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What Happens Next?

Good morning, friends 🙂 We have returned from the mountains. Colorado is an amazing state. It was a whirlwind of a trip and I didn’t get to write as much as I’d planned. I’ll try not to let that happen again 🙂

Just a quick thought this morning about story. I’m reading Donald Miller’s book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years right now. I started it on the flight to CO and seriously couldn’t put it down. I have never read for that long on a plane for fear of getting motion sickness but it would have been worth it if I had met that end. In the book, Don and Ben and Steve are writing a film script. They’re writing a story based on Don’s life and a memoir he wrote (Blue Like Jazz). At one point, when they were trying to decide what was going to happen to Don to make the story more interesting, Don asks:

“What happens next?”
“What do we want to happen?” Steve answered.
What-Happens-next

 

I love that. I love it because we’re living in a story. We’re trying to make a better character. If we want our character to be adventurous, then we go on more adventures. If we want our character to be more successful, then we start doing things that successful people do. If we want our character to have better relationships, or to be a reader, or a writer, or a musician, we make him do the work he has to do to make it real. We don’t always get to choose what happens next but we always get to choose how our character responds, reacts, and moves forward. Our story is not limited to the things that happen to us. Circumstance is not the writer of our story.

What happens next?
What do you want to happen?

Happy Tuesday!

Chris

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