Considering Stories
I ended up discussing a couple points on story crafting/telling recently...
I voiced a thought that occurred to me watching Salt about the time the main character jumped from one moving vehicle to another: Within a single story (movie, book, etc.), exceptions and coincidences are an acceptable norm. After all, there isn't a lot of appeal in reading/watching something about a character that lives out a perfectly normal, mundane, unexciting life. No, our stories are drafted around the one-in-a-million hero, the decendent of a legend, the chosen dragon rider, the... whatever.
But in an extended tale, that sort of thing gets old and starts to pain the picture that everyone in the fictional world is blessed with power and luck. That's what makes storytelling in a setting like a MUCK or MMORPG particularly difficult. Having five legendary heroes can be interesting. Having fifty or five thousand makes it almost silly. You either have to tone down the heroes to something more normal or you almost inevitably shatter the suspension of disbelief. Either way, you pretty much can't end up with the epic and awe-inspiring tale you might otherwise have.
This got us talking briefly on the matter of cliche. My position put forth was that cliches aren't bad, per se, in a story. In fact, they tend to be common (or they wouldn't be cliche). What's bad is when they pull the audience out of the story. The young hero watching his village burn can draw sympathy or eye-rolling, depending on the how of the delivery.
Not that I'd belittle originality. But let's face it, it's hard to have truly original story ideas these days. I just think it's far more important to keep the audience (or players) involved and invested than to be original. And that's more a matter of pacing, presentation, and (at least in roleplaying) interaction.
I'll summarize a friend's additional thought from the continuing conversation: A story needs to show some development of the main character over its course. I actually objected to that one initially, but when called on it, I was hard pressed to find an example in support of my reaction. Rather, I conceded the point seems true to me specifically in the case of good stories.
See, I could come up with examples of stories that didn't show change in the protagonist, but every example that popped into my mind was a story that had dragged on and wasn't very compelling in my mind: things like long-running comic lines such as Batman, or TV series. Both of these might have "episodes" that contain character development and growth, but overall the protagonist(s) really doesn't change much. As such, the overall stories tend to strike me as stale. Any movie or book I pulled to mind that I felt was good, indeed involved the main character learning or growing in some way.
Which all comes together as a part of why sequels suck more often than not and stories that people refuse to allow to end grow dull. Initial character growth and bonding is usually so much more fascinating than anything that comes after. Cliche and coincidence gets harder and harder to ignore as they are piled one on top of another. Basically, it gets more difficult to retain the "magic" of any story the longer it runs. And if you go on too long, it seems you tend to end up with fictional worlds where nothing is really believable (soap operas) or stories that can no longer rise above the plot-of-the-week (comics, sit coms).
I voiced a thought that occurred to me watching Salt about the time the main character jumped from one moving vehicle to another: Within a single story (movie, book, etc.), exceptions and coincidences are an acceptable norm. After all, there isn't a lot of appeal in reading/watching something about a character that lives out a perfectly normal, mundane, unexciting life. No, our stories are drafted around the one-in-a-million hero, the decendent of a legend, the chosen dragon rider, the... whatever.
But in an extended tale, that sort of thing gets old and starts to pain the picture that everyone in the fictional world is blessed with power and luck. That's what makes storytelling in a setting like a MUCK or MMORPG particularly difficult. Having five legendary heroes can be interesting. Having fifty or five thousand makes it almost silly. You either have to tone down the heroes to something more normal or you almost inevitably shatter the suspension of disbelief. Either way, you pretty much can't end up with the epic and awe-inspiring tale you might otherwise have.
This got us talking briefly on the matter of cliche. My position put forth was that cliches aren't bad, per se, in a story. In fact, they tend to be common (or they wouldn't be cliche). What's bad is when they pull the audience out of the story. The young hero watching his village burn can draw sympathy or eye-rolling, depending on the how of the delivery.
Not that I'd belittle originality. But let's face it, it's hard to have truly original story ideas these days. I just think it's far more important to keep the audience (or players) involved and invested than to be original. And that's more a matter of pacing, presentation, and (at least in roleplaying) interaction.
I'll summarize a friend's additional thought from the continuing conversation: A story needs to show some development of the main character over its course. I actually objected to that one initially, but when called on it, I was hard pressed to find an example in support of my reaction. Rather, I conceded the point seems true to me specifically in the case of good stories.
See, I could come up with examples of stories that didn't show change in the protagonist, but every example that popped into my mind was a story that had dragged on and wasn't very compelling in my mind: things like long-running comic lines such as Batman, or TV series. Both of these might have "episodes" that contain character development and growth, but overall the protagonist(s) really doesn't change much. As such, the overall stories tend to strike me as stale. Any movie or book I pulled to mind that I felt was good, indeed involved the main character learning or growing in some way.
Which all comes together as a part of why sequels suck more often than not and stories that people refuse to allow to end grow dull. Initial character growth and bonding is usually so much more fascinating than anything that comes after. Cliche and coincidence gets harder and harder to ignore as they are piled one on top of another. Basically, it gets more difficult to retain the "magic" of any story the longer it runs. And if you go on too long, it seems you tend to end up with fictional worlds where nothing is really believable (soap operas) or stories that can no longer rise above the plot-of-the-week (comics, sit coms).
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