No one specifically taught me about story currents.

I sat on a rock beside the Broad River in Ledges Whitewater River Park, outside Weaverville, NC, and after watching the currents swirling for a couple weeks, I understood that this image perfectly reflected what I navigated through in a story or in a real-life situation.

That said, other writers think about the same elements differently, and I wouldn’t have developed mine without learning theirs and trying it out. Professor Josh Harmon, one of my writing professors at Vassar College, taught these same elements as “supporting forces” (i.e. whatever helps the character internally or externally) and “opposing forces” (i.e. whatever hinders the character internally or externally) from John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, a classic writing workshop text.

So, it’s part of my creative lineage twice over, but I find this problematic for a couple reasons.

First and foremost, this binary mentality is based on a foundational lens of: “You’re either with us or against us.” This is not a helpful lens. In fact, it’s often quite harmful, so there’s no need to add any more fuel to that fire, even in fiction.  

“Supporting forces” and “opposing forces” imply that there are only forces at play that have a will of their own, intentionally and intelligently deciding to support the main character on their journey or intentionally and intelligently plotting to drag them back. Very rarely are the forces working so directly on the situation. There’s usually much more nuance.

And importantly for a writer, this lens is limiting. It doesn’t successfully capture the complexity of real life, especially in my experience. Dividing all forces into “supporting” and “opposing” reduces the world—real or fictional—into something smaller and uglier than it is. Thinking about it that way stops you from keeping an open mind when you’re developing the story and all the elements within it.  

That’s why I prefer “story currents,” such as “helping currents,” “honing currents,” and “eddies.” Just having a third option breaks you out of the false binary.