The Shapes of Stories, Part 1: The Arc We Crave
On Transformation, Grief, and the Stories That Give Our Pain a Purpose
Most people think it was the spider bite.
Granted, the radioactive spider that bit Peter Parker did give him super speed, enhanced senses, and the ability to climb walls. A pretty big day in a young man’s life, to be sure.
But that wasn’t when he became Spider-Man.
At first, he didn’t do much with his new powers—at least not much that mattered. He used them for spectacle, for self-interest, for a taste of something bigger than his ordinary life. The identity came later—after the rupture. After the death of his uncle, a death he could have easily prevented with his newfound powers.
That was the rupture. The moment after which nothing could be the same.
Peter Parker didn’t become a hero because he got bitten. He became a hero because he needed the pain to mean something. He needed the loss to lead somewhere. He had to rewrite the story so that the trauma had a purpose.
(NB: This desire is the heart of any growth narrative, as we saw in my first series, A Love Supreme: the ache for meaning in the aftermath.)
That’s what makes the Spider-Man origin story so enduring. It isn’t just about superpowers—it’s about transformation through grief. And we know that shape. We all reach for it instinctively when bad things happen.
There’s a reason Spidey’s origin story has been told and retold across three cinematic reboots (and counting). We recognize the pattern: the call, the rupture, the reckoning, the return. The story feels familiar because we want chaos to assemble into something meaningful. We want pain to transform us. We want the mess to resolve into purpose.
The superhero origin story gives us a blueprint for transformation:
A disruption.
A struggle.
A return—with a purpose larger than ourselves.
We even have the syntax for it:
If not for _________, I never would have __________.
This framing device isn’t just a cinematic trick. It’s a narrative structure that has worked its way into how we think and talk about real life: pain has to have meaning.
Superpowered Metaphors
For me, what makes so many Marvel origin stories resonate isn’t just the action, the gadgets, or the clever banter—it’s that the characters’ superpowers almost always stand in for something deeper. The transformation from zero to hero is symbolic.
Stan Lee, co-creator of Spider-Man and dozens of other iconic characters, often said that what made Peter Parker work was that he had problems. He was anxious, broke, insecure. He worried about money. He worried about girls. He worried about his family. He had acne.
So, the spider bite wasn’t the real transformation—it was the metaphor. The real origin was emotional: grief, guilt, responsibility.
Other heroes follow similar arcs. The X-Men’s powers arrive unbidden, often with pain and confusion. Their mutation is alienation, identity, marginalization—made visible. Bruce Banner becomes the Hulk through unchecked rage. Tony Stark becomes Iron Man through trauma and captivity. These are not just fantasy powers. They’re emotional metaphors—dramatized responses to rupture.
Legendary comics writer Grant Morrison once described superheroes as “fairy tales for grown-ups.” In Supergods, he argues that superhero narratives work because they ritualize transformation. They give symbolic shape to moments when we lose control, and help us imagine what it would look like to emerge changed.
These stories offer more than escapism: they give us a form, and they let us turn fracture into meaning.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Personal Statement
The narrative logic of this pattern—the incident, the transformation, the redemptive turn—doesn’t just shape comics and movies. It shows up everywhere: memoirs, TED Talks, advertising, even political campaigns.
One of my major influences is the legendary journalist and writing teacher Roy Peter Clark, who teaches that every good story has a moment “after which nothing can be the same.” He calls it the inciting incident—the break that sets the story in motion. I use this when I work with students on personal statements. I ask them: Where does your story turn? What’s the moment that changed the trajectory?
Most of the time, they find it. Sometimes it’s being cut from a team, or losing a parent, or moving to a new country. Sometimes it’s a quiet realization—a shift in perspective. The moment itself doesn’t have to be heroic. It doesn’t even have to be a “moment.” But the story we build around it—that’s where the power lives. That pivot point in the narrative explains (and justifies) what comes next.
But this desire to find a turning point is more than a mere writing tool. It’s a cultural reflex.
We see it in narrative journalism all the time—especially in character-driven profiles or longform features. The story almost always centers on some rupture: a diagnosis, an arrest, a death, a loss. What follows is framed as a journey. A struggle. A return. It’s a storytelling shape borrowed from myth—but now applied to real people, real events, real grief.
Sometimes, this shape clarifies. It gives us access to unfamiliar experiences. But other times, it simplifies. It pressures real life into a formula it may not actually follow.
Writers and critics have begun to point out the limitations of this redemptive arc—especially in stories about marginalized people. Too often, real trauma is only validated when it produces growth. Victimhood must lead to resilience. Pain must produce purpose.
If not for ________, I never would have ________.
It’s what literary critic Parul Sehgal describes as “the trauma plot,” these redemptive structures often become a kind of tyranny:
Trauma has become synonymous with backstory, but the tyranny of backstory is itself a relatively recent phenomenon—one that, like any successful convention, has a way of skirting our notice.
In other words, the redemptive arc we so instinctively reach for isn’t just a natural response to pain, it’s a cultural habit, a narrative convention, that we may not even realize we’ve internalized. The moment of rupture becomes obligatory, and the growth that follows becomes expected.
The narrative of “overcoming” a traumatic backstory isn’t necessarily wrong, but its ubiquity should give us cause to pause, because when every story must begin with pain and end with purpose, what happens to the stories that don’t cooperate? What happens to lives that are still unresolved, nonlinear, fragmented? What happens when the backstory doesn’t explain—or redeem—what follows?
As Roy Peter Clark himself has acknowledged, narrative is powerful, but it’s not neutral. The shapes we reach for form what we see—and dictate what we leave out.
Not the End. Not Yet.
We all want to believe that our struggles lead somewhere, mean something. We want to—need to—believe that the pain we go through isn’t just random, but a part of something bigger than ourselves.
But what if that story doesn’t arrive on time? What if the lesson never appears? What if the shape we’ve been promised doesn’t fit the life we’re actually living?
In the next part of this series, we’ll look at the stories we inherit—scripts we never chose, but often follow anyway. We’ll think about stories that tell us who we’re supposed to be, how transformation should look, and what counts as a “worthy” arc.
And after that, we’ll ask a harder question:
What does it mean to rewrite the story altogether?
Because sometimes, the most powerful act isn’t telling your story, it’s revising the one you’ve been handed.