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Weak beer, cold pizza, watered down movies. Yech!
Key takeaways:
Success depends on pleasing your audience, masterfully
- Powerful stories please the audience
- Creating a pleasing story is like creating architecture for a building
- A compelling plot and compelling characters are essential
- Second stories and subplots can sap all the power from a story — handle with care
- Character development at the front can sap the story of all power
I drank a weak soft drink yesterday that was so watered down it was almost undrinkable. I couldn’t believe I paid for it. I couldn’t believe I drank it all. Yech! Weak beer. Cold pizza. Weak soft drinks. And then there are weak, watered down movies. Yech!
There are a lot of ways to water down a story. I’m not so much a structuralist as an architect. There are certain things in a story that audiences want to see, so you oblige them if you want to be successful.
Most of all they want the writer to stick to the story like glue, and they want them to be unique and have surprises in them and have some interesting views.
Creating a story is like designing a building
In any architecture, most rooms are simply a box. It’s the placement and styling that matters. Architecture. Most buildings can be reconfigured for hundreds of other purposes, like stores, clinics, restaurants, and apartments.
Many huge shopping malls today are being converted to apartments because people want quick in and out strip malls, of which the epitome is shopping online. Open the computer, shop, close the computer. To please people, stories can also be reconfigured into something pleasing.
Most story locations and time periods can be reset anywhere because they are mostly about the human condition and much less about place. They can be converted to screenplays, plays, and novels without much difficulty. If the architecture is pleasing, audiences like them in any form. For example, the children’s Christmas tale book, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, worked very well in a movie with Jim Carrey as the Grinch.
It’s essential to make the story interesting and compelling on page 1, and continue to the end. I like to reveal the plot on page 1, or soon after. I will only read or watch 10% of a book or movie without being drawn forward by the plot. I have to know what the story is about.
It isn’t a law that the plot must come into focus on page 30 in a screenplay or play, or relatively the same in a novel. The plot is an influence on all pages from beginning to end. If I don’t find the story compelling — that is, the plot is not pulling me forward — I simply stop watching or reading.
I have walked out of movie theaters after half an hour. I regularly stop reading books at around page fifty if the plot isn’t evident and moving forward. If it’s not interesting, I’m done. I don’t care if the last 10% is supposed to be gold, I won’t sit there disinterested because the writer couldn’t make it interesting, and makes me wade through it.
Characters must be compelling
Good characterization is vital and characters are the first element in writing a story. Compelling characters are those who we can relate to, or hate, are strongly motivated and the audience either knows their motivation, or feels it through the strength of their dialogue and actions. Lacking this, there is no story.
Compelling characters who clash drive the plot and character actions. This creates the drama. Conflict is the heart of drama. No conflict, no plot, no interest. So the protagonist (good guy) wants one thing, and the antagonist (bad guy or opposing person or situation) wants another. Conflict results. Emotions and actions rise in intensity.
As the characters push forward through the story the conflict becomes more dramatic, creating a dramatic arc of increasing tension. Stories that lack increasing tension usually sag in the middle and the audience loses interest. So character actions from one scene to the next usually get bigger. If not, there’s usually a weak motivation problem.
How to reduce your raging storm to a slow sprinkle
Two things get in the way of this dramatic arc. One is flashbacks. Sometimes there is a secret that needs revealed through a flashback, so it has to be there. But generally important things from the past can be revealed through conflict driven dialogue. The past doesn’t have to literally jump into the present. And then there’s the second story or subplot.
Second stories and subplots can ruin a story
It may be tempting to demonstrate writing skill by adding subplots and second stories to a story. A second story is like the second story of a house. It can be great if the story involves family children. But it might need to be sealed up like when the children are gone.
Second stories are simply stories about other characters that are there because readers or viewers are interested in their lives. Those other characters are compelling. But should they be used?
Second stories can get in the way of a dramatic arc, making the story puny. They work well in series television with a huge set of characters, each of which are very interesting to the audience. Entire episodes can be written about them. But in single stories like novels, movies, and plays that stand on their own (no essential plot that unites the entire series, if there is one), second stories can simply make the story very weak.
I talk to writers who can’t understand why their books don’t sell. They insist on putting all of their character development back story, that they have worked very hard to create, at the front of the book. Nooooooooooooooooo.
I try to help them understand that most people aren’t interested in all that — audiences want to get right into the plot of the book. You can show important things about the characters and what they want in the opening. You can reveal important things about your character in conflict situations throughout the story. But those writers are determined to continue doing it the same way. This is one reason I refuse to work with nearly all writers. That and the fact that most of them quit.
Subplots are usually little stories involving other characters, with dramatic arcs of their own that at the climax of the main story help make the victory possible.
Subplots can add a lot of interest unless they sap the power of the main plot. When a story isn’t moving forward, the story dramatic arc isn’t building, so it loses intensity and interest.
We see subplots a lot in TV series. There often is a large cast, and we develop interest in many characters and their lives. But there is generally a theme involved for the entire cast, so the overall theme is developed. For example, in a recent The Good Doctor, each character had, at some point in their lives, experienced a devastating loss that was affecting their lives and abilities. Themes are central to many characters in stories like The Good Doctor, and New Amsterdam.
In the TV series Manifest, and Charmed, I find that the frequent cuts to subplots detracts from the power of the story. They're still interesting, and are used to affect the ending or series arc, but they would be more powerful if they let the main story arc build.
Powerful writing keeps the focus on the main plot. It holds audience interest and creates an excellent story arc. The energy is drained away when the focus is on the past, character past, excessive description, character development, or plots or side stories that are irrelevant to the main plot.
It may seem to be more sophisticated writing to put in subplots and second stories, but the most engaging and powerful stories are the ones that have no incidentals getting in the way of the principal drama. No flashbacks, subplots, no second stories. But that's not a rule. Subplots work and I do write them, as do an occasional flashback. To be sure, there are those who love to pick up a doorstop book and immerse themselves in endless description, characterization, subplots, side stories, etc. Enjoy your writng.
- Dorian
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