One of the things I’ve found disappointing in so many recent scifi/fantasy/superhero/action whatever films is that the main conflict of the film so routinely is resolved by people hitting each other really hard. Maybe they hit with fists, or with bullets, or laser beams, or laser swords, but one way other another it’s going to…
The Gut is Cliche, the Grind is Creative
I really wish I could remember where I got this advice from, but I think it was an undergraduate poetry class, the sort of class where you learn about all the different formalist things with poetry and then go on to write a whole lot of bad poems, the sort of bad poems that Poet…
Targaryen Madness as a Deux Ex Machina
I realize that gripes about the show’s ending and the Mad Queen turn are nothing new, but there is an angle to this that I haven’t seen discussed: Daenerys Targaryen is the T-Rex from Jurassic Park. …Bear with me on this. In his discussion of the deus ex machina in Story, Robert McKee puts the…
When Character Motivations Serve the Plot, Not the Character
In story telling, it’s crucial that characters act according to their own motivations, and not because the plot requires it of them. There is an elegant way to make the character serve the plot when it doesn’t really make sense, what Michael Byers (no relation) calls the Sure-But-And-So, but that’s a discussion for another time…
Demogorgon Spotted in 1959 Puerto Rico
From Hunter S. Thompson’s novel The Rum Diary.
Deep Psychological Needs and Interpersonal Conflicts
Lesson 1 of story telling (even before “show, don’t tell” and “leave out the parts the reader’s going to skip”) is that stories are inherently about conflict. Someone wanted something, and then they got it — that’s not a story at all. There has to be an obstacle there, something creating conflict for the characters….
Comparison of the Structures of Seasons 1-3
In this post, I’m going to go through each of the three seasons of Stranger Things and analyze them in terms of basic story structure and pacing. Before jumping in, I want to first get some of the jargon out of the way. For purposes of this discussion an “A Story” is the central conflict…
The Cliches Season 3 of Stranger Things Needs to Avoid
It’s almost become expected that as a series continues the quality will trend downhill; it doesn’t always happen, but it’s so common as to become cliche. I suspect the reason for this is because the lead up time to the original film or TV season (or novel) can often be years, while the turnaround for…
Save the Cat! Building Investment in Characters.
In lamenting some of the terribleness of modern screenwriting, Blake Snyder points out how many films lack a simple “Save the cat!” scene which he defines as such: It’s the scene where we meet the hero and the hero does something — like saving a cat — that defines who he is and makes us,…
The Mechanical Issues in Stranger Things Season 2
While overall I enjoyed Season 2, it certainly was not as strong as Season 1. In this post I want to critique the season in terms of technical story telling mechanics. I know I’m a bit late to the Season 2 criticism party, but hopefully you’ll find it interesting to look at the season not…