Better Endings…or Better Character?

Re-Blog of Guest Blog (I feel this one is so appropriate to our topic of Fictional Better Endings that I want to re-post it for anyone who may have missed it in our thread.-LW)

I do not believe it is fruitful to play ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda’ about past choices in the pursuit of hindsight identification of a better ending. I believe that every person does the best they can, based upon who they are at that specific time and within that set of circumstances, which will never exist in that precise combination again.

Of course, we would make different choices now – – the ‘bad endings’ of our past have made us into the wiser person we are today.

So what is the key to creating a life of better endings?

If you have studied creative fiction, you understand “action always follows character.” In other words, the choices and outcomes of a story are not laid out artificially: they organically flow from a character’s set of fears, passions, insecurities, personality and history.

You don’t find apples on a peach tree. Who you are determines what you do and what follows.

Our character is a stew of ideas and reactions steeped in conditioning from childhood, ethnicity and culture and personal aversions and preferences, wrapped in the ego or persona we have chosen to build and present to the world around us. It changes with time, but we can make conscious changes so it does not hinder future choices and actions.

When I meditate, I become aware of some of the internal, automatic themes of my thinking that color my choices and behavior. Unfortunately, they are not all positive; many are defensive (the role of the ego). But once I am conscious of them, I can choose to not act out of them. Over time, they may weaken from disuse; I may even succeed at replacing them with more positive ones.

The truth is I will always have an ego whining about the world, and it can lead me down a less happy path. But I am not powerless before it. I can work consciously to build a kinder, more aware and honest character. Will I still make poor choices? Yes, since I am not perfect and life appears to be a school of learning in which we can learn from our unhappy endings. With sincere effort to become wiser and more compassionate, I will make wiser and more compassionate choices.

Gandhi said it best: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Create a better character within you and better endings from your reactions and choices will follow outside of you, as day follows night . . . naturally.

Rebekah Shardy is a geriatric social worker, hospice manager, author of “98 Things a Woman Should Do in Her Lifetime,” (Andrews McMeel, 2003) and recipient of three short fiction awards.

Related articles

• Character Arcs (authormagazineonline.wordpress.com)

Fictional Better Endings? (and, Life Mapping Begins Today!)

Create your own list of works of fiction for which you would like to imagine a Better Ending. Any genre of fiction will suffice.  After making your list, choose one and flex your creativity! Write a Better Ending scenario. Again, Better Endings are not necessarily happier ones, just tweaked in a way that is satisfying to you.

My own list is only suggestive, as I know many of you are better versed than I am in a wide range of genres. But here are a few well known works of fiction the endings (or body) of which would be rather interesting to ‘twist’:

• Moby Dick
• The Scarlet Letter
• Romeo and Juliet
• Jane Eyre
• Lost Horizon (Part II, the sequel)
• Heidi
• Huckleberry Finn
• Oliver Twist
• Cinderella
• The Time Machine (the sequel)
• Animal Farm
• Lord of the Flies

You can add your own list by Commenting below. Please submit your stories, of any length or format, by this Saturday evening, and the sooner the better so I can comment on them here.

Thanks to those of you who are Following this blog daily; I invite all of you visiting the site to Follow to receive your daily Better Endings.

_______

I am starting a new feature for this blog, starting today! Check out the text box to the right on the Home page. From now on I will post a weekly LIFE MAPPING activity. On Friday posts I will share more about the weekly Life Mapping prompt.  Over the past twelve years I have developed a complete personal growth & development approach which I call the Life Maps Process. I aim to publish a book for the general public next year, called Life Paths. The book will be accompanied by the Life Maps Process Handbook, a self-help toolkit that anyone can use to engage in a complete life mapping process on their own. I will offer many of these handbook techniques in our weekly Better Endings Life Mapping activity.  The “through line” to my book on Life Paths is, “Live your Dream, Now!” So you see, that is the connection with Better Endings. I have coached and taught classes to over 400 people in Life Mapping techniques, and I find that when anyone takes the time to review and reflect on their Life Chapters and Life Story to Now, they find patterns and challenges as well as Strengths they can develop that can empower them to forge a clearer, truer path to realizing their Life Dream.

Related articles

• Weekly Topic: Fictional Better Endings (betterendingsnow.com)
• Are You Fiction? Are You Real Life? (saraelizabethpatrick.wordpress.com)
• Why Do We Read and Write Fiction? (margaretjeanlangstaff.com)
• Fiction vs. Non Fiction (gilroym.wordpress.com)

Better Stories

Have you read (and/or seen the Ang Lee film based on) The Life of Pi by Yann Martel? While the film version’s treatment of the dual story-line ending presents the final twist, the novel version goes into greater depth and is more layered so as to highlight the meaning behind the message. This dual-story ending exposes differences in the psychological construction and interpretation of reality itself.

Since character drives fictional outcomes–again with thanks to Rebekah’s writerly Guest Blog last week–but perhaps also since the reader’s own character drives their perceptions of these outcomes, I prefer the version of Pi’s story–about how he survived the sinking of an ocean liner–wherein Pi must cope with a fierce Bengal tiger and benefits from divine intervention whenever he surrenders to and accepts his human limitations and his mortality. I love the scene where Pi throws up his arms in utter despair, awaiting his immanent death, and thanks God and the vast expanse of the universe itself for all the experience he has been privileged to endure in this earthly life, only to be answered with a school of flying fish dropping sustenance onto the raft he shares by that point only with Richard Parker, the tiger. By my readerly view, it is a more pragmatic, less believing sort who prefers that Pi’s tale of surviving with animals is but a metaphorical account of a more gruesome expression of human animality. Is Pi compensating with his ‘better story’ through psychological denial of his observations of the brutal murder of his mother by the Cook? Is his very faith a coping device for self-delusion about the atrocities he witnessed?

Which Life of Pi story version do you prefer, and more importantly, why?  If you haven’t read the book, go watch the movie (or, read; it is beautiful writing!), and journal, talk about or contemplate your own response to the ideas and emotions represented. How does this story relate to your personal narrative?

I invite you to send in your Comments or submit your personal story about ‘fictional endings’ this week. Imagine a Better Ending, or a better story about ‘what really happened’ from one of the characters’ viewpoints or from your own retelling of the story according to your own life experiences.

Also for a Guest Blog this week, please answer and send in your answer of ANY LENGTH or format to the question: What is an example of a Better Ending from your own life?

 

Related articles

• Life of Pi by Yann Martel (kittykatkoni.wordpress.com)
• LIfe of pi By Yann Martel (lostinwords12.wordpress.com)
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel (yawebprototype.wordpress.com)

Guest Blog: Better Endings or… Better Character? by Rebekah Shardy

 

I do not believe it is fruitful to play ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda’ about past choices in the pursuit of hindsight identification of a better ending. I believe that every person does the best they can, based upon who they are at that specific time and within that set of circumstances, which will never exist in that precise combination again.

Of course, we would make different choices now – – the ‘bad endings’ of our past have made us into the wiser person we are today.

So what is the key to creating a life of better endings?

If you have studied creative fiction, you understand “action always follows character.” In other words, the choices and outcomes of a story are not laid out artificially: they organically flow from a character’s set of fears, passions, insecurities, personality and history.

You don’t find apples on a peach tree. Who you are determines what you do and what follows.

Our character is a stew of ideas and reactions steeped in conditioning from childhood, ethnicity and culture and personal aversions and preferences, wrapped in the ego or persona we have chosen to build and present to the world around us. It changes with time, but we can make conscious changes so it does not hinder future choices and actions.

When I meditate, I become aware of some of the internal, automatic themes of my thinking that color my choices and behavior. Unfortunately, they are not all positive; many are defensive (the role of the ego). But once I am conscious of them, I can choose to not act out of them. Over time, they may weaken from disuse; I may even succeed at replacing them with more positive ones.

The truth is I will always have an ego whining about the world, and it can lead me down a less happy path. But I am not powerless before it. I can work consciously to build a kinder, more aware and honest character. Will I still make poor choices? Yes, since I am not perfect and life appears to be a school of learning in which we can learn from our unhappy endings. With sincere effort to become wiser and more compassionate, I will make wiser and more compassionate choices.

Gandhi said it best: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Create a better character within you and better endings from your reactions and choices will follow outside of you, as day follows night . . . naturally.

Rebekah Shardy is a geriatric social worker, hospice manager, author of “98 Things a Woman Should Do in Her Lifetime,” (Andrews McMeel, 2003) and recipient of three short fiction awards.

Welcome to a Year of BETTER ENDINGS

Change a story, change a life, and a world … YOURS! Welcome to a year of Better Endings.  This is an inspirational, personal growth & development blog as well as a writer’s blog, about Better Endings. I am Linda Watts, an anthropologist who has developed a personal development approach called Life Mapping which has as its main aim to help anybody to Live Your Dream, Now! This daily, interactive Better Endings site is a free, one year adventure in creative re-visioning or flexibility stretching.  The idea similar in principle to the Lumosity program that trains the brain to higher functioning, yet here we will retool and train up your faculty of Imagination through creative story-telling. The basic inspirational idea is really quite simple: as you practice imagining and constructing ‘better ending’ scenarios across a wide range of topics, you will be developing your natural ability to create and actualize Better Ending scenarios in your own life!

I invite you to join in the fun, day to day and week by week. Every week there will be a Weekly Topic. I will introduce the topic on Monday and on Tuesday I will post a sample story on the weekly topic. Please send in your COMMENTS below any Post at any time, and please send in your own stories about the weekly topic. Multiple entries are welcome! See the menu tabs to Submit your story to my email address given there. We can discuss the stories and comments coming in throughout the week, exploring the possible implications and insights related to our weekly topic. Then, every Sunday, I will publish a selected Story of the Week.  As the author of the Story of the Week you will receive a byline and a short bio published with your story. You can send in stories on any of the weekly themes at any time, so please don’t feel constrained by the calendar. I will sort your story into an appropriate week and consider it as an entry for the Story of the Week during its appropriate week.  There are 26 weekly topics which we will cycle through twice over the course of this one year adventure in blogging.

You may also submit essays (approximately 300-600 words) for a weekly Guest Blog. I invite all of you to do this. Please just answer the question,”What Do Better Endings Mean to ME?” Please answer from the depth of your own unique life experience, career background, and interests. I’ll publish at least one Guest Blog entry every week on Thursdays. If a lot of entries come in I may publish two days of Guest Blogs per week.  Authors for our Guest Blog posts will also receive a byline and a published bio.

So, let’s get started with WEEK ONE!

Our first Weekly Topic is Historical Events.

Where would America or indeed where would the world be today if the Supreme Court had awarded the US Presidency in the year 2000 to Al Gore ? That was a very strong possibility that did not come to pass, and it has undoubtedly affected the course of history in radical ways.  Or what if Lincoln had leaned over to whisper an endearment in his wife’s ear just as Booth’s near-fatal bullet whizzed past his head (or, JFK or MLK, similarly)? Historical events become collective, cultural memories, or “memes”, and they can mark deep impacts on those who tell their stories later. Especially tragic events tend to be held as collective scars in the popular mindset over many generations. Books are written, movies made and remade, exploring every angle, every nook and cranny of these legendary crises and pivotal events.

So here is YOUR opportunity to alter that collective mindset and in so doing to subtly re-map–at least in your own and in your readers’ minds–the very landscape of a long-established cultural memory. Consider the possibilities! How might things have gone differently If? When? Because? …and how might history itself and the world we live in be potentially impacted or even radically changed because of the ‘better ending’ you envision?

The only guideline  that I would like to establish for your Better Endings stories that you submit is that “better endings” will have life-affirming, wellness oriented and personally fulfilling outcomes. I maintain the right to filter out strongly negative or destructively oriented stories and comments. But at the same time, a “better” ending need not necessarily be a “happy” one. Maybe a tragedy still occurs but somehow what someone learns from their hard experience affects later decisions or other people in a positive or constructively meaningful way.

So let us embark and have a free tilt at History!  I heartily invite each one of you to COMMENT below any Post with your ideas, questions and insights. I will Reply to your Comments and the rest of you can chime in with follow up Comments too, so we can engage in a conversation about our themes and about the overall experience and principle of Better Endings. Of course also, if you enjoy this experience, join in! And please LIKE and SHARE this site with others.