The best short stories leave out important information but evoke it in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections.*
These are my secret rules for making that happen:
- Lead your listener toward a conclusion and then let them arrive at it on their own. If you state a conclusion and then try to support it with evidence, you are robbing your listener of the joy of discovery.
- Give your listener the new, the surprising, and the different.
- If you must give them old information, reframe it; give it to them from a new perspective, so that they will see it again for the first time.
- Leave out the parts that people skip.
My Christmas gift to you is The Story of the Universe According to Roy.
I call it “Way Back in the Long Ago.” You will find it at TribalGospel.com
It is an auditory opera, a campfire story of God and the Universe told under a starfilled sky by an old man who is accompanied by musicians who sit at the furthest edges of that circle of light.
But your seat is closer.
You feel the warmth of the fire as it dances the dance of the story, and the stars twinkle their agreement with glittering laughter.
This is chapter one.
Way back in the long ago, the maker spoke, and light exploded across the darkness. Energy radiated across the nothing.
Time and space and order appeared from the nothing of the long ago.
Bits of energy shot like shrapnel from a bomb into the grid that was created by the ordering of the nothing. Bits of energy bonded with other bits to become great lumps that went spinning across the grid.
Their spinning caused these lumps to become spherical.
Some of the spheres were made of gasses; ice giants and dwarfs, gas giants and dwarfs, and suns of every size and temperature were created by the energy within them.
Others of those spheres became great rocks.
Oxygen bonded to hydrogen so that water splashed in the hollows of those rocks.
The maker smiled.
Algae and moss and grass and trees emerged, and the maker smiled again.
Winged creatures darted through the air and swimming creatures darted through the sea, and the maker smiled again.
And then creatures appeared on the rock itself. Creatures appeared on the land.
The maker looked at us and decided to make us into little makers with the power to choose whatever we would choose. We have the authority to say “yes,” and the authority to say “no,” as we stare into the eyes of the maker.
The maker gave us this watery rock we live upon, and complete authority over it.
We have the freedom to be guided by our choices. We are no longer the captives of our instincts.
The maker is not held captive by time and space. The maker created time and space from the nothing.
It is only we – you and me – who measure time and space.
Our history of deciding for ourselves and living with the consequences has not been a good history.
Seven billion of us are crammed onto a rock that circles an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through the nothing… at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.
We are passengers on a world spinning out of control.
Having wrongly been told that the maker is in control, we blame the maker for every sadness.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.
I hope you will take an hour to enjoy my little campfire opera.
Merry Christmas.
Roy H. Williams
*The same is true of the best jokes and the best ads.
This week, roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy, Maxwell, offer their third annual holiday encore of their inspirational Yuletide tale, A Christmas Day Miracle, by Dean and Talya Rotbart. First published in 2021, A Christmas Day Miracle has become a holiday favorite. It is the true story of a man, Riyaz Adat, on death’s doorstep; and his devoted wife, Margaret. The story is a poignant reminder of the wonder and power of life’s unexpected blessings. The telling will begin as soon as you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com