There is nothing worse than a movie that tries to provide some meaningful moment at the last second. Often times it feels like these heavy-handed messages are just a panicked reaction to an empty story. If you do it right, the events in your story and the order in which they appear in should provide an audience all the meaning they’ll ever need.

In her most excellent blog on screenwriting, Jane Espenson recently wrote an article about ending a story with a heavy-handed message. She mentions that she caught a kid’s show that finished things up with this line:

I haaaaaaaate these kinds of endings. Hate them, hate them, hate them. Which is one of the reasons why I like the Dramatica theory of story - it infuses a story with meaning without having to resort to cheesy lines like this. Why? Because if the sequence of events in your story are organized in such a way as to provide the message you seek, you won’t feel the need to sum things up afterwards.

That’s one of the main things Dramatica does - it helps arrange the events in your story to produce the meaning you are after. The simplest example of this is the concept of a slap and a scream. A slap followed by a scream has a different meaning than a scream followed by a slap.

Same events - different order - separate meanings.

And no need to end it with, “She was screaming so I had to slap her.” I’ve written more about this is an article about Why Act Order is More Important Than Time Spent.

Jane goes on to say:

If you decide to do this, you really have to earn it. You can’t just look at your story and come up with the vaguest possible aphorism that covers both the A and B stories. Even a great story will fall on its face if it turns out that the whole thing existed as an illustration of “Life is surprising,” or “I wish things were fairer!”

Totally agree. If you haven’t provided an audience with meaning for the last two hours, they’re certainly not going to trust what you have to say in the last two or three minutes. They come to stories craving meaning. The message of a story is something that has to be built up over time; it must be allowed time to grow and synthesize within the minds of an audience.

The purpose to your writing can’t be an afterthought.

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• Do Something Dramatica→