When Donald Miller started collaborating with some film makers to create a film about his life, he discovered that it was necessary to fictionalise some elements in order to make his life seem more interesting, and that got him thinking about how he could re-create his own real-life story. Don’s interactions with the film makers and the subsequent changes he made to his own life are described in his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.
The screenwriter Robert McKee has written a book called Story, and he gives seminars explaining the ingredients of good screenwriting. Don attended one of the seminars and discovered that the essence of a good story is “a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it”. He decided to make his own story more interesting by hiking the Inca Trail in Peru, going for a long kayak trip in British Columbia, cycling across the US, and meeting his estranged father.
Don writes in a whimsical and immensely entertaining manner. Interestingly enough, although I enjoyed reading each of the stories about things that Don had done to make his life story more interesting, I was left with the impression that the book would still have been just as entertaining without any of them. Nonetheless, it is a great book, and it has inspired me to find ways of making my own life a more interesting story.