a book of shots | tbn one shot collection

THE PLOT

How does a story come to be?

Every story in the world began somewhere. Every plot was constructed by ideas and connections, or so I presume, as such was the case with this very world. My world. It was a part of me before I was even truly present.

So then, how does a story come to life?

Characters who walk, who breathe, who laugh, who grieve, who hold onto hope for a future that slips through fingers, for it was never quite theirs to hold onto. It could be argued that this phenomenon is a result of the imagination, yet the imagination only contributes so much. If lives were never lived, the imagination would have nothing to offer, other than a vague sense that these characters about which you immerse yourself in have something they wish to achieve.

I have lived, yet not as others have. My life has thus far been short, and removed. I have helplessly watched as the characters of this world struggled to achieve the things they wanted, yearning to dip myself into their narrative and shape it, as though it were clay, malleable and mine to control.

... I apologize for the late introduction. I am The Plot, or so I've been named. I am the consciousness of this story, these books, the characters and their grievances. The further the story progressed, the more I became present. The more I have weighed on the aftermath of both decisions and situations.

It is perhaps my fault that the story did not end with Finch and Lane, as it once could have been. She once told the boy that their story was never supposed to have continued after the strike was won, and so it was. Yet the possibility of other possibilities were drawn, and I was as powerless as all the rest when yet more storylines were written into fruition.

I was powerless.

I no longer am.

Every possibility has a possibility, and yet another possibility after that. Possibilities upon possibilities, and I see them all. I have seen happy endings and bitter tragedies. I have lived them all. Yet I have been fractured by time and moments, and am no longer able to tell which story I once was, and who I would've ended up being. It is possible my tragedies and happy endings have mixed, or perhaps this was the way it was supposed to be all along, for the sole writer of this memoir is not I.

I live in a web of confusion. Storylines crowd my mind. It is all I know. For this reason, I have decided to place them separate from the others, the true, one by one. Possibilities upon possibilities, I lay them here.

They will now be yours to experience.