted island. Rejection emails stormed my inbox, launching a full-scale assault on my confidence. It was a war of attrition against my morale. Each week I'd publish a story. Each week I'd hear nothing back. Each week I'd listen to other writers on YouTube and hear their advice.

Everyone's advice shared a common theme: write to the emotional truth of the story.

WTF does that mean?

Reality: Stories aren't about what happens. It's the meaning we ascribe to it.

It's why we can create a story based on any character, living or dead, human or non-human. The individual characters aren't as important as the relationships between them. That's what makes us come back for more.

Meaning is the lifeblood for good stories.

My stories weren't doing well because I wasn't imbuing meaning into it. I looked over my stories which did well and found a pattern. Those were the stories where meaning flowed between characters no matter the length.

But how could I get to emotional cores more consistently?

What blocks most writers from writing emotional cores is Fear.

Alan Watt, founder of L.A Writers' Lab has a great fear exercise. He sets aside 5 minutes and asks the writers to fill in the blank:

I'm afraid to write this story because _________.

This exercise is great to get out of our heads and be aware of our fears, but he goes deeper.

That was my mental block.

I was self-conscious of what others would think. Would they think I'm projecting? My friends are gonna raise an eyebrow. I don't have experience in this so why would I write it. 

And being self-conscious prevents the story from taking a life of its own. I start restraining the characters like an untrained dog instead of letting them guide me to where they want to go.

Two years ago, when I was writing Week 032: Eternity in an Hour, I didn't know how to end the story.

The story was about a guy who gets stuck in time. Not traveling through time, but he's stuck in the moment. Forever in the present with everything around him frozen. I was a rat stuck in a maze, each turn leading me further into confusion. I was about to delete the entire story and start over, but I stopped.

I walked side-by-side with my character as he figured a way out of his situation.

I never knew how the story would end as I was writing it. But I was writing from the emotional truth of uncertainty and desperation as he clawed his way out. And that's what made it compelling to read.

Writing from Fear made the story more meaningful. 

I'm always afraid when writing a story. I'm exploring a deeper truth we all share and being vulnerable on the page for others to read and see is terrifying. But the fear was never the obstacle to prevent me from writing.

Failure became a beacon for how important it was for me to share it. 

What are your thoughts on writing from emotional truths? Do we write from fear or despite it?