I want my stories to be something about life that causes people to say, not, oh, isn't that the truth, but to feel some kind of reward from the writing, and that doesn't mean that it has to be a happy ending or anything, but just that everything the story tells moves the reader in such a way that you feel you are a different person when you finish.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the transformative power of storytelling in evoking deep emotional responses from readers.
Alice Munro expresses her desire for stories to resonate profoundly with readers, aiming for them to feel changed by the experience. She highlights that the impact of a story is not solely defined by a happy ending, but by its ability to evoke feelings that enrich the reader's understanding of life.
In practice
This quote can be used in a writing workshop to inspire authors to focus on emotional impact.
Sometimes our connection is frayed, it is in danger, it seems almost lost. Views and streets deny knowledge of us, the air grows thin. Wouldn't we rather have a destiny to submit to, than, something that claims us, anything, instead of such flimsy choices, arbitrary days?
I was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.
Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
I just believed it easily, the way you might believe and in fact remember that you once had another set of teeth, now vanished but real in spite of that. Until one day, one day when I may even have been in my teens, I knew with a dim sort of hole in my insides that now I didn't believe it anymore.
You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing.
A story is not like a road to follow... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside it altered by being viewed from these windows.
We attempted perfection; we wanted an object to be without flaw, so we cut the papers with a razor, pasted them down meticulously, but it buckled and was ruined... that is why we decided to tear prewrinkled paper, so that in the finished work of art imperfection would be an integral part, as if at birth death were built in.
It's hard to be surprised by a film. It's hard to be surprised by another actor or by a director when you've seen enough and been around. So when I am, or when I forget that I'm watching someone's movie, or when I don't know how someone made a certain turn that I didn't expect . . . You know, I'm in.
The funniest thing is that all the things every director goes through, I thought I could shortcut, but there was no getting around those issues.
I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.
I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names?
The best I can do is to make a film every two years.
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