The Story in Your Head vs. the Story on the Page

Before you sit down at your computer or with your notebook to start writing, a story swirls around in your head. It’s the story you want to write, the story you need to write. And the story in your head is fabulous. 

The story in your head is as twisty and passionate as the latest bestseller. It makes readers laugh and cry. It’s all about love and power and the world and contains every feeling that’s ever swept through your body. (When you start to put the story on the page, it’s probably about a kitten.) 

The story in your head outlasts Western civilization. It’s the classic of all classics. People on far-off future planets get assigned your text in class and groan. You have attained the immortality of homework.

The story in your head has gaps. And it isn’t necessarily your job to fill these gaps, when the story lives only in your head. You can simply hop elsewhere, to another part of it, and entertain yourself. Your story can be all lavish descriptions of sylvan forests and ball gowns, and that will be fine. No reader’s going to complain about a story that isn’t written down.

But without writing any of it down, there will be no story, not really. No one else can read it. No one will connect with it. And if there’s any truth to your hunch that the story in your head is worth telling, then your own rattling mind is a lonely place to keep that story, isn’t it?

If you want the story in your head to come to life, you’ve got to write it down. (Or share or tell it in some other form; there are many valid choices.) However, it will change in the telling. It might veer off in a different direction than intended. Maybe it’ll even be a better direction, but it will take work to get there.

In your head, a story can write itself in moments. In practice, if the story is long and complex, it takes hours, days, maybe even years. It may take several revisions. Parts will fall off of the story in your head as it assumes material form, and new pieces will attach themselves to it. 

The story in your head was exciting, maybe even perfect. The story on the page is imperfect. But you aren’t going to have a story if you don’t write it down. And good stories deserve to be told.