The Good Sort Of Story

A story about a character that suddenly has to grapple with something completely alien to them

She had always been a very good girl. She had always been one of the nicest young women. She did not have much to worry about in life. Seemingly. She was good-looking. She was pretty. And for now, the promise of the future had kept her going. Alice H was a really nice person. To top it all, she smiled at every person she met. A wide grin.

Alice was happy about one thing in life, and that was the fact that “things usually fell into place when they were supposed to”. She came from a rich family but wanted her own life! She had the best of everything, but like most rich people, there was always some weird problem that was always nipping at their heels.

Alice Holson was pretty smart too for the record. She seemed to be good at picking up skills at the workplace. She seemed fine with picking up any sort of work if she was down for it. But Alice wanted a secure, stable life.

She wanted to be a Writer, she wanted to be someone who told stories. Her childhood had been a little rocky. Her parents were over-achievers, she wasn’t, the glamour of a subtle life attracted her, and glitz and glamour seemed like a scary proposition.

Telling stories had been a natural talent for Alice ever since she went up on stage to sing as a child. She started as a little singer, but then she started to tell stories and speeches on stage. She had a flair for it almost. The stories she told brought the crowds great excitement.

Alice was by now already a content writer who earned a little money from her writing gigs. She worked as a freelancer, who usually took up small-time projects for small amounts of cash. She also was working on a book, which had a couple of 5-star reviews as it was. And that too was bringing in some money.

Alice also read the Bible every morning. She went to church every Sunday and concentrated. On the Words. To her, The Words were Truth. And they were Life. Her favorite lines from Biblical scripture were “For man did not live by bread alone, but by every word that came from the mouth of God,” She felt that life was simplistic when she lived by Biblical wisdom.

Alice went on with her daily routine, doing small things every day that brought her joy. For Alice, the small things were big things, and apart from that, she also felt like her content writing work and the blog on which she wrote short stories were everything to her.

Since she loved telling stories, she read other books and watched movies with a keen eye; She also tried to listen to the lyrics of popular music she heard, as if it was all telling a story.

Given that Alice was quite detail-oriented, she maintained that even in her story-telling. People seemed to take a liking to what she had to say. Not only did it kill time, as some were likely to say, it was the sort of work that Alice really enjoyed doing.

As things would have it, Alice published a short story on a designated day every week, and also did her content writing work on the side. Apart from this, the book she had written also brought in some income.

Alice was an avid believer in Jesus Christ. But it was not something that went back years. Her spirituality was of course based on her own life journey and not on the advice of her parents or immediate family like aunties and uncles.

She lived a life based on her faith. At least she tried! So maybe the other supposedly ‘cool writers’ who had it all together, smoked or did drugs. Or had many lovers. To help them find ideas and inspiration for new books, and their writing in general.

Alice found reprieve in her church-going friends, whose company she simply loved, and she loved watching family movies that were reviewed by Christian media companies, and that too without guilt. Strangely, the air at mass was calming, and seeing people venerate God and Heaven above, also seemed to have a place in her life, and it was doing its magic!

So maybe some people missed the ‘spice’ in some of their movies. Or for that matter their food, or even their friends, or their clothes, or habits. But Alice felt she had a slow pulse, and her heart beat at a sane rhythm. Being a Jesus freak had its benefits.

She did not feel like she missed any of the things people were so used to consuming with regards to what they watched, or for that matter who they hung out with, or what they wore. Not that Alice did not follow the trends, she just seemed a little less in awe of fads and what the Bible deemed as passing temptations “which would probably wither away like grass”

One day, during the time when Alice was working on a new book, she happened to hang out at her favourite cafe, where she reflected on many things that meant a lot to her, and got inspiration for writing. There a cute guy happened to enter the cafe. Apparently he had blue eyes, and a naughty smile.

He happened to sit at the table close to where Alice was working on her iPad. She noticed him, and he noticed her, and they both smiled at the other. They got into a conversation, which was very like the place, as the sort of Cafe, where many writers also liked to network while having a coffee.

Alice came across a huge problem while working on her book. There was something in her own book that confused her. The start of the book did not seem to go with the ending. There was an awkward time lapse, and it sure looked like some of the protagonists tendencies were a little unlike the way the book was working out, and the ending for some reason just didn’t fit the books genre. '

Actually it seemed a little bit as though, people wouldn’t relate to the character, and they just wouldn’t be able to be conclusive about whatever they were so motivated about.

Alice was so deliriously angry that she decided she would keep the manuscript in her locker. Do away with the book, and probably bury it in her mother’s honour. The fact was that someone else had pointed out the error, and that made her wonder.

Probably the tone of the concerned person was a little careless, so she as usual took things to heart. Yes Alice wasn’t clicking her magic red shoes today, so she could be anywhere but where she was. On the other hand, she accepted that the book was sub-standard fare, and chucked it in her locker, but she did something remarkably Heraclitean that day.

Alice decided to watch a movie. She normally did not watch these kinds of movies, but today she did, because she felt her style was cramped. She really wanted her book to be mainstream, the kind of thing that would sell, and the kind of book people would remember her for.

Alice did not like to waste her time, Alice was clear about the fact that even though some writers did weed and smoked for inspiration, she did not fail to get her inspiration from her family, back home who also were smart folks because if she didn’t there could have surely been chaos.

The movie was cheesy, romantic, street-wise, worldly-wise, and probably a little less spiritual. Sometimes Alice H felt like she was not inspired by the kind of worldly-wise motivation that she needed to make a really well-rounded protagonist, have them fit in with the Books climax, plot, etc.

And so, She felt she was grappling with something alien to her. She felt like her content was not realistic enough for people to get into the character’s world or their way of thinking, and their unique personalities. Some people often faced that while writing. It was a concept known as world-building, where capturing the essence of a character’s environment while trying to make it believable in another part of the world where the context was completely different.

She knew that trying to explain to her readers how Ruby’s steaming coffee made her nostalgic was completely misunderstood if she was a writer that lived in a hut by the lake.

On the contrary, she knew that at least if Ruby was grounded in the practical realities: of what was possible in her context and what wasn’t, and was probably okay with that idea, it made sense and her audience would probably find that Ruby Dowager, the heroine would probably seem a lot more promising, and a lot less hype.

And so, Alice felt sad about the book in the locker.

Though she had all these thoughts, she really liked the style in which she had written the book that she was working on when she met the cute guy in the cafe, who smiled at her.

So she decided to rethink the manuscript’s last 4 pages. On them, she had mentioned how Ruby met a cute guy in a cafe, years ago, and how she fell in love with him over a cup of coffee.

She was wondering how to make her book a little more intense, and less contrived. She suddenly looked up, mid-thought while she was reminiscing about all of these things, and she noticed something awkwardly strange. The same cute stranger with blue eyes and a naughty smile was there. He looked friendly, and he smiled at her again. And then they both smiled at the other.

The guy said something that would change her life forever. He said that he could read her mind, he could tell she was a writer, he had figured it out. He said that she probably needed to change only one aspect of her book, and yes, it was based on one of her most obvious character flaws.

She always played safe.

She smiled back and said “I guess, I really try to”

She smiled at him and got back to her book. She realized something very real about the world. Her book was her book. She was very proud of the original style and the feel of the book. Much of the book’s storyline, whether she cared to admit it or not was based on her own perception of the world.

If the book had an almost perfect narrative voice, that she felt was her own, she wanted her characters to relate to it, to her worldview. And what was truly good about her past experiences. Maybe she didn’t want it to “sell”, maybe she wanted people to get to know her through her work. And if people could relate to that, then, the time and effort were well worth it!

When she stopped thinking, looking at the bubbles in the coffee, she saw that the guy wasn’t there. She wished she had told him more about what she really felt. About why, she held fast to her strange, but orthodox ways of thinking, at least when thinking about the way her book was written.

She wanted to tell him that sometimes love stories were more about a girl’s perspective, and romance was more a girl thing. If that was too cheesy for some, she didn’t care, coz apart from just putting a book out there, she wanted it to be personal. Because a book had to be personal. It was a book, wasn’t it? Not a fairy tale, but her story. Her book. Her way.

And so, she wasn’t grappling anymore. That day Alice Holson was a winner. She knew that she was happy. And the book was going to be a cheerful entry into the Frankfurt Book Festival. It may not have been the next bestselling novel, but it was there, and didn’t it have a story to tell?