There is this thing that happens in the movies when the hero finally gets everything they ever wanted.
The score swells, the screen fades to black, the credits roll. What we DON’ T talk about enough is how the very next day, the day after everything, the hero has to wake up and go on living. We act as if all our life stories will fit neatly within the confines of the average 120 minutes of a cinematic reimagining. As if once our main character makes it over that first big hurdle, they will never again stumble. They will have ARRIVED.
And in the silver screen economy, arrival is everything.
But then the next day comes. And real life settles in.
Plot idea: We as the hero of our own story get everything we ever wanted in the first five minutes of our film. And then the audience spends the next two hours watching us wake up, pay bills, go to the grocery store, get cut off in traffic, answer angry emails, have trouble sleeping, and walk around with this constant low hum of low-grade anxiety about whether or not our best days are already behind us. It’ s not exactly main character energy, is it?
Pretty soon, these long stretches of even more setbacks, disappointments, and failures than we ever could have imagined play out in real time. There is no threeminute movie montage to help us skip to the good part. At times, it even feels like they are playing out in slow motion. Possibly even stuck skipping on repeat.
You now know what it is to stumble.
You now know what it is to land with a thud.
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