Image via Wikipedia Hoover Tower, Stanford, campus where Steve Jobs spokeJean Purcell
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Fiction writers must create and develop believable characters. The protagonist, especially, must have flaws, weaknesses, fears...to form identification by the reader.
Steve Jobs, who died after a long illness, created Apple, the high-tech business known all over the world. He was not afraid to tell about a tough time in his life. Speaking about a time of apparent failure, Steve Jobs told Stanford University graduates: "Sometime, life is going to throw a brick at you."
The line was followed--oddly, I thought--by laughter. You can find that speech on YouTube and listen for the laughter rippling over the audience after that line.
Surely some of those students knew exactly what Steve Jobs meant; they had already had to dodge or recover from a few "bricks" that had come their way. Maybe some who laughed like dark humor, after the fact. When we get out of the dark, we can look back and laugh sometimes.
Fiction writers know that good stories involve some "bricks" being thrown, usually at main characters. Protagonists cannot be shown as jumping to the right conclusions all the time. They cannot have all the answers, do the right thing always, or never fail to make the correct or anticipated responses.
Some authors are able to bring the release of tears to our eyes, making words swim on pages before us. That, we know, means the story is moving us somewhere deep within ourselves.
I hope that if a brick has already come your way in this New Year 2012 that you know you will somehow recover. You can even be stronger for refusing to give up, to allow that brick to destroy you. Just listen on YouTube to what Steve Jobs said. Whatever his beliefs, he was given ability, in this life, to push forward and give to graduates who were about to learn more about life outside than inside the university.
That is no joke.
Tweet thisThat is no joke.
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