I believe that bad storytelling is actually just selfish storytelling. It is instance of a writer or storyteller taking things away from the audience or insufficiently helping the audience along.
In that vein, I have thought of a few principles that storyteller/writers should follow in order to write generously. Please note, these suggestions are specific to people who are writing stories (not devotionals, blog posts, or newsletters). They are also specific to people who are writing for an audience (not journals, diaries, or Facebook statuses for people with no friends).
I simply believe that if you want to write for an audience, you must write for them, not AT them.
1. Give your moments to the audience.
How many times have you been reading a book, watching a TV show or enjoying a movie and a character on the screen spoon fed you information? A great example of this is the TV show Full House. At the point of the episode where someone is supposed to learn a lesson from Danny, certain music will start playing. Danny will go into one of his “dad talks,” and the other household member will listen intently while he doles out wisdom. In Full House, this was part of the genre of the show. It was a family sitcom aimed at younger audiences. . . but if you watch it as an adult, you’re likely to get tired of the dad talk music.
My point is this: If you have done your job right as a writer, your audience will reach the “moral of the story” without you ever having to directly state it.
Last year, I was so frustrated by the movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close when, in one scene, the young boy admits that he knew all along that his quest was hopeless. I felt that, as an audience member, I already realized that he was holding on to the past in an unrealistic way. I didn’t need the character to tell me that was what he was doing. It felt like I was at the end of one of Aesop’s Fables, and my elementary school teacher was telling to work like the ants so I would have food to eat in winter. If the movie had allowed me to make the realization, I believe the effect would have been more powerful.
Even though it would be much easier to write a “dad talk” into every short story, novel, TV show, and movie, in the end you’re shortchanging your audience by taking those powerful moments of realization away.
2. You do the legwork.
Writing is fun. I presume you agree or are at least interested in writing if you’re still reading. However, anyone who has sat down with a story to tell knows that it isn’t always easy. In fact, the vast majority of writing anything worth reading is hard work. In order to be generous with your writing, I believe that you have to do the hard work for your audience. You must build your story in a way that will make sense, be enjoyable, and have big payoffs.
This might sound contradictory to the first point I made, which makes it sound like the audience is responsible for filling in the gaps. Wrong. The audience is responsible for planting the flag on the summit. As a writer, you must pick them up at base camp and carry them to the very top of the mountain, and when you get close enough to the top, you have to put them down and let them think they got there by their own efforts.
In one of my classes, we recently read the screenplay for Back to the Future. It is a great example of the writer doing the legwork, but allowing the reader to plant the flag. The first part of the movie is filled with little pieces of information that will later be explained.
For example, Marty wanders near a van with speakers encouraging people to “Re-Elect Mayor Goldie Wilson!” in 1985. Later, we see that it is Marty who first plants the idea of becoming mayor in Goldie’s head in 1955. After he does this, he never takes credit for it. He never tells anyone else in the movie that he is the one who is responsible for Goldie’s eventual success. The audience knows, and that’s enough. This moment, however, does not work if the writer doesn’t give you the setup earlier in the movie.
It seems like mundane detail work, but payoffs don’t happen without setups. Setups aren’t as fun or easy to write as payoffs, but they give the audience a logical story experience, as opposed to a bunch of payoffs in a row. Imagine that an entire movie comprises the moments when couples get together at the end of romantic comedies. Scene after scene is a couple having a fight where one person convinces the other that they love them, and the scene ends with a kiss. We don’t know the couples; we’re not invested. Granted, those scenes are fun to write, but they aren’t fun to watch unless you’ve been through the rest of the movie.
That’s all I have right now. I may post more of these principles as I see them in the future, but in the meantime, what do you think?
And here’s a question I haven’t really though about very much:
Do these principles apply to types of writing that are not exactly storytelling?
2 comments:
I think the idea of 'doing the legwork' is pretty common throughout writing. In an academic essay, you have to take your audience through all the steps you've (generally) already thought through in order to get them to the same conclusion that you have reached. You're doing it in a different way, of course. Instead of planting small images, you're more often completely explaining why that image has to be there in the grand scheme of your central argument.
Great principles. I have noticed "giving your moments to the audience" apply beyond writing as well. In education, parenting and conversation, it seems best to let others come to their own conclusion (or at least feel like they did). No one wants to be told what to believe. But if someone feels like they "connected the dots," your message has more weight. This doesn't mean you lose your power of influence. You still have the power to set up the paradigm that fits and the allusions that lead to the point you want to make.
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