When I talk about the arc of a story, I don’t think I mean what everyone else means. What I mean is literally an arc, a visualization of the ideas of benedy and maledy in the simplest possible expression:
I think every genuine story – every narrative in which something changes – can be described with one of those two arcs. Two stories, total, told in infinite variations. Even the individual stories within a serial story can be understood with those arcs, with the serial itself being the two arcs joined together and repeated like a sine wave – typically multiple over-lapping sine waves – as relationships within the story wax and wane.
Stories can be crafted every which way, but it’s useful for my purposes to look at all narratives as having a three act structure, with Act II being represented in the illustration by the shaded areas. Act I is the set up, and Act III the resolution, but it is in Act II that the change, for the better or the worse, is effected. How does this happen? In the form of events, without which the change is neither possible nor plausible.
This is an essential way of thinking about stories, but it’s also an essential way of thinking about life: The stories you see in your own life, and in the lives of the people around you, will seem to follow those arcs, as well. And in life as in stories, the action is in Act II.
Here’s an idea that’s fun for me in both contexts: Act III of a maledy looks an awful lot like Act I of a benedy. If you find yourself thinking that your life is looking pretty maledic, that would seem to me to be a fine time to scrap the first two acts and start over, with the goal of writing a happier ending. Don’t destroy anything that can and should be fixed, but when everything is already wrecked, that’s a good time to stop picking through the wreckage and get on with your life.
Happiness is always yours for the chase, but it will not pursue you. If you change the stories you tell yourself about life, you can change your life for the better forever – regardless of what anyone else does. And that’s #MyKindOfBenedy.
