There are very few genuinely good stories. I would define a 'genuinely good story' to be one that no other story on Earth is already strictly superior to. Strictly superior is defined as being better in every way. Plenty of stories are superior in the sense that they are overall better stories, but to be defeated by something that is strictly superior to you means you added nothing to the conversation, the equation, of story-making. All of it has already been covered by something that was better than you. There was no point to you even opening your mouth.
Almost every story ever written has another story that stands in a strictly superior position to it. There are millions of stories out there, as the Count of Monte Cristo once mentioned, but the more books he read, the more he realized everything of value was contained in just ten or so Great Books. He then instructed his 'pupil' in prison to not waste his time reading other works and to concentrate on these all important ten. If he still had free time, it was better to read the 'strictly superior ten' again than waste his time reading inferior, derivative, or just poorly thought out products.
However, there are two factors that help people write stories that are worth reading even if they are inferior in every way -- the arrow of time and the love of novelty. Sometimes we find ourselves watching or reading a story we realize is strictly inferior to something we've already seen or read, and we just plow on regardless, because we'd rather read a new, inferior version than crack out the old, superior one. The arrow of time is a little more rewarding, it means that a story by Homer, for instance, can't mention the hero getting out a gun or jumping into a jet to mow down his enemies. The arrow of time creates new situations for our characters to be facing which means no one has really covered the issue before. This is even more accurate when stories are cast in the 'present' which can have so much change from just a few years ago that there's a blank slate for all story tellers to compete in equally.
This second tier of stories can be saved by its novelty and new conceptual space, but it cannot succeed without a firm grasp of the basics of good story telling. In short, a story must also be charming, it must not be repulsive, to people's emotions before it can ever engage their intellect/curiosity.
Here is a list, thrown together at random, of what every story must do, and must not do, to remain at least good:
1. The story's main characters must be good people. People you like. People you wouldn't mind hanging out with or talking to. This is because story characters become the audience's friends, and we spend hours with them just like real people. If we cannot stand the main characters because they are too annoying, despicable, or idiotic, how can we ever spend enough time with them to reach the end of the story? To merit paying such extraordinary attention to these fictional characters, they must proportionally be extraordinarily cool, extraordinarily likable characters. After all, we don't spend hours or days of our lives tracking every last motion, thought, or word out of some stranger's mouth, in the hopes of it being interesting.
2. The main characters must get along. The relationships between the cast must be amicable, not poisonous. It is too painful to watch people you care about fighting or not getting along. It is also nearly impossible to find someone good or likable who hurts those around him, or pays no consideration for the feelings of others. When the entire party is full of feuding, petty fights, jealousies, lies, deceits, treacheries, ego clashes, and so on, the audience is left with a bitter taste in their mouth and are repulsed. Alternatively, when the party is marked by its exceptional loyalty, trust, love, warmth, cooperation, enjoyment, fun, carefree attitude, affirmation, etc, we are left warm and somehow feel a part of the community the story has built. If the main characters don't get along, we are either hurt in proportion to how much we like them and wish they would get along, or disgusted with how unlikable the characters must be to not get along. There is virtually no reason we should ever want to see the party at odds with itself.
Plenty of groups are capable of having vastly different personalities or ideals while still getting along. This is done via an exchange of mutual respect and trust with other members of the party, despite any differences. It is common for people to tease each other based on differences that ultimately 'don't matter,' while believing in them about things that do. A good story can tell the difference between a lack of unity and a lack of harmony.
3. The villains of the story should be good people. If they aren't outright good guys, they should at least possess vast reserves of merit and virtue, which allows them to be formidable foes that are a pleasure to observe. For the same reason no one can be bothered to watch a story about losers you would hate in real life, no story can afford to spend 1/2 or even 1/3 of its time focusing on unlikable, despicable, repulsive enemies. Ultimately they are characters too and the audience is forced to observe their words, thoughts, and deeds. If they can find nothing of worth in any of them, you have thrown away some enormous portion of the story to a stinking swamp of pain readers must hold their noses while walking through to get back to the heroes each time. Furthermore, it is unreasonable that repulsive, despicable villains with no redeeming virtues could pose a serious threat or competition with the heroes. This drags the heroes down to the level of the villains and leaves them with nothing heroic they can do. The villains, in essence, defeat themselves before the heroes get to do anything.
A clear right and wrong is not necessary to distinguish heroes from villains. All you need is for people to love the heroes, right or wrong, for who they are. This is done by referencing rules #1 and #2. If the heroes are good people who get along with each other, the reader/viewer will implicitly be rooting for them simply because they can't stand the thought of our heroes becoming unhappy and suffering from defeat.
4. The villains of a story should get along with each other. Nothing is more pathetic than a group of villains turning on each other before the hero even arrives. Another major mistake is having heroes win, not due to their ability, but due to the villain's inability. This would be some miraculous civil war or treachery that comes about at the very end which weakens the villain just in time enough to be defeated by the much weaker heroes. Everyone is left wondering why the villains can't rally any dedicated supporters together, when even Stalin and Mao found enough loyal followers to pursue the evilist agendas imaginable. There is no sink of human depravity sufficient to stop a band of villains from being true to each other, implacable in devotion, and skilled in execution. Also, it is impossible to flesh out someone's character except through their relationships with others. Someone who has bad relations with everyone else is therefore incapable of even displaying who he or she is. With no one to confide in or trust, they simply float like amorphous blobs through the story, incapable of defining themselves by not interacting, like neutrinos, with the rest of the universe. Someone has to believe in and listen to them, at least enough so that they can talk about their various schemes. Villains are worthless without a party, the same as heroes.
5. If at all possible, the story should be happy. Not just with the ending, which is too late to correct all the pain that has come before it. The entire story should be as upbeat as possible. This is because the world is often very sad, and no one wants to escape to an even more hellish fantasy. We seek out stories to be enlightened, entertained, or understood. None of this can happen when bad things outweigh the good. We don't want characters we have grown to like to break up, we don't want them to die (especially meaningless or too short deaths), we don't want heroes to lose, we don't want whatever horrible misfortune the authors are imagining for them. Torturing a fictional character, to the viewer or reader, is the same as torturing a real person -- in fact, we've grown to empathize with the fictional character far more than any Rwandan or Haitian we hear about in the news. Pleasing them is the same as pleasing us. We are happy for them. So let them be happy as much as possible.
6. A character's choices must matter. A story is driven by the character's decisions, and their consequences. If a character has no decisions or choices, because they are too weak to affect anything outside of themselves, there is no story. Likewise, if a character is so powerful that he can get away with any decision, no matter how stupid or bad, there is again no story. Decisions must matter. There must be a clear causal, and moral, connection between what someone does and what then happens, both to the character and the world he changed. If someone makes a bad decision, bad consequences should result -- no miraculous luck should deliver him from his mistake. If someone makes a good decision, he should be rewarded. He shouldn't be criticized or hated by everyone else. The world should not become worse as a result. Good things should flow from it in time. If he had to choose between two opposing goods, he cannot then have both after making his choice, he must gain one and lose the other. His choice must matter.
A character MUST MAKE CHOICES for a story to continue. Any situation where the character is indecisive and dithering, is a story that is going nowhere and producing nothing. A romance where one guy can't choose between two girls, or one girl can't choose between two guys, is nothing short of agonizing. Everyone has to wait until the stupid character makes up his damn mind, so we can finally see the consequences of his actions. Until then, nothing happens, because there are no consequences, because nothing ever changes.
7. Anything extraneous to the story should not be in the story. Sentence structure gives a good hint to good story telling. In English, it is possible to mark out an extraneous phrase by bracketing it in commas. For instance, a sentence could read:
"Jack drove his truck, which is blue, to the market."
The fundamental meaning of the sentence is not changed by anything between the commas. Everything of import was comprehended in the 'real sentence,' not the useless aside. The same is true in story telling. Everything that happens should be essential to the functioning of the rest of the story. It should have some important, causal relationship with the rest of the story. It should change the flow of the world. Any situation in a story that arises out of nothing, then disappears back into nothingness, should just be left out entirely. Any character that has no relation to the other characters in the story, or doesn't have a strong relationship to the other characters, should just be eliminated entirely. There is no point to disrupting a story's flow with some other, unrelated story. There is also no point to mentioning scenes in a story that are of so little consequence that they produced no change to any character or any relationship between characters.
An example of good story telling that keeps the plot moving is to have some sort of 'collect me' system. This way there is measurable progress towards a determined goal. If there are 7 bosses to an evil organization, you know you've made progress each time you take one down. If there are 7 shards to a magic jewel, you know you've accomplished something by finding one. But there can be no alteration, no progress, in an open-ended story that promises an endless variety of villains or treasures, all equally meaningless, that our heroes could potentially confront and defeat forever. Virtually all American story lines have this critical flaw, because they are cops, or lawyers, or doctors, who ceaselessly confront an endless series of criminals, cases, and diseases that can never be overcome no matter how many years the story extends. Open ended stories are horrible because after the episode is over, no one can tell where it falls in the timeline, and no one would know any more or less about the characters or the world they live in, than if the story had never been told.
Mental space is a limited resource. To create maximum information density, which is equal to maximum pleasure to those beholding the information, there must be meaning and meat to every single line. No one should have to wait for a story to reach its point. We all have better things to do with our lives.
8. A story must make sense. This requires internal consistency, and external consistency -- nothing should be outside the region of believability for an interested observer. Fans are willing to extend every benefit of a doubt to their heroes, but when they make inexplicable decisions never before shown as part of their character, or if ridiculous events keep happening that far exceed credibility, or the very chains of causality seem to be broken by authorial forces intervening at every turn, no story can survive. For instance, people who are in love should not suddenly be out of love. People who believe in justice should not suddenly go eat a puppy to display their villainy. People who got trapped should not suddenly be saved by a passing space amoeba. Obvious solutions to problems should not be overlooked by the characters facing them. Villains should not inexplicably spare their opponents at their moment of triumph -- nor should heroes. If at any time someone has a certain path to victory, they should take it, without being distracted by goals of secondary importance. Rules of magic or science must exist that clearly delineate what people can and can not do, whatever their superpowers. People must act upon reasonable motivations and use logic most people can understand, even if they don't agree with it. If someone's motivations or logic is insane, it should be treated as such by the characters around him.
9. A story should be transparent. The motivations behind characters should be revealed. What they are doing should be explained. Special words that have no defined meaning, characters only referred to by pronouns or titles, anything cryptic or concealing should be abjured. This is because it is painful to not understand what is going on. It is also meaningless. Flashbacks to a complicated past and prophecies of an uncertain future are equally incomprehensible gibberish. The jabberwocky poem is better than a bunch of garbage which can't be understood to mean anything until 200 pages, or 20 episodes, later. Meaning cannot exist without clarity and truth. Stories, language, communication itself, cannot exist without meaning.
10. A story should not offend its audience. By this, it should not use unnecessarily big words, long sentences, or convoluted plots. It should not lecture people on right or wrong, or go into long-winded monologues. It should not prejudge any conflict, and leave it up to the viewer to decide how they feel. It should not violate its own canon set down by previous works by the same author in the same world, or the canon set up by previous versions of the same story. A character whose role and personality is well established in earlier works cannot simply be evaporated away in later ones -- this is a complete betrayal to the fans who grew to love said characters, defined by their traits, in the earlier ones. A story should have an ending -- it should not stretch ten, twenty, fifty years, or until death, giving no release to its captive audience. People want to know what happens, they want to know how it all turns out. Exploiting that weakness by making them buy an interminable series the author never intends to finish is just fraud. If a story is not finishing within a reasonable length of real-world time, the author should just say what happens in brief, outline form, and spare us all the misery. If a story is set in the real world, it should not contradict any known fact of history. A decent respect should be paid to the morals of the audience, without using deliberately inflammatory language or imagery.
1 comment:
Post a Comment