The Backstory
I remember working with a co-author on an earlier book about the idea of co-active leadership. Because that book was an amalgam of fiction and non-fiction, we had to flesh it out with fully-drawn characters and an engaging plot in addition to making sure our points and theories are being developed fully.
When we started exploring the backstory on our characters, we had to think: where did they come from, what did they do, and who were they in connection with prior to their arrival in the story? The bones of the story were solid, but the richness came in when we started to engage with the characters’ backgrounds. As we worked on this, we felt that the reader also began to care about them and either identify with them or find within them a curious and engaging human being that they want to know more about. The book then became a vortex into which all these stories arrived and swirled together and then get bumped out the other end into new stories all together.
Isn’t that what transformation is all about?
We go through our lives developing our stories, our beliefs, our emotional truths, our philosophies, our justifications and compensations for why we are the way we are. We reach a point in that story where our eyes open a bit and we see that much of our story no longer works for us and we start scrambling around “trying” to make it work, because this is our story after all.
Many of us then create a new story all about “trying”. Others of us create stories about giving up, or hiding out, or pushing and forcing the world to change in some way to support this story that no longer works for us. At some point, some of us, maybe many of us, reach a point where we are exposed to ourselves completely and know that this story must change.
At that point, a transformation is needed, a metamorphosis, a jump from one story to another, an inclusion or healing of the old story and the magical manifestation of the new one. This transformation can be an all-at-once experience that forever changes the hero or the heroines’ life story or it can be a series of mini transformations over a period of time with each mini transformation feeling, at the time, like stepping into an entirely different world.
The backstories are what engage us, the reader or the audience. The struggles, the limiting beliefs, the dark times and the pain of the hero pulls us into the story. Once we are in the story we stay to see how the hero or heroine transforms and evolves from those places to where the bigger story is taking them. We need to know our own backstories and be entertained by them without believing them. We need to remember that they are stories, they are perspectives and the stories can always be either rewritten or they can move in new and surprising ways.
Tell me, how do you wish to write your story?
Re-worked from original posts on Henry’s blog.
Today’s article is a guest post by Henry Kimsey-House. Henry Kimsey-House is the co-author of Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead
Read more about how to guest post on Jon Stolpe Stretched by clicking here.