Identifying with both the storyteller and the avatar + inside and outside.

The storyteller is the one who can write any story. The closer we identify with the storyteller, the more we can access this power.

That said, it’s worth noting again that, as mentioned in “Your POV is powerful,” the storyteller needs the avatar. A storyteller without an avatar only has a blank page. And that blank page is pure possibility: everything that can exist “exists” within that blank page in that nothing exists.

But what’s the point of having just the blank page and no story? 

The Storyteller’s Eye is a worldview that works best for those who want to be a storyteller and an avatar.

But we tend to start out identifying solely as the avatar. (If you started out identifying as both, you probably won't need to read anything on this website.) So, how do we identify more with the storyteller?

By accepting the inspiration that we are also the storyteller. That's it.

This might sound “too” simple. However, this is how everything works in a story.

Say, a novelist writes in a novel something like this:

Ithaka had long black hair that reached her waist.

And what happens? Ithaka does have long black hair that reaches her waist. 

The avatar world works no differently. It’s simple.

However, simple isn’t necessarily easy. It need not be difficult, but it need not be easy either.

Most of the time, when we think that we think something, we aren’t actually thinking it. For example, for most of us who come across the idea that, literally, whatever we decide to be our story is our story, the reaction might be: But then, why am I not already a millionaire? But then, why don’t I have a super hot body? But then, why am I not the President of the United Nations of the Earth Alliance Against the Intergalactic Forces?

The answer, too, is simple: because of the “but”s. Because the “but”s are what dominate the POV, instead of what we claim we desire.

We don’t even need to go all the way to being a millionaire, having a super hot body, or being the president who’s going to save humanity against alien forces. Some of us may find it difficult to accept inspiration like this: “Something good is going to happen today.” We may think it's unrealistic, even though, simultaneously, most of us would agree: something good happening on a day is "objectively" a very realistic possibility. We know it's possible. We just don't think it's possible for us.

Imagine that sentence in a novel.

“Something good is going to happen today,” Mongmong thought.

If that is all Mongmong thinks, she will experience good things. This cannot be helped. The novelist cannot throw anything "bad" at her, if she truly thinks like the above sentence. The novelist can throw bombs at her, and Mongmong would still think, "Why, these are bombs! This is an excellent opportunity to prove my valiance!"

However, what tends to come after such a sentence, in both a novel and in real life, is this:

But that couldn’t be true. It was silly of Mongmong to have thought of that possibility at all. Good things didn’t happen randomly. And Mongmong just wasn’t one of the people for whom good things did happen through destiny.

Instead of accepting the inspiration that good things happen, Mongmong accepts that she isn’t a person for whom good things could possibly apply. That is her honest POV. Therefore, when bombs do fall on her, likely, she will claim "I'm not surprised. I knew bad things would happen." This is her honest POV.

A quick disclaimer: The Storyteller's Eye is not about positivity bullshittery. This worldview doesn't claim that we should all pretend to like it when bombs fall on us.

We cannot lie on the page. We can lie avatar-to-avatar, sure. We can use the seeming separation. But we cannot lie to ourselves. And we cannot lie avatar-to-storyteller or storyteller-to-avatar.

For now, more importantly, Mongmong is not aware of her POV as a whole. She, like many of us in the avatar world and many other novel characters, is likely to not notice her POV at all. Or, if she does notice her POV, then she probably thinks that her POV exists “inside her head” and that “the world” exists “outside.”

But consider the above example again.

Where is Mongmong’s POV and where is the world?

They aren’t inside or outside. The inside is the outside.

Mongmong isn’t surrounded by the world. Mongmong is the world.

Another example:

Mongmong fought through the crowd of noisy commuters. She was so sick of this morning traffic. From every side, people pushed her. The really impolite ones reeked of breakfast. They hadn’t even bothered to brush their teeth.

“Excuse me?” someone said from behind her. “Will you get out of the way?”

“Are you kidding?” she said. “Do you not see that there’s nowhere I can go?"

It was hot, in the subway compartment. Summer was an unideal time to use public transportation. Mongmong hated summer.

Mongmong might think that she is only observing her surroundings because they are there. She might think that the words she uttered out loud exist “outside” of her, because “someone else” heard it.

However, what is it like for us, the readers? (Readers, like writers, are storytellers. Through the reader’s reading of the story, the story comes to exist in the reader’s reality.)

For the readers, everything happened on the page. The words “Will you get out of the way?” don’t consist of material that's different from the words that make up “From every side, people pushed her.” To Mongmong the character, she heard the former "from the outside" and the latter happened inside her head. (Or, again, likely, she isn't even aware that the latter is happening inside her head.) But to the readers? And to the writer? Everything happened on the page.

So it is with us, in the avatar world. We think we are “seeing” the world. But that material that we see consists of the same material that makes up what we “think.” Thinking is seeing. Everything in the POV—everywhere and everywhen the avatar can go with its everyday awareness, and that which can go everywhere and everywhen—is made of the same material. We can think of this POV as everything that is written on a page. That POV does have the possibility to go everywhere (it can access the power of the blank page), but usually, it doesn’t. It stays specialized—sometimes, in a way that we don’t realize.

The amusing thing about The Storyteller’s Eye worldview is that, because Mongmong has so much power, she can decide to be powerless. She can decide that she has nothing to do with her novelist. She can decide that the world is separate from her. Events happen to her. Events happen at her.

And she would be precisely correct. The novelist will unfold her story accordingly.

No matter how much Mongmong may claim that she is just being objective ("Look! Objectively, I am separate from the guy whose breath reeks of breakfast!"), we readers can see: Mongmong and the guy with the bad breath are made of the exact same material, literally.

There is no difference between inside and outside, at the storyteller level. We can see that when we’re reading a novel. And because we can see that (it’s in our avatar’s POV), we can imagine that something like this analogy applies to our world. And acceptance of that inspiration makes it be true. We specialize our POV with that inspiration. Our storytellers unfold our stories accordingly.

We who use The Storyteller’s Eye are like novel characters awakening in a novel.

The worldview tag is best read in this order. The later posts build on the earlier posts.