Some stories take forever to get started; others capture you from page one. What is it about some stories that just force you to stay attentive, eagerly anticipating some sort of resolution? The answer, I think, lies within the concept of the fully explored argument.
When it came to stories, things were much simpler back during the mid-part of the last century. The good guys wore white and the bad guys always clad themselves in black1. There was little to no ambiguity or vagueness employed towards the presentation of the message of a film. What you saw was what you got.
Consequently, and in my opinion unfortunately, there was little to no subtlety to that presentation as well.
Audiences will not sit still for a half-assed argument
Of course, there were exceptions to that rule; not everything was so cut and dried. But for the majority of films that were made during that time, this sort of story shorthand was the norm. The protagonist was always the hero and their quests were always assumed to be noble. While this sort of thinking might come across as juvenile to us, back then it was perfectly acceptable; it was what audiences expected to find at the theater.
Nowadays though, audiences crave a more elegant form of storytelling. To them, context is everything. They understand that what may seem as an absolute evil to one can simultaneously be seen by another as a completely righteous act. The pervasiveness of the Internet and with it the bombardment of several different points-of-view has made it virtually impossible for one to understand what is “right” and what is “wrong.” The audience of today has come to realize that the meaning that exists relies completely on the point-of-view assumed by the viewer.
So what does this have to do with locking a story in?
Audience members today will not sit still for a half-assed argument. You’ve got to give them everything if you want them to listen.
The Four Perspectives
There are four different points-of-view one can assume when examining a problem:
- The Third-Person Impersonal or “They” perspective
- The First-Person Personal or “I” perspective
- The First-Person Impersonal or “You” perspective
- The Third-Person Personal or “We” perspective
These match up nicely with the four major throughlines every great story should have:
- “They” perspective = The Overall Story Throughline
- “I” perspective = The Main Character Throughline
- “You” perspective = The Impact Character Throughline
- “We” perspective = The Subjective Story or Relationship Throughline
Leave one of these unexplored and the audience will never forgive you for it. They won’t buy what you are trying to say to them because they’ll always know that you left one side of the argument out. Trust is extremely important in these matters and if you’re trying to say something even remotely significant to an audience member you can’t try and leave some questions unanswered. They’ll call you on it every time.
It’s not enough, therefore, to simply have a “willful protagonist,” an antagonist, and a collection of escalating plot points. At best you’re only providing an audience with half an argument. You still need to give them that external singular perspective (often presented by the Impact Character) and that collective personal perspective (the relationship between the Main and Impact Character) that only two people can share.
If you don’t, the audience member of today will check out.
No Givens
This is not to say that the audience members of today are dramatically smarter than those of the past. Casablanca and All About Eve are just a few of the mid 20th-century films that explored all four sides of an argument. Even Shakespeare locked his audiences in with stories like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. So it’s not a case of the old vs. the new as much as it is a matter of the fully crafted vs. the unfinished.
The point is that nowadays, more and more people are attuned to the idea of the fully explored argument and conversely, the incomplete argument. In the past, writers were able to get away with leaving out more in the past because there was an assumed shorthand that existed between writer and audience member. The idea of the noble protagonist always wearing white succeeded for a reason. The audience was more apt to fill in the blanks because everyone was, for the most part, coming from the same viewpoint.
All Points-of-View Accounted For
If you want to lock an audience member into your story then, you have to be absolutely sure that you provide them with an argument that is presented from all sides. Just like the audiences of old expected their hero to be on the straight and narrow, the audiences of today need to know that they are being shown every angle. It’s the only way they’ll accept the argument (or message) you are trying to make.
This feeling of being locked into a story is easy to notice once you’ve become aware of it. It’s only once that fourth and final throughline comes into play that you can really feel something shift within your own consciousness. That mental shift is your mind locking in to the story.
This happened to me when watching Notes on a Scandal. I had heard that it was a good film, but wasn’t entirely sold as it didn’t have tremendous word of mouth. The film starts out normally enough by introducing us to Barbara Covett2. and although we don’t know it yet, we are shown the players in what would become a shocking scandal between teacher and student. Main Character and Overall Story Throughlines accounted for.
Then there’s that beautiful scene in the shed behind Sheba’s house. We start to see that Sheba shares many of the same issues that Barabara does, only from a different point-of-view. With this, the Impact Character Throughline comes into play granting a smile to develop on us lovers of story. We can only hope that perhaps a complete story is in the works…
It’s only once we see their twisted relationship start to develop in the following montage sequence that we know we’ve found a gem. Setting this Subjective Story Throughline into motion solidifies our trust in the film to provide us with a complete argument - all perspectives have been accounted for. Whether or not you feel the argument was successful or not matters little; the point is you’ve been mentally locked in to the author’s argument.
Fulfilling a Promise
The moment you introduce that fourth and final throughline you will have locked the audience in to your story. There will be nothing they can do but listen to your exploration of those throughlines and eagerly anticipate the resolution of your argument. They will respect you for not insulting their intelligence, and therefore will want to know how your story ends, how it all works out.
A story without these four perspectives is really just an empty promise, leaving an audience unfulfilled and disappointed.
Footnotes for this article
- Yes, I realize Gary Cooper is wearing a black hat in this picture, but you get the idea!↩
- Sigh…why do authors have to use descriptive names. We get it, she covets something…ugh.↩
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