You Never Know What One Story Will Inspire!
I was too clumsy for ballet, apparently. My mother’s talent for all kinds of dance didn't pass to me, and after one stint in ballet and another in tap, she switched me to piano. Thank you, Mom!
From age 7 to 17, I enjoyed every piano lesson. Next to reading, playing piano was my favorite activity.
But this story isn’t about me. It starts with my disappointment in my own young daughter—not because of dance or music, but because she didn’t enjoy reading.
Good Lord. My child? Not liking books?
I confessed to her that her name was inspired by a BOOK that I was reading while pregnant with her. Look, here’s the wonderful character, the strong, wise woman you were named after! I tempted, prodded, and bribed, to no avail.
Until one day, her appetite woke up. So she is my daughter, after all!
Today she devours books, and it makes my heart sing when she asks me for a recommendation—and then actually reads it. What first captured her, and continues to delight her, is historical fiction.
I understand why.
One of the great pleasures of good historical fiction is that you learn important history without feeling like you’re being taught. I’m talking about novels grounded in what we actually know about the dates, customs, people, culture, and events of the time. Ken Follett, for example, is known for the extensive research behind his novels. A book like The Pillars of the Earth lets us experience 12th-century history instead of studying it.
In many cases, we already know what happened historically. Stories let us imagine what it felt like. Dates and facts become kitchens, battlefields, marriages, meals, fears, arguments, losses, and all variety of human connections.
Historical fiction also gives history back to ordinary people—the shopkeeper, the mother, the child, the immigrant, the person whose name never made a history book.
And suddenly something enormous becomes personal. “Millions of people” is impossible for the mind to comprehend. One person we care about is not.
Story gives enormous events a human scale.
I think historical fiction reminds us of something easy to forget: people in history didn't know they were living in “history.” They were simply living their lives, making decisions with incomplete information—just as we are now.
Someday, right now will be history. But to us, it's simply life.
All of this points to another reason I think historical fiction is so powerful: it demonstrates what story can do.
Most of us would never voluntarily curl up in bed at night with a 600-page history textbook. But give us a compelling novel set during the building of a medieval cathedral, or that follows a brave girl who joins the French Resistance, or walks you through the rise and fall of a civilization, and we may stay up far too late turning the pages.
And along the way, we learn history.
The facts haven't suddenly become more interesting.
They've been given people.
That's what story does.
Instead of telling us that a war began on a certain date, story introduces us to someone whose son is about to be sent into it. Instead of explaining that a famine occurred, it puts us at a table where a mother is deciding which child gets the last piece of bread.
Facts give us information.
Story gives us a reason to care about the information.
And once we care, we pay attention. We remember. We want to know what happens next.
That principle doesn't belong only to novelists.
If you're a speaker, coach, business owner, or nonfiction author, you probably have information you want other people to understand. But information alone rarely sticks.
So don't just give people information. Give them a way to experience it.
And don't overlook the ordinary moments of your own life because they don't seem important enough to be stories. Remember, the people we now read about in history didn't know they were living history either.
Neither do we.
So pay attention. The ordinary moments you are living today may be the stories worth telling tomorrow.
I am here, listening. Tell me your story.
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