We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life 'outside' the story changes the story.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I have no particular reader in mind, but a passionate desire to tell an honest, moving story.
You set up a story and it turns inside out and that is, for me, the most exciting sort of story to write. The viewer thinks it's going to be about something and it does the opposite.
I hate being bored when I read a story. Even a well-trod theme can be made fresh by a different perspective or fresh writing.
Stories can encourage us and embolden us to face ourselves and to feel. Stories can make us feel less alone. If we're reading a story that moves us, we can feel that emotion that I feel towards my father or mother or girlfriend. So they can give us late-night company.
The story is a machine for empathy. In contrast to logic or reason, a story is about emotion that gets staged over a sequence of dramatic moments, so you empathize with the characters without really thinking about it too much. It is a really powerful tool for imagining yourself in other people's situations.
Fiction seeks to represent human experience as it is lived and as it reverberates in our hopes, fears, dreams, and memories. So much of our lives are internal. The art of fiction has claimed - more than anything else - this internal ground as its own.
When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.
As society evolves, people are interested in a new take on an old beloved story.
What makes a story a story is that something changes. Internal, external, small or large, trivial or of earth-shattering importance. Doesn't matter.
The idea that an author can extricate her or his own ongoing life experience from the tale being written is a conceit of very little worth.