Dispatch from the Storyfront #7

Twenty years ago, I was a young woman boarding a plane out of Portland, Oregon, headed to Los Angeles. I’d just been dealt with the most catastrophic emotional blow of my life to date, and I was on my way to my sister’s house for safety and recovery.

Heartbreak. Devastation. I was barely holding it together.

My hands shook. My eyes swam with tears I was afraid to let fall because I knew the moment one broke loose, I would completely unravel in public. Strangers stepped around me cautiously. Few made eye contact as I walked rigidly through the airport, shoulders tight, jaw clenched. I knew if I could just hold it in until I got to LA, I could fall apart in the safety of my sister’s apartment. I could barely see where I was walking, my vision half saltwater and half stomach-aching loss.

The sheer will required to stay upright and put one foot in front of the other was apparently visible to strangers, mostly kind-hearted people who seemed to sense that I was very close to crumpling and that the kindest thing they could do for me was NOT ask if I was okay, or if I needed a hug. It was fairly obvious, I assume, that any break in the fortification would unleash whatever composure I was clinging to. If you’ve ever seen a fragile person holding it together with a handful of barbiturates, a box of tissue, and a lifted chin, you know the drill: do not open the door to the bottoming out until there is a clear, safe place to do so.

I took my aisle seat, staring straight ahead, not speaking to anyone or making eye contact, clenching my teeth hard enough to trigger a migraine. A man stopped, looked at the row, looked at me, looked at his window seat, then apologized softly as he squeezed past to get to his chair. I noticed faded jeans, an overshirt, and dark hair going gray at the sides. He was perhaps in his late forties. I was twenty-six.

Even though everyone else seemed to get the idea to part like water around my expression, he looked right at me. I breathed through my nose, jawline tight, begging through watery eyes for him NOT to talk to me. Not to ask. Not to open that door. Not on a plane where I would not be able to stop the grief from pouring out once it started.

He seemed to get the drift and took his seat. He buckled in. The flight attendant made her speech. No one showed up to take the middle seat. We took off, and as the life I was leaving behind was torn away by g-force, I saw him watching me. I gripped the armrests with white knuckles, willing the heartbreak to stay in Portland.

But the energy eventually began to drain from me, and the tears started falling down my cheeks, dripping onto my chest. I didn’t try to wipe them away for fear the movement would draw attention.

Then a tissue appeared in my blurry vision.

A clump of Kleenex, actually, offered silently from the direction of the man in the window seat. I took it without looking at him, still not sure I could handle eye contact, and cleaned myself up.

After the seatbelt light went off, I felt brave enough to glance over. He was reading a book but seemed to sense the movement and looked up at me with large, compassionate brown eyes. I nodded a thank you, unable to muster a smile or words, then looked straight ahead again, afraid he would require me to speak or hold eye contact.

Unexpectedly the tears started again, and I was embarrassed that I couldn’t stop them. His seatbelt clicked. I felt him move off to my left, then resettle in the middle seat, the chair beside me.

An open palm appeared on my left armrest.

I swallowed, chin quivering, then laid my hand in his.

And I wept.

I couldn’t look at him. I was so ashamed about falling apart on a stranger. His fingers closed around mine and held that little piece of me while allowing me what dignity could be spared at fourteen thousand feet. The flight attendant brought us both water and extra tissue. I don’t remember what he said to her, but he seemed to buffer the others a little so I wasn’t required to explain myself or tend to their discomfort.

It was only a short flight. A couple of hours that felt like a decade.

When I was at last drained, wrung out, I finally really looked at him. We didn’t speak. He didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t ask for his hand back, though I’m sure it was sweaty and covered in tears. At length I released him and whispered, “Thank you. I’ll be okay. I promise.”

When we landed, he waited for me to disembark. We didn’t exchange names. We didn’t speak beyond that. He followed me to baggage claim where my sister was already waiting. She rushed forward and pulled me into a huge hug. “You’re here! You’re okay!” There was a sudden rush of energy, the commotion of bags and chaotic crowds. My eyes were swollen. My head pounded. Relief washed over me like a king tide, and I held my sister like a lifesaver in deep water, shaking and gasping for air.

And he was gone before I could introduce him to her or give him a proper thank you. He simply evaporated into the crowd, and I was left with his warm smile and the memory of slightly callused fingers around mine.

This is a true story.

What it illustrates, for me, is the humanizing effect of strangers at their greatest capacity to be humane to one another. Unspoken kindness. Genuine compassion. The ability to read a situation and not impress a will upon the vulnerable or ask anything in return for that kindness. A simple offering of tissue, then later an open palm. No questions. No obligation. Just human observation, presence, and empathy.

Twenty years later, I remember it.

In storytelling we spend a lot of time talking about how to make characters relatable, sympathetic, likable, redeemable, interesting, complex. We have whole systems and beat sheets and formulas designed to tell us where a character should prove their humanity so an audience will connect with them.

In screenwriting they call one version of this the “save the cat” moment: an act meant to demonstrate that a character is worth rooting for. I could wax on for hours about my dislike of the mechanical use of that trope in modern storytelling, especially cinema and television. No, it does not need to happen at the 18–22-minute mark in a film. It only needs to happen if the plot and the character require it.

Humanity isn’t a plot beat.

That man did not hand me Kleenex because the story required the audience to like him before Act Two. He responded because the moment required something from him, he noticed what a grieving woman needed, and whatever collection of experiences had made him the man sitting beside me that day shaped how he chose to answer.

Maybe he was a father to a young woman my age. Maybe he had been in a similar situation before. Maybe he had once been the person barely holding it together in public. Maybe he was simply unusually observant and compassionate. I will never know.

What I do know is that his humanity showed up in action.

When heavy character evolution is happening, these human connections may happen more frequently. When a character is de-evolving on a downward curve, they may happen less, if ever at all. These moments are like character RPMs: you shift when the engine makes the noise and not before. The actions also have to be proportionate to the situation and to the growth trajectory of the characters in play.

Imagine how that same flight would have unfolded if a rough, domineering grandma had sat beside me and loudly demanded to know why I was so upset. Or if a child had innocently and curiously asked why I was so sad. Or if a bawdy young partier had claimed the middle seat, ordered extra alcohol, and tried to get me drunk to solve my ails.

None of those people would necessarily be less human. They would simply bring a different humanity into the scene, and the scene would change because of it.

The loud grandma might genuinely believe she was helping. The child could be innocent and devastating. The partier might honestly believe tequila fixes heartbreak. Their responses would tell us something about them because humanizing a character does not mean making the character kind.

It means making their behavior recognizably human.

That’s where I think the mechanical “save the cat” approach can fail us. If we decide in advance that a character needs an approved act of kindness at an approved point in the story, we can end up demonstrating the writer’s intention rather than revealing the character.

Watch the character instead.

Listen to what the scene is asking of them. Understand what one person needs in that moment, then allow every other character present to respond according to who THEY are. One may fill the need. Another may misunderstand it. Someone else may exploit it. A character may desperately want to help and have absolutely no idea how.

All of those responses can be human.

Playing that airplane scenario back in my mind, the way it actually happened is forever cemented as the most beautiful possible ending to a catastrophically traumatic day. When I think back to that time in my life, I don’t always dwell on the way the day started. I remember the roughness of a stranger’s gentle hand, and I send a moment of thanks into the universe that he was the one who got that window seat and made the flight bearable before my life pivoted in a completely different direction.

Twenty years later, I don’t remember his name. I don’t know where he was going, what he did for a living, whether he had children, or what happened to him after he disappeared into that Los Angeles crowd.

I remember the callouses on his hand and the weight of his fingers.

That’s character.

We don’t always remember what someone said. We remember what they did when another human being needed something from them. And sometimes we remember what they failed to do, what they misunderstood, what they couldn’t bring themselves to offer, or what they chose to take instead.

Give your characters those moments, not because the screenplay says it’s time to save the cat, but because you’ve listened closely enough to know who they are when another person needs them.

And don’t only give those moments to your heroes… let everyone be human.

You’ll know you’ve done it well when your readers can see some piece of humanity in themselves by witnessing the humanity in the character. While you were reading my story, did you connect with my struggle to hold it together? With the gentleman’s compassionate willingness to be an anchor? Did you see the humanness on both sides?

Bring that to your page. Bring it to your performance. Bring it to your music, the chords of heartbreak and the lullabies of soothing. Bring it to your worlds, your craft, and your daily living. Bring it home, because we are humans first and storytellers second, and the stories I hope we want to tell are the ones where the complicated, imperfect, sometimes breathtaking parts of humanity are allowed to shine.

Twenty years from now, your reader may not remember every plot point.

But they might remember a gentle, calloused hand.

May the Muses keep you sparked.

See you in the Storyverse.

-Athena