Quote

Sometimes stories are inherently important whether or not they have a direct relation to your life.

The stories I write are often literal to events that have happened or observations that I've made, and sometimes they're fantastical.

As a matter of fact, I deliberately look for the mundane, because I feel these stories are ignored. The most influential things that happen to virtually all of us are the things that happen on a daily basis. Not the traumas.

Sometimes when you tell a story, you reach a little bit too far just to make the story a better one.

If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable rather than its literal narrative.

But every day I tell my story, and be comfortable with my story and be comfortable with what I've done, and what I did, and how I am today, it lessens the likelihood it will ever happen.

When a story is told really well and is real, even if it's not about their own lives, people can apply it to themselves.

No matter what writers say, most stories are about ourselves. The facts might change a little, but not much.

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation.

The trick to making a story matter is that every now and then, somebody you care about has to go. If it's somebody that you don't care about, then it doesn't really have - the stakes aren't there. But if you do that every now and then, then the story matters to people. And there are actual stakes involved, emotional stakes.