Hello, and welcome back to Dance in The Rain! My name is Amelia Arrow and I am an artistic person. I love to discuss history, I love to listen to music and I love to draw. In fact, the ballerina holding the umbrella in the left corner is one of my creations. However, drawing cannot compare to the passion I have for writing. To create worlds by stringing words together on a page is the most wonderful thing in the world. It gets even better when other people read what I wrote and comment on what they think of it. 

However, I was not always the sharing type. There was a good five-year span when I had so many ideas hitting me in the face, but I never finished any of my stories. While that bothers me nowadays, back then I didn't care. I never shared them with anyone, not even my family because I wasn't writing for anyone, but myself. Which is why I connect to Miranda Carroll in Station Eleven so deeply. I understand her. Us writers spend days working away, putting our brain under stress just to come up with good prose, a compelling character and a rich world. It's hard! And don't even get me started on writer's block. 

 So why bother going through all that? Why write a novel if it is going to drive you crazy? Well, it is because writers understand the importance of stories as an art form. Think fast! What is your favourite story you read as a kid? Or even now, what's one book you can't put down? Why did you like it? Was it the plot? The message? Was it the characters? Comment down below what your opinion is.

My opinion is both the message and the characters are what makes a story important. You see, the importance of writing stories is that they, like every other art form, reflect the human race. They reflect what humans are and our potential to be, through the characters in the story. Each protagonist in a story has a particular message tied to them. For example, in the "Turtle and the Hare", a very well known children's tale about how a slow turtle managed to outrun a hare because the hare was so overconfident that he took a nap during the race, believing the turtle would never catch up. Unfortunately for him, the turtle went past him to the finish line while he slept which teaches the hare and the children reading the short story, don't be overconfident.

This teaching moment is the same as the "aha" moment; an epiphany, a simple realization made from the protagonist. Every protagonist in a novel or short story must have this realization, a moment to reflect upon their actions and learn something new.

Previously I mentioned that I connected to Miranda Carroll from Station Eleven, so let's talk about Emily St. John Mandel's novel and see how it reflects the human race. Emily St. John Mandel creates a unique situation where 99% of all humans on Earth are wiped out by the Georgia Flu Epidemic. This allows all of the characters we meet to be pressured and let their true selves come out. The thing with Station Eleven is that everything in the book is plausible. In the novel, a cult lead by Tyler Leander is formed, as well as another group, the Traveling Symphony is created. These two groups both represent the two social extremes of how mankind could end up if there was an epidemic. Even though both of them have murdered, there is a fine line between them, and no, it isn't because one is a group of biblical lunatics. Rather, it comes down to morality and code. The cult represents the end of morality, while the Traveling Symphony represents upholding morality and everything that represents humankind. We see this is in Chapter 19, page 122 where they find Eleanor. The stowaway explains that she is running away from the prophet because she was made his wife even though she is only 12 years old. "They knew they risked accusations of kidnapping and they had long adhered to a strict policy of nonintervention in the politics of the towns through which they passed, but no one imagined delivering a child bride back to the prophet." This quote not only shows that the Traveling Symphony upholds morality, but that the cult does not.

It doesn't matter if the text is a short story, a novel, or other forms of art, they all have a message told through characters that remind us of humanity and what we can become in certain circumstances. Therefore, it is important for writers to continue their craft so that we. the audience, may understand the world better and allow us to reflect on our actions. After all, we are all characters living out our own story.

Thank you for reading Dance in the Rain's second's post! Next, we will go back a few centuries to Shakespeare's day and look at one of his most famous plays in Frailty, thy name is woman. Not.