Revelations about narrative

Alright, so... this is going to be brief because it is simple: everything is better in fiction than in reality.

All stories are embellished because the way they really happened is boring. When telling stories you can create the "ideal situation". Take my own story about the Ferrari for example. It happened, but in reality there was no colourful language...there were no parkas the lady didn't call me hunny.

The easiest way to make an interesting character is to make them either extremely wealthy or extremely poor 'cause lets face it, who wants to read/watch/listen to a story about regular people. Watch almost any movie or TV show. Doctors, lawyers, criminals, police, spoiled high school kids (The Hills). Heck, take money out of the equation and Donny & Jaclyn's lives are looking pretty interesting...we could even be on cribs!

This doesn't just apply to scripted fiction, but to everyday news as well. Remember they are called news "stories" for a reason. Sure the events happen, but keep in mind there is a person, just like you or me, writing about them. Their job is to make it newsworthy which is synonymous with: interesting, meaningful, crucial, significant, and a whole slew of other words turning most things in the news into nothing more than embellished reality.

d.

...I guess by brief I meant ranty.