The Necessity of purpose

Well, in writing anything, I have found out that purpose is extremely important, if you don't have some sort of purpose for your paper, essay, short story, novel, or any piece of writing, then that piece of writing will be non-sensical and incoherent. So the story I am currently working on has a purpose. My purpose is to learn to write with purpose, so this story is slightly ironic because of that. Here is my rough draft beginning:





Once upon a time, there was a man. His name was Parker, and he had spent his entire life in the great white empty expanse the others called earth. He wasn't like the others; the large mob of people standing in the middle of the huge white space. Parker wondered how he was different from them, how and why. They all seemed happy, what sounded like laughter reached him from where he sat, about a hundred feet from the crowd. "They must have a reason to live," he thought,"they must be living their lives in the best way possible." He was searching for purpose, he realized. He wanted to live his life to the fullest, at least that is what he thought the purpose of life must be. He knew he wouldn't live forever, no one did. He did not want to waste his life. "The people over there, they seem to have it." Parker told himself. He envied them. They seemed to have a goal, they seemed satisfied, he wanted to feel satisfied like they did. He wanted to have the emptiness in his heart filled. Parker had spent his whole life just watching them, he had listened when he was young, but they had slowly drifted away from where he had sat, where he sat now. And then he just watched. He didn't remember what they had said, other than they seemed to know what they were doing. Like they had a sort of meaningfulness that he didn't have. He wanted his life to be more than it was, to be like them. "I am going to ask them" Parker told himself. He slowly got up, and stood, and for the first time began to walk, slowly, to the crowd before him. Parker thought he had heard laughter, but as he neared his goal, his perception began to change. The laughter became louder, sharper, and somehow...angrier. Half way there he realized that what he heard wasn't laughter, he had been mistaken. What he thought was happiness and satisfaction emanating from the throng, was instead discord, anger,...selfishness. He wanted to turn around, but he realized that the room had closed behind him, and that he could only move forward. He wished he had stayed in his place of relative quiet, But he could not get away, he could not go back. "I have to finish what I have started now." Parker told himself. He was afraid, though he was not sure of what, he approached the mob. They didn't look like they had answers, like they had what he wanted, they didn't seem to be any better off than he had been. Actually, they seemed worse. He asked them anyway. "Excuse me," fear and uncertainty tinged his voice, but the swarm of people didn't not stop. They hadn't heard him. More resolute he yelled, "Can anyone tell me...the...the purpose of life?!" The people quieted, all of the seemingly endless horde staring at him, blankly. As he looked intently at the mob of people, it seemed as if they were separated into many different groups, each of these groups held a banner, with words written on them, each banner saying a different thing. From one of these groups a man stepped forward. He was an old man, with a long flowing beard. He wore a toga, what looked like one large white tablecloth, wrapped around him and over one arm. " I know the purpose of life. Man is the measure of all things young one, Man is the purpose of life." He said this with a flourish, pointing at the people around him. But Parker remembered the angry voices, the selfishness and meanness that was so loud in his ears, only minutes before. "How can this be?" He asked. The old man answered, "Man is the greatest being, superior to everything else, the best, the strongest. So Man must create his own purpose." After a short pause the man continued, "I am a stoic, I do not let the meaningless pleasures of life distract me. I focus on doing good, I never do wrong. This is the best way to live, the only way that Man, who is himself the greatest living being, should live." the man finished, with a look of self confidence, and importance. Parker thought about this for a minute, he felt hope swelling inside him, could this be the answer he had searched for for so long? But he had a question, "But sir, what is good, or bad, wrong or right. What is morality sir?" With an arrogant smirk, the old man quickly answered, "Well, right or wrong, is what Man determines it to be, obviously! I determine morality!" The old man looked shocked, as he came to the full realization of what he had said. Behind him the groups banner that read, "Just do good for goodness sake!" Was quickly torn down, and was replaced by a banner that read,"Do whatever you want to do!" And the people in the group began to beat each other, steal from one another, the strongest people taking whatever they wanted from the weaker, doing what they determined was "good". The old man stammered, trying to take back what he had said, but he could not. Parker realized that if man was the greatest being, than what the old man had said would be true. "If man is the greatest being, determiner of everything, basically God in every meaning of the word, then there is no purpose, only anarchy." Parker realized that he would not find his answer here. Another man stepped forward, he was middle aged, with graying hair and a bald spot forming on the top of his head. He wore large glasses and a lab coat, " I know the answer. You see, I am a scientist, and all scientists agree that the purpose of life is, that there is no purpose, therefore, it must be fact that there is no purpose to life."....[and this is as much as I have written so far]

Inspiration

When you look at the rich celebrities, the successful businessmen/women, the actors/actresses. They seem to have everything. Like they are truly living, like they have really arrived at the country of happiness, via the train called popularity and success. If this is true though, why do so many of them commit suicide? Why are so many rich, beautiful, popular people, always strung out on drugs, trying to get their minds off the place that they are in. They don't act happy or look happy. I think it is because the are not happy. That is what I am going to write about. Inside the mind of some fictional , celebrity , maybe an actor, or maybe someone that is just plain rich, but someone who is unsatisfied in life, even though that person apparently has everything. I will need to do research, so I can understand a little bit of the life of someone who is like that. But I think that could work.

Writing something with meaning, and not something that is junk

Well, after some more study, I have found that you can't just start randomly trying to right a story and expect to get one that has any sort of literary value. If you don't plan your story out, it probably won't have any commercial value either. So, I have decided I am pretty much just going to scrap my previous story for now. And I am going to try to write something with purpose, trying to explore some aspect in human nature, to teach the reader something. When I figure out what this is, I will write a detailed outline. I have always been bad with outlines, I always want to just write, and figure out what I am going to say as I go along. This actually creates a whole lot more work, than if I had just gone ahead and wrote the outline. Not to mention the fact that whatever I had been writing probably will sound like a rambling poorly structured and unfocused work.

Here is what I think I am going to attempt to write on, which is also something I have been considering a lot lately. The hopelessness of trusting in yourself, in your career, or in anything else so superficial, to bring you joy. It requires a whole lot more than money, or your family even, to bring true happiness. Of course I would need to be able to show this, without directly stating this in the story. Using things like symbolism, irony, ect. to show this to the reader.

It isn't an original or very creative plot so far I know. :D This is pretty much me just trying to practice on writing story structure, and being able to describe the environment to the reader. It is also very easy to write a character that doesn't make sense, and is not consistent. So I decided to use a very simply straightforward conflict, and focus on practicing my structure ect.

It had been two days. He sat in the middle of the cold floor, his mind clear. It surprised him as he realized this. It was cold, and the air smelled damp and earthy, kind of like it did after it rained, just danker, like a cave. He then remembered that he was in the basement. The only cave he had been in was in Colorado, he remembered the fresh mountain air before, and then the change in pressure, atmosphere, and quality of the air as he and a bunch of other people followed the tour guide into the cave. “The Cave of the Winds” he remembered the brochure. His mom had hated the cave, she hated the dark, the claustrophobic spaces, the smell of the air, so much like the basement now smelled. A wave of grief swept over him now, as he remembered his family. He had tried to keep them out of his mind the past few days, trying think of anything, focus on anything that would keep them off of and out of his mind. But he now knew, he was fully aware that they were all dead. His family was dead. He said this to himself out loud, barely audible. And then he broke down again, tears running down his face in torrents. He was only 16. Still a boy. Even though he once thought that this was a large number, he felt so young and helpless. He felt lost. He was tall, taller than most men, but not tall enough to stand out in a crowd. He was not naturally muscular, and his tall and thin frame made him look even weaker than he was. He had a thin face, one not particularly striking, his tear stained, dark, shallow eyes, and pale face, made him look much older than he was, like an old man.

The Sun was warm on his face, the smells of the basement were gone, the sadness and fear were gone. He lay in the soft grass staring up into the warm blue sky, white fluffy clouds making shapes of imagined things, cars, an elephant, and an ice cream cone. He was happy. “Daniel! Time for lunch!” He sat up quickly and looked over to where he heard the familiar voice. “Mom! Dad! Little sis!” He yelled with a joy that he had never felt before, one he could not describe. The kind of joy felt after you feel you have lost something infinitely precious to you, but you realize that you were wrong, that what you held dear was not lost, but found. As he reached his family, he barely noticed the tuna fish sandwhiches, with the little pieces of boiled egg and the cut off crusts, his favorite. “Guys you’re ok!” He yelled. “Why wouldn’t we be Danny?” Dad answered “I had a nightmare. Must have fallen asleep in the grass! I love you guys! Even you little sis!” He smiled as he grabbed her around the waist and hugged her tightly to himself, rendering her speechless…and unable to breathe. “What has gotten into you Daniel? Every one is doing fine!” His mom said in a pleasant voice with an edge of worry. He sat down. His family was there as he remembered them, his apparent nightmare behind him, he relaxed. He scooped himself a big glob of potato salad, and took a bite out of a tuna fish sandwhich. But instead of the satisfying taste that he expected the tuna fish tasted horrible like nothing he had tasted before, like rotting flesh. He gagged, he then methodically, unwillingly, grabbed a spoon and scooped some of the potato salad, into his mouth, it to tasted like what he imagined a rotting corpse would taste like. “Whats’s wrong honey?” his mom asked, but before he could answer, she began to cough uncontrollably, and then Dad, and then little sis. “What’s wrong?!”, “What’s wrong?!” He asked loudly, and then he began to scream this, over and over. But they wouldn’t answer. Then his family looked up at him, all three of them with dark red in-human, hungry eyes, and open mouths, blood covering their faces. His sister groaned and reached for him. That is when he ran. He ran and he ran, for what seemed like hours, until he began to pass places he thought he recognized. The small grocery store, where they always got their groceries, and the nice checkout lady, who always remembered their names. The theater where his family would watch the latest films. His school and the houses of friends he knew. Then he looked behind him and realized that there was a huge mob of people following him. He recognized his Mom, Dad, and sister, all his friends from school, the checkout lady from the grocery store, calling his name in an unintelligible gurgle. Hundreds of people he recognized and many others he didn’t even know. Actors from movies he remembered, the local weather man who always talked in a particular voiced, and smiled when he said that there was a 50% chance of rain. They all had the bloodshot eyes, the gaping mouth, the outstretched arms reaching for him. He screamed. He tried to run faster, but his legs stopped working for some reason. He tried harder. He moved even slower, like his legs were made of gelatin. He fell down on his back, staring at the mob in horror as they approached him, he tried to scream for help, to tell them to stop, to explain to them that he knew some of them, a lot of them, his family! But no words escaped his lips, as the mob descended on him, tearing at his body, he could not even muster a scream…

He woke up in a cold sweat, he felt like screaming, but he suppressed it. His mind was in a panic, as he slowly began to realize that what he had just gone through was not real, but a nightmare, all the grief and sadness that he had felt from losing his family returned, more so because of the dream. He wondered if he was still in a nightmare, if the dark walls of the basement and the cold floor he laid on was simply another figment of his imagination. He hoped so, but as he once again smelled the damp dirt-like smell of the basement, too real for any dream, he knew that what he experienced right now was much too real. He got a grip on himself, he deepened his shallow breaths and made himself focus. He did not think about his family. He knew that if he did not put them out of his mind, he couldn’t make it, he couldn’t last another day. He was hungry, a kind of hunger only felt by someone who hasn’t eaten anything for almost three days. He remembered the canned food shelved along one of the walls. He got up from where he lay and shivered. He felt blindly around in the dark. He reached the shelves and felt around for a can, not being careful, he knocked a large can of tomatoes off of the shelf, and it smashed into his bare foot. He barely suppressed a cry of pain. But he did suppress it, because he did not want to let the “things” that he knew roamed the streets, that were in the house, to be aware of his existence. He grabbed a smaller can and sat down. He began to sob, uncontrollably, the tears ran down his face in rivulets, and he could hear the small squeaks coming from his chest. “This has to be a nightmare, this can’t be real!” he told himself over and over, his voice filled with emotion and grief. He repeated this to himself for ten minutes, the same thing over and over, first loudly, and then quieter. Until he eventually was only lipsing the words, but no sound was coming out. He was losing his mind. That is when he heard the scream. And then again, and again, until it degenerated into a series of shrieks that sounded almost human. He waited and he did not move, hours seemed to pass. He hardened himself. He did not let himself cry, he knew he had to get a grip, that this was real, very real. That this was not a dream, not a nightmare.

Feedback!

Here is the beginning of a somewhat morbid short story I've been writing. Don't ask me why I chose it. I really don't know, just random inspiration maybe. Anyways, let me know how it sounds, this is only the very beginning, I only started on the thing yesterday, so I have a lot of unpolished stuff.







It had been two days. He sat in the middle of the cold floor, his mind clear. It surprised him as he realized this. It was cold, and the air smelled damp and earthy, kind of like it did after it rained, just danker, like a cave. He then remembered that he was in the basement. The only cave he had been in was in Colorado, he remembered the fresh mountain air before, and then the change in pressure, atmosphere, and quality of the air as he and a bunch of other people followed the tour guide into the cave. “The Cave of the Winds” he remembered the brochure. His mom had hated the cave, she hated the dark, the claustrophobic spaces, the smell of the air, so much like the basement now smelled. A wave of grief swept over him now, as he remembered his family. He had tried to keep them out of his mind the past few days, trying think of anything, focus on anything that would keep them off of and out of his mind. But he now knew, he was fully aware that they were all dead. His family was dead. He said this to himself out loud, barely audible. And then he broke down again, tears running down his face in torrents. He was only 16. Still a boy. Even though he once thought that this was a large number, he felt so young and helpless. He felt lost. He was tall, taller than most men, but not tall enough to stand out in a crowd. He was not naturally muscular, and his tall and thin frame made him look even weaker than he was. He had a thin face, one not particularly striking, his tear stained, dark, shallow eyes, and pale face, made him look much older than he was, like an old man.