The Golden Theme

As a storyteller, you are a servant of your story, not the master. You must do what it requires, not what you want it to do. You must remove your ego from it. Art is not to show people who you are; it is to show people who they are. Or to put it more accurately, it is to show us who we are—as human beings.

But connecting with another person on an emotional level, a level beyond words, is transcendent. The ancient Greeks believed that this feeling was medicinal.

But even Superman has his kryptonite. It is important that a character so powerful have something that could kill him—so that he can risk his life to save others. This way he can show selflessness.

Style is what happens as a result of how you solve a given problem.

You can almost feel an electrical charge in the air. It is an exhilarating feeling. It is the feeling we get when we are aware that we are all the same. That feeling is a powerful medicine.

"As a storyteller, you are a servant of your story, not the master. You must do what it requires, not what you want to do. You must remove your ego from it. Art is not to show people who you are; it is to show people who they are."

The plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. —Erwin Schrödinger

This simple sentence, we are all the same, is the Golden Theme that all stories express.

Further research has found that humans have even more highly evolved mirror neurons than monkeys. So our brains do not understand the difference between doing and watching.