Today's #flashfiction #WhoBuiltTheFourthWall

“You're a stinker.”

Pepe le pew* #quote

       Today I sent the first three chapters of my book to my friend CJ for his opinion. This is a bit of a moment of truth, as he will be the first of several people I will bounce the book's physical form off of to see if the idea is taking form, see if the angle I came up with works. If enough people say nay I think I'll scrap the book(keep a copy of what I have so far of course) and go onto something else or go with a different angle. But with the practice from it and the blog I will be able to come up with something else much more efficiently anyway, already have some things lined up already.

       Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Who Built The Fourth Wall

      In writing there's something called the fourth wall. Some of you may know this term. It's the barrier between the audience and the characters, and when the character addresses the audience and admits they are in a story they are breaking the fourth wall.

      But the real question is, who built the fourth wall?

      We couldn't know the person's name, man or woman, it must have been one of the first storytellers. One of the first people that sat down all those years when language first sprung into being in the ancient times and they gathered around campfires or in caves to tell stories.

       The first person who came up with some characters, or maybe just one, they just had to be fictional, and set them on some fictitious journey. Back then they may have been hunters that story teller wanted to exist just so he could possibly be them. Maybe a hero he wished would exist in a time of crisis.

        And when this story came to be he had to have created such a scenario so emotionally engaging that the readers could feel like they were actually observing characters in some way. Back then they really didn't have walls. But a forth wall was created. A wall of the imagination that the audience stood behind and watched the characters behind and the storyteller let it all unfold. Whatever hunters and heroes he created or whatever figments of his imagination.

      This storyteller built that wall and we keep building that wall today, and breaking it down, when we need to. Maybe just for our characters to do a quick joke to the camera. Well, I bust that wall down a lot in mine.