How to Write a Spirit Story

by Debra Dadd Redalia

From being one of the Editors of Signs of Spirit, I've discovered that many of you have stories to tell, but are not sure how to approach putting them on paper. We want you to write your story in any way you want to write it, but if you want a few suggestions that I've learned from my experience as a professional writer, here they are.

1. Start just by writing whatever comes to you.

I've been a how-to sort of writer for many years. It's pretty easy for me to organize and communicate facts and figures. But to tell a story was something different, and to tell a personal story about myself at first seemed impossible.

Way before I started writing spirit stories, I just started keeping a journal for myself. When something occurred in my life that I could identify as being of spirit, I just wrote down the facts. As I continued to acknowledge these occurances, my awareness and ability as a spirit increased.

By keeping a journal, you begin to have a collection of your own personal stories, become more comfortable with writing, and acknowledge the spirit that you are!

2. Imagine you are telling your story to a friend.

Writing a spirit story is freestyle writing. Just be conversational. Just tell your story as you would to a friend. Imagine a friend is sitting there with you and just tell them your story as you write. Or use a tape recorder. Or actually sit with a friend, turn on the tape recorder, and tell your story. 

Don't "think" about it. spirit exists beyond the computation of the mind. Just be there and communicate.

3. Choose content for your story.

Life happens as one story after another. If you look at any story, it has a beginning, a change or transformation, and an end. 

Look at any book, television show, play, or movie. First they set the scene and introduce you to the characters. Then something occurs and there is some kind of activity. And then all the activity resolves and something has occurred.

When I began to look at my life as cycles of stories--long stories and short stories all weaving in and out of each other--I could pull all these story cycles apart and tell one story at a time. I could see, "Oh, I did this and that happened!"

Just pick a story, whether it was a moment or hours or days or years, and see it's beginning and change and end. Then write that. Write the beginning. Write the transformation that occurred. Write the conclusion.

Here's the most important thing: tell only one story at a time. Certainly part of the richness of well-loved stories are what are called "sub-plots"--extra stories around the edges that interweave with the main story. But there is not really room for sub-plots in stories of this length.

And the other important thing: identify the spirit awareness or ability you are demonstrating with the story, so that your message is clear. For example, "I want to tell the reader about being aware as a spirit outside of my body," or "I want to tell the story of meeting someone I knew from a past life." If you know what you are writing about, the reader will understand.

To start, pick a very simple story.

4. Fill in color with details.

Once you have your basic story outline, look at what happened again and become more aware of the little details. Like what was the weather, what were you wearing, what sounds you heard...just whatever comes to mind. There is, in your mind, a whole picture of this incident in vivid detail. As a spirit, just look at that picture and see what you see. Jot these details down. You don't have to use all of them, but the list will give you some material to choose from.

In particular, recall your feelings as a spirit while this story was taking place and any realizations you had. Remember this story is about your own experience as a spirit.

5. The spirit "conclusion."

The main benefit I see in us sharing these stories is to make known the attributes of spirits, which are not widely known in our society. What we are doing in sharing our stories is demonstrating these attributes in story form. Once I realized this, I've made a point to include some statement of the attribute being demonstrated in the story. Just to make it clear.

I've noticed that inherent in each spirit story, the conclusion is some sort of realization about being a spirit, and it's important to include that realization as it is part of the cycle of the story.

Speaking from the viewpoint of spirit

The most difficult part for me in gaining the ability to tell my own spirit stories was finding the viewpoint from which to write and the language to use. Once I worked through that, it is now easy for me to write my spirit stories, so I want to share with you what I've discovered.

In our culture, the predominant viewpoint is that we are bodies that have minds and are searching for this elusive thing we call "spirit" or "soul". I have read a lot of spiritual writing and most of it refers to this spirit as being something other than the "I" of the writer. For the most part, spiritual writing is written as if the writer were a body, and not a spirit.

Since I'm-a-body is the general agreement in this culture, our language is geared around this viewpoint. And so we say things like "I was talking to myself," and it gets very confusing. In this sentence, what is "I" and what is "myself"? When we say "I am sick," what exactly is sick, the body or the spirit?

The solution to the language problem is very simple. When I write, I use these rules:

• "I" or "me" is always me the spirit. Usually now, to be clear, I will say at least once in a story, "I, as a spirit" to establish that viewpoint.
• If I am expressing something that is happening in my mind, I refer to it as "my mind"--the mind being a collection of thoughts and images collected as in a computer, which can compute themselves as a computer does.
• If something is happening to my body, I refer to it as "my body" as in "My body is sick." I, spirit, am not sick, my body is sick.

By using these simple conventions, a shift took place for me. It became much easier to be able to separate out what was me, the spirit, from what was my mind and what was my body. Though spirit, mind, and body work together as a harmonious whole to create life, they are each quite different. Acknowledging each by name and sorting out their characteristics was an immense aid for understanding both each separately and how they interact together.

Now it's easy for me to write my spirit stories because I can write what is happening with each of these characters "spirit," "mind," and "body."