What The Best Stories Are About

Been thinking a lot about something Wright said in his interview with me earlier this week. It actually helped me shape a story idea into something I felt like I could sell my editor. 

The best stories are universal. There’s a great Steinbeck quote, I’m gonna find the book because it’s too good a quote and I don’t want to mess it up. 

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Let’s see. Here it is. This is from East of Eden: “If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and lasting story is about everyone, or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting—only the deeply personal and familiar.”

So many people do a story about the one-legged goalie ... but that’s the total wrong way. You don’t look for the abnormal. You look for the universal. At least I do.