I had a realization some time ago, when
working on my first novel. I kept trying to figure out where it
started. Every time I thought I had a beginning point, I realized
that there were things that came before that I wanted to explore as
well. When I went back to those, there were still more points
earlier on that drew me further back.
And I came to realize that all stories
are always in
medias res. No matter where you start, there is something that
came before. Some element of the backstory that continually becomes
a story itself. The threads of any plot, character or situation
stretch back before the moment that the storyteller begins, as they
must, in order for a context to exist when the story does begin.
Hence, The
Silmarillion.
Which actually goes to show that the
selection of the actual starting point of the story being told can be
of more than a little significance. Darth
Vader's revelation that he is Luke's
father would have had far less impact if one had watched the prequels
before A New
Hope.
It also becomes an interesting point of
psychology. Since there is no true beginning or end in the human
mind, the concept of the beginning of everything is almost impossible
to comprehend. Every culture tells stories about what came before
the beginning of humanity, based on the assumption that there is
always something before.
But Stephen
Hawking said something interesting, once (and only once). He
said “Asking what happened before the beginning of the universe may
well be like asking what happens one mile north of the North Pole.”
His point is that, while the words and the sentence seem to make
sense, the actual question does not. It assumes referents which are
not valid, and therefore becomes meaningless.
So we face that dichotomy. We cannot
truly understand or accept what lies outside of our experiences, even
when we know that there is something literally beyond our
understanding or experience. I think that may be one of the
fundamental forces in the human mind that drives us to tell stories,
to experiment with ideas until we come up with one that says what we
want it to say, and lets us see what is either there or not there.
How perfect that everything humans do
seems to come back to trying to resolve an irresolvable tension.
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