The What If Scenario

Perhaps I am a storyteller after all. Any time something unusual happens, I write a different ending in my head.

It begins "What if?" like every great story.

What if a girl is caught in a tornado and taken on an adventure that teaches her the value of family and home?

What if a great white shark terrorizes a popular vacation destination?

What if a man is imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit?

Or

What if a trip to the moon nearly ends in disaster? 

What if a woman discovers a corporate cover up that caused a community to get cancer?

What if a retired lawman moves West to a lawless boom town?

The first three stories are fiction, the last three really happened. I can't decide which are better. 

Actually, the ones that are a combination of truth and fiction are best. We respond to the truth in a story - the parts that we can relate to. When a story veers from the path - from telling the truth - we detect it instantly and the book or film loses us. 

That's why it's been said, that in order to be a good writer you have to be a good person.

Alice Walker: "Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for?"

I like that. Because, to be a good storyteller, you need to be able to recognize truth and describe it in an interesting way. You can't be in it for the money or the glory. You need to write for no other reason than you have a story to tell.
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I am listening to: The dishwasher
I am reading: The Headmaster's Wife
And I am: Hungry