As writers, we focus a lot on plot, structure, and dialogue, but I’m starting to feel like every story is really about one deeper truth we keep coming back to.
Not something we plan, but something that shows up again and again in our writing.
For me, it’s about connection and timing, how people can care deeply for each other but still miss each other because of where they are in life.
Curious, what’s the one truth that keeps showing up in your writing?
1 person likes this
That’s a really perceptive way to look at storytelling. Once you start noticing that “under-current truth,” it’s hard to unsee it, it tends to shape everything from character decisions to the kind of endings we’re willing to write.
In my own work, I keep circling back to transformation through clarity. Not dramatic reinvention, but those quieter moments where a character finally sees what’s been in front of them all along, about themselves, about others, or about the story they’ve been telling themselves. I think a lot of conflict, whether internal or external, comes from that gap between perception and reality.
It shows up in different forms: a manuscript that finally finds its structure, a character who stops avoiding responsibility, or even relationships where misunderstanding dissolves into recognition. It’s less about change for spectacle, and more about the cost and relief of understanding.
I’d be curious to hear how you think timing and connection shape your characters’ choices, do you find they drive the plot, or reveal it?
2 people like this
Alexa Harrison That’s a great way to put it “the cost and relief of understanding” really stuck with me.
For me, timing and connection don’t just reveal the plot, they create it. Most of the key moments come from characters being slightly out of sync emotionally or in timing.
If they were aligned at the right moment, there’d be no story. It’s that delay, hesitation, or missed chance that drives everything forward.
And when clarity finally comes, it often arrives too late or at a cost which is what makes it meaningful.
1 person likes this
Good words, Abhijeet Aade and Alexa Harrison. "Deeper truth" and "under-current truth" are keys details of subtext, which in my scripts has been somethng like "power multiplies selfishness." Those who are able to influence others will do so and will do it, to a degree, for their own ends even if part of a greater hierarchy.
For example, in a totalitarian dystopia, a committed enforcer of the regime will always be inclined to do little things for his/her own personal benefit independent of their role as an enforcer.
A more real-life example and one from personal experience, many years back, I moved out of an apartment after grad school. I was on good terms with that landlord and we had a very nice talk about what we'll do after, he was thinking of getting another building and I was moving far away very soon. And I can't help that's why he kept half of my security deposit, $125. My apartment was spotless. I lived with my wife by then and she is a very dedicated cleaner of personal spaces. Our neighbors in that building also gave up half of their security deposit, yet they smoked in their place and had a cat. That apartment was way dustier and stuffier than ours… alas since most people were moving far away and with grand plans after grad school, they had little to no time to argue over $125.
1 person likes this
Abhijeet Aade, That’s a really interesting way to look at it. For me, it tends to come back to how people deal with loss, especially the ways they avoid or reshape reality to cope with it.
1 person likes this
Michael Dzurak That’s a really interesting way to frame it “power multiplies selfishness” feels like a very grounded and honest undercurrent.
I like how you connected it from a larger dystopian idea to something as small and real as your personal experience that’s exactly how these truths show up in storytelling too.
Even in everyday situations, people tend to act in their own interest when they have the space or authority to do so, sometimes subtly, sometimes without even realizing it.
It makes for compelling characters as well, because they’re not purely “good” or “bad” just human.
2 people like this
Ayesha Simra That’s really powerful especially the idea of reshaping reality to cope with loss.
It feels very true to how people actually process things. Sometimes it’s not about facing the loss directly, but about how we reinterpret it just to keep moving forward.
I think those emotional shifts often create the most honest moments in a story.
Curious do you find your characters eventually confront that reality, or do they continue living within that version they’ve created?
2 people like this
Abhijeet Aade, That’s a great way to put it. I think they eventually have to confront it, but not all at once. It’s more of a gradual breakdown of that version they’ve created, until they can’t fully hold onto it anymore.
2 people like this
Ayesha Simra Yeah, exactly. It’s like the version they hold onto starts to crack over time rather than shatter all at once. That slow unraveling feels more honest to me, both in life and in storytelling.”