Go Ahead — Write This Story: Change, Part II

[mount_oregano]

When characters change, what can they change? Remember, no one likes to change and when forced, we change as little as possible. The easiest thing to change is our environment, like changing jobs or housing. Behavior and capabilities are a little harder, such as acquiring new habits, strategies, skills, or motives. Opinions and beliefs, like voting for a political party, are often emotionally based and are hard to change. Values, our core ideas about what matters in life, such as religious faith, are even harder to change. Finally, self-image or identity, who we are and what our purpose in life is, is the hardest of all to change.

If you want to write about attempts at change, here are a few ideas:

• This is a story about a father who will abandon his family in two weeks and move to another country because he thinks they will be happier and safer without him.

• This is an outdoors adventure novel in which a werewolf is accidentally captured during a Yellowstone wolf relocation program, and the incident is documented by a Smithsonian Magazine photographer.

• This is a cyberpunk story about a young woman who sells her identity and must recreate herself from zero.

— Sue Burke