Dead men talking, when the stories of your past misfortunes become the thriller of the town
Some silly fellow wanted to join the army before he can finish his history thriller, he was documenting about ancient torture devices, a research project which he would later convert into a story but since it was not thrilling enough he had to be in the army and witness a real torture, or go through one himself.
So that he can truly bring out the feel of it, “I have to know exactly what it’s like to be tortured, so that I can covert those heightened moments and emotions into words,” he said, many people who heard him felt sorry for the poor kid. I don’t know how long he is going to last in the field, should he continue thinking this way, “look into my eyes kid,” said an old veteran “I have been into many battles, there is no fun in warfare, I tell you please withdraw your naive intentions and go back home to the comfort of your mansion, many of us you see here barely made it through, it was not by our own strength but by mere luck we survived the ordeal while our friends were lost, let alone telling stories about our experiences, you can tell a story about a war you have experienced, but you should never go to war so that you can have a story to tell.” he said firmly. Don’t do silly things, many of which could jeopardise your life simply to entertain your friends.
What about these people who had no experiences so far? What are they going to put into their pen and paper?
One’s personal life experiences aren’t enough to create a strong story foundation, because life is too short to allow one to go through all the experiences they need to learn from, knowledge can be acquired through other people’s experiences as well.
Frankly I have never been a soldier myself, but I live near the barracks, so I have an idea of what it’s like to be under brutal command, I will give a terrific account so that when people happen to read through my journal, they will think I am an ex-marine.
I can only talk of the things I have seen and heard over the barbed wire, a real lieutenant would not be excited enough as I am to talk about things he went through in the military parade, especially the excruciating workload and constant punishments even for very small mistakes, let alone find time to write a book about that. So am here, allow me to say explain how I sneaked through the barbed wire and caught few glimpses of the training inside the camp. An eyewitness testimony is always more sensible than claims from the mouth of the one who took part in the exact scenario or everything.
Limitations of personal experiences.
Personal experiences are not enough to rely solely on in order to produce a written account, when your perfectly accurate story of your experience is over what else do you have left? It might means you need to go back outside, experience a different type of adventure before you can continue writing.
It’s very difficult for military commanders to give details of the combat experiences in their stories, some memories are so fresh and so gruesome that if they do, it might bring them to tears, no wonder the only person who can give a very terrific military account is a lieutenant who went on only one mission and experienced very little upheaval during his career, he therefore takes the stories of other combatants and tell them as if they were his own. This is the best story teller, when his comrades were actually being torn to pieces by shell fragments, he only heard rumours that the battalion to the front had received heavy shelling while his squad got no direct confrontation.
