Don't Skip This Part

Elmore Leonard once wrote: "I try to leave out the parts that people skip." I guess I should have added that Elmore Leonard is a fairly well-known writer and screenwriter, so obviously this quotation pertains to his writing technique. Anyway, that's honestly neither here nor there (or anywhere).


It got me thinking how closely our lives mimic what we read. Now, my life is no "To Kill a Mockingbird" storyline, and I pray to God it's no "Twilight" saga either (although I wouldn't mind having an Edward around), but it's kind of ironic: authors write tales that mirror human existence, and we then read those stories to escape our own being. We wish upon wish and hope upon hope that our lives would be as interesting or less dramatic or as romantic or more thrilling-- anything to make it like what we are reading.


Now, from an author's perspective, they try to make it so you just can not put the book down. They want their readers so engulfed in the lives and stories and shortcomings of the characters that they just HAVE to know what happens next. But here we are, reading this epic tale, engrossed in every last detail, and we probably never stop to think that these narrations that we spend so much time reading really are not that synonymous with real life. Even Leonard says that he leaves out all the parts that people would skip.


But here's the thing: the parts that people would skip when reading a book... THOSE are of what our day-to-day lives consist. THOSE parts are actually realistic. THOSE parts get us from one fight scene to the next. The fillers are what makes our lives flow, connect, and what brings color into our lives.


Maybe I'm a realist, and maybe it is just because I get annoyed with the abundance of alien/vampire/wizard/dinosaur/big scary monster movies that are released, but if you ask me, documentaries and biographies are the best kinds of cinema out there. They give you the real view on a subject-- they let the audience become privy to everything, not just what would make a good scene.


Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Now, I'll venture a guess and say that Isaac Newton was a tad more scientific than Elmore Leonard, but truth be told that the same is true of events. The Chaos Theory even states that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world. Every action we take has a consequence, even if it is just not tying our shoes tight enough in the morning.


So why do we skip out on the parts that take us from one fleeting love affair, or one exciting fight scene, or one life-changing moment, to the next?