On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
In a recent post on the Writer Unboxed blog, author Kathleen McCleary offered suggestions on how to weave kindness into our stories. Here’s an excerpt from that post:
Betrayal, greed, vanity, pride, impulsivity—all the human flaws that drive plots and create good stories are exactly that, flaws. I read a dozen books on my recent vacation, but two that stood out were Ann Patchett’s new novel Whistler and a brilliant work of non-fiction, The Gales of November, by John U. Bacon (and believe me, if someone had told me I’d be gripped by a book about the Great Lakes shipping industry and the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, I’d have said, “Clearly you don’t know me very well”). I also saw The Odyssey, the movie that’s everywhere right now, and it captured me, too. I’ve thought quite a bit about why these works resonated and what I could take away from that for my own writing. And what gripped me were not the mistakes and shortcomings that fueled these stories, but a different theme: Kindness.
It may be that I am especially starved for reading about kindness these days, because no matter what “side” you’re on, we live in ugly, divisive times. And yet, how exciting is it to read about nice people who treat each other nicely and get along just fine? It’s not exactly the kind of stuff that keeps you up at night, desperate to turn one more page. But making sure there’s a streak of kindness in your fiction is exactly the kind of emotional truth that readers respond to, and that helps us as writers plumb what truly matters. Consider:
Kindness as a plot twist. Honestly, when Ann Patchett’s book opened with the main character running into her former stepfather and there were hints of a trauma in her past that involved him, I thought all the worst, most-depressing things you can think about what the book was going to be. And it totally contradicted all of them. It’s not a spoiler to say the stepfather is a lovely, warm human who did all he could to protect and nurture his stepdaughter. It confounded my expectations but also stereotypical plot tropes. It made me delight even more in the relationship between the two. Think about how you could make kindness run counter to what readers might expect.
Kindness as the foundation. One of the overwhelming themes of The Odyssey is kindness to strangers, to treat every guest as an honored friend. This isn’t just a nice thing to do; it’s the foundation for a moral universe, to treat others as you would like to be treated. And to defy or deny this fundamental tenet is to set in motion forces that can lead to destruction and despair. Odysseus plays upon the Trojans’ faith in this in gifting the Trojan horse; it leads to the fall of Troy and to Odysseus’ own fall as he violates a moral code he believes in. His long journey back home, and the pain and loss he endures, are all part of the price he pays. Whatever moral universe you create in your fiction, develop what happens when your character knowingly defies its most important value.
Kindness in unexpected characters. If you think of the men who work on Great Lakes freighters and the captains who oversee them, “tenderness” and “kindness” aren’t exactly the first words that come to mind. But John U. Bacon brings to life all 29 of the men lost on the Edmund Fitzgerald, and it’s the notes of kindness that make the characters memorable. Oiler Blaine Wilhelm kept every penny he won in card games or every coin he got in change when buying a beer in port and put the coins in a coffee can he would bring home to divide among his seven kids at the end of every season. The captain, Ernest McSorley, a smart and fair and experienced sailor, agreed to take one last run on Lake Superior late in the season to earn extra money to help pay for cancer treatments for his sick wife. These are real life stories about real men, and it’s these small details that stick, in real life as in fiction.
Kindness as resistance. Sometimes, kindness is a form of rebellion or even revolution in a world where evil seems to have triumphed. Eumaeus the shepherd in The Odyssey welcomes a stranger (the disguised Odysseus) into his home, even after he’s been beaten and taunted by the men (the suitors) who are also strangers in Ithaca, and whom he also treated with kindness and respect.
My mother used to always quote Henry James, who once said, “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” (I did double-check the veracity of this quote). It’s not a bad mantra to live by. And, when used judiciously, it’s not a bad mantra to write by, either.
Where does kindness fit into your writing? Are you conscious of making sure there is a thread of kindness somewhere?
