Once upon a time, two guys named Ben and Steve called a guy named Don, who wrote a book, Blue Like Jazz, that made it to The New York Times‘s Bestseller list. We want to turn your book into a movie, they told Don, but he wasn’t too sure how’d it work. Blue Like Jazz was just a bunch of his thoughts in one book:
…”While you’ve written a good book,
thoughts don’t translate onto the
screen very well. The audience can’t get inside your head like they can in a
book… A story has to move in real life and real time. It’s all about action.”
“You think they might be bored if
we just show my life the way it is,” I clarified…“I think they’d stab each other in
the necks with drinking straws,” Steve said…
If Steve was right about a good story being a
condensed version of life – that is, if story is just life without the
meaningless scenes – I wondered if life could be lived more like a good story
in the first place. I wondered whether a person could plan a story for his life
and live it intentionally.
- how he and Ben and Steve turn a bunch of his poignant essays into a compelling screenplay
- what happens as Don applies a very simple yet profound principle to his life.
We at the World Race echo his call to live a better story. Don’t settle for the boring storyline. Today, decide to change the world with your story.
“A story is a character who wants
something and overcomes conflict to get it,” [Jordan] said…I looked at the definition for a second,
wondering at how simple it really was. He was right… “That’s the essence of a
story.”
- All passages quoted from A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller, published 2009 by Thomas Nelson.
- Photo: book cover (from donmilleris.com)
- We’re opening up an opportunity to live a better story in January 2012 World Race; you’ll find it here.
