Alchemists of Fiction - Part Two: Storytellers In Their Creations

I remember one morning when Pat Hopkins, my writing mentor last year, said, “A genius storyteller puts his or herself in their stories.”
He then mentioned Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary suspense filmmaker, as one of those storytellers who always featured in his own flicks.
He would always appear in his movies as brief as a second, such as his passerby role in Rebecca.

Another storyteller I can think of is that of Valmiki, who fashioned the epic Ramayana. He too was in this story, as a humble villager who housed Rama. It was apparent he told the story in two parts. The first being when Rama, Sita and Lakshman were journeying and the second being the pursuit of Ravan after he kidnapped Sita. He apparently told the story aurally while it happened.

Storytelling has been around since the beginning of human civilisation. When humans were unable to turn their breath into voice, they often communicated stories through pictures drawn on rock. When aural language developed, tales of wisdom were told by the shaman to the rest of the villagers while they sat around a bonfire listening attentively.

However, when language evolved into a written form – apparently the Sumerians were the first to do this – epic tales were then told. Stories such as the Mahabharata were written as poems by various authors who wanted to chronicle the events of their times, which is why the story spans hundreds of years. The same can be said of the Bible and many other lost and hidden scriptures from that era.

Often these storytellers would feature themselves. This has been done plenty of times by great writers such as Alan Moore in Another Suburban Romance.

Grant Morrison, a comic book writer, used himself in the graphic novel Animal Man to express the relationship a writer has with his own character.
Animal Man went through some traumatic experiences to finally realise that he was the creation of a British writer who wanted to kill him off. This sort of realization is similar to that of a human experiencing the trauma of self realisation and the sort of enlightment where one sees the world for what it really is.

In this story, Morrison is looked upon by the character as a sort of god who can manipulate the fabled world at his own will. And this sparks existential questions about whether Animal Man’s choices and decisions are exclusively his own or whether they were the product of a writer for the amusement of his readers. Animal Man goes berserk and soon calms down to see the significance of living in such a world.
And I must say, all this was realised by the protagonist after he popped a couple of peyote beans at the Grand Canyons.

The same writer/character relationship can be seen in the humorous movie Stranger than Fiction with Will Ferrel. It’s worth a watch.

For a storyteller, creating the story is seen as an internal journey, one that explores parts of the self that they never knew existed, which is why some storytellers feature themselves in their creations because they feel that part of their being is in this story.

If you can think of any more storytellers who feature in their own creations, share it with us in the comments section below. Another one that seems obvious is the director Quentin Tarantino who features in all his movies and always seems to get killed off i.e. Reservoir Dogs and From Dusk till Dawn.

Image references:

First Picture: Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. Universal.

Second Picture: Writer Alan Moore who wrote the classic Watchmen.

Third Picture: One of the final covers of Animal Man, when he discovers he nothing but another man's creation. DC/Vertigo.