A Story Limit is one of the most important things you can put into your story. Whether it be a Timelock or an Optionlock, a writer must let the audience know when the story will be over; to leave this out is tantamount to lying to your audience. And while it is important to pick one of these and stick to it, it turns out that there are some stories that are a bit more nebulous when it comes to defining how their endings will come about.
I’ve written more than one post about the importance of a Story Limit. Why is that? More often than not, when a story doesn’t work it’s because there is no limit or the limit is not clearly defined or worse — the limit is broken. Quick recap: Meaningful stories are arguments; successful arguments are made within a set amount of borders. They have clearly defined endings that help one decide the value of such arguments.
However, while it is important to clue the audience in to when the story might end, it turns out that there are some stories that can go either way.
Take for instance the wonderfully acted and confidently written, The Queen. For those unfamiliar with it, the film centers around the tragic events of Princess Diana’s death and the response, or lack thereof, from the Royal Family. Recently elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) believes the Royal Family should break tradition and respond in a way that shows the rest of their country that they actually care; Queen Elizabeth (Helen Mirren) and those who surround her believe a more “reasonable” response is required.
In the end, the Queen decides to give her subjects what they want and makes an unprecedented appearance at the makeshift mourning taking place in front of Buckingham Palace. But what exactly brings about this climax?
While watching the movie I had the distinct feeling that there was a Timelock placed upon the Objective Story. Progress in the story is marked by days of the week; a title card appears every now and then, announcing the days of the week as they pass. It was my feeling that these cards were put there to emphasize what little time the Royal Family had to react. Princess Diana’s funeral was to occur the following Saturday and the closer they got to that deadline the greater the tension placed on the Royal Family and specifically Queen Elizabeth to engage in some kind of public reaction.
What a Story Limit Feels Like
An interesting thing happens with a story that has a Timelock on it — as time runs out, the characters in the story will feel like they are running out of options. At first this may sound like I’m just muddling the two concepts together but if you put yourself in place of a character in a story, or if you’ve had an important deadline recently, you can see how as the minutes tick away you’ll feel like you’re running out of things you can do in that set amount of time. This is the kind of pressure a Timelock puts on characters.
Conversely, a story with an Optionlock on it will have the characters feeling like they are running out of time. If you’re at the mall and you’ve got to find a present in one of those stores, the more stores you go through empty-handed the more you’ll feel like you’re running out of time.
Understanding this, I believed the Story Limit for The Queen was a Timelock. The Royal Family was aware that they were running out of options as Princess Diana’s funeral grew closer and closer. Surely, they must provide some sort of response before that deadline.
That being said, there was another way of looking at the Story Limit.
A Different Interpretation
You can also see the Story Limit in The Queen as an Optionlock. How? Well, the crisis at hand is much more than simply dealing with Diana’s family. The story starts with the election of Tony Blair — that’s when problems really begin for the Royal Family. The central problem in the story is now How are they going to survive in this new progressive environment? The limited options they have towards dealing with that (meeting with the new Prime Minister, responding to Diana’s death, etc.) are, in fact, the narrowing options of the Optionlock.
The days of the week that I thought were indicative of a Timelock were really simply indications of how the pressure was mounting against them. Instead of seeing the “Wednesday” title card and thinking, “Oh, wow, they only have 3 days left to react,” the Royal Family in fact was thinking “Wow, it’s been 3 days since we’ve done something to show our support. We’re taking too long (feeling Time slip away) to respond.”
It is a subtle difference but a difference nevertheless.
A Limit That Could Fall Either Way
It was so subtle that during our initial analysis I wondered if perhaps this would be one of those stories where it didn’t matter whether it was a Timelock or an Optionlock - that the meaning of the story would essentially stay the same.
Listen to our discussion of the Story Limit in The Queen.the Story Limit in The Queen.
When you use the Dramatica software to create a story you are first presented with over 32,000 possible stories. As you answer the basic 12 questions those possible stories are narrowed down until you finally reach the one unique storyform that you are looking for. The storyform is the DNA of your story; it contains all the information necessary to create a satisfying and fulfilling story.
When answering these questions, it is a good idea to leave blank any that you are uncertain of. Often, by virtue of your selections, those blanks will be filled in by the software. This is the voodoo or magic behind Dramatica that makes it so powerful1.
This is what we did with our analysis of The Queen. We left the Story Limit question blank and answered all the others. Guess what we discovered?
The Story Limit was still open to interpretation! See where it says only 2 storyforms remaining? One will have a Timelock, the other and Optionlock. Some stories will require a certain limit to be put in place; this one apparently didn’t.
Just to be sure we also checked the Plot Progression screen for this particular storyform. The Plot Progression scene is where you can view the different items that will be explored in each Act and in which order they should appear. If there would be any effect on the story due to the Limit, it would be there.
Looks like the Act Order has already been filled in for us which means…the Story Limit will have little to no effect on the basic meaning of the story. If you were writing your own story it would be important to know what it is and to reveal it to your audience; but for the purposes of analysis the Story Limit has no effect on the essential meaning of the story behind The Queen
Some Parts are More Important Than Others
The storyform is a very unique way of looking at and interpreting a story. But every story is not created equal. Some absolutely require a tragic ending while others insist that the Main Character remain Steadfast in her resolve. Some maintain that the plot must be driven by actions while others state that the Main Character must solve his problems linearly. The important thing to take away is that every storyform is unique in its own fashion and therefore every story will emphasize certain parts over others.
In The Queen, the Story Limit was not emphasized as it was not essential towards the meaning of the story. Sure on the micro level there might be some miniscule difference, but in the grander sense of things (which is really all that matters in a screenplay or a movie) the limit turned out to be not all that important. It’s why I sensed or felt that the story was limited by Time while others saw it limited by Options. Even though I fully accept the argument for an Optionlock now, at the time I really felt that both interpretations were valid.
Whether limited by Time or limited by Options, the structural and dynamic meaning behind a story like The Queen would essentially stay the same. While I still maintain that every story should have a Limit and that Limit should stay consistent throughout, it is clear to see that not all stories rely so heavily on this concept in order to provide a meaningful experience to the audience.
Footnotes for this article
- Trust me. It works.↩
6 responses so far ↓
1 Chris Huntley // Jan 22, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Since a Story Limit may have an affect on the involvement level of some audience members (i.e. women TEND not to be terribly interested in Timelock stories), some Timelock movies include an “apparent” Optionlock too. The Optionlock isn’t really the story Limit since it doesn’t bring about the story’s climax, but it does make the story more accessible. Two examples that come to mind are “The American President” and “16 Blocks.”
16 Blocks, by name, implies an Optionlock. The trailer for the film clarifies this a little by stating that the protagonist needs to go “16 blocks within 118 minutes.” It turns out that the immovable “lock” is the deadline (10:00 AM), not the distance.
An American President sets up a deadline of the date and time of the president’s State of the Union address. Days remaining drop of the calendar on a regular basis reminding us of the upcoming deadline. The writers cleverly include an Optionlock (the number of votes needed for a particular vote) tied to the female lead. Ultimately, the Optionlock is met before the Timelock and does not force the climax, though it does contribute to the tension and is used to influence events leading up to the climax.
2 Mia // Jan 23, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I think it’s much more common to find Optionlock stories with apparent Timelocks. Action movies frequently include ticking bombs and countdowns as part of their climaxes, even if they have been using Optionlocks up until that point. Two obvious examples are “Alien” and “Star Wars.”
In “Alien,” the characters are limited by the resources they have: there are only so many places the alien could be hiding on the Nostromo; there are only so many crew members on board to fight it; they have a limited amount of weapons, and so on. But during the climax of the film, Ripley sets off a bomb with a timer. Can she get off the ship before it explodes? Time runs out. The bomb explodes. But the alien isn’t dead yet. The Timelock doesn’t actually end the story.
Similar to “Alien” is “Star Wars.” Luke and Obi-Wan need to get the Death Star plans to the Rebels, but it doesn’t matter how long it takes them. Likewise, the Empire needs to discover the location of the Rebel base, but there’s no deadline involved. But during the climax of the film, a countdown appears. Luke’s assault on the Death Star is now a race against time. Can he blow up the Death Star before the Rebel base is in its firing range? Time runs out. But it matters little. All of the Rebel fighter pilots besides Luke have been taken out of action. Even if they had another hour, the Rebels couldn’t have launched another pass at the thermal exhaust port. Time and Options run out simultaneously.
In both cases the Timelock accelerates the pace and adds a lot of tension, but doesn’t actually end the story. Additionally, both apparent Timelocks appear during the final showdown when the characters are almost out of options anyway. Because of this, neither films feels like it has two limits. Rather, it feels as though the Timelock is a discrete feature of the character’s final option. Furthermore, “Star Wars” is enjoyed by both men and women alike, so an apparent Timelock isn’t enough to marginalise female viewers. I always wondered, who decided that women tend not to get involved with Timelock stories? How did they go about coming to that conclusion? Chris?
3 Jim // Jan 23, 2008 at 11:07 pm
I think it has to do with the idea that generally speaking, most women use Time as their baseline. It is what they use as a given from which to measure everything else. Because of this women tend to see Time as fluid which is why stories with Timelocks might be more difficult for them to empathize with. Whaddya mean there is a Timelimit? Time is malleable.
Men on the other hand use Space as their given which is why they have difficulty empathizing with Main Characters who solve problems holistically.
In Dramatica it’s referred to as Reach and is talked about more here.
4 Chris Huntley // Jan 24, 2008 at 10:07 am
Minor correction. MEN tend to see TIME as unchangeable because it is their point of reference, their baseline. WOMEN use space as their baseline and find time maleable.
It’s actually more complicated than that, but the net effect is that women tend to discount timelocks as irrelevant, while men tend to poo-poo the differences between male mental sex [linear problem-solving] and female mental sex [holistic problem-solving], and treat female mental sex as something that is not real.
Melanie and I came up with the concept of Mental Sex in 1990 while developing Dramatica. This was before the scads of brain research work done since that time that seems to support our theory (unofficially).
A way to see this timelock/optionlock female mental sex phenomena in real life is to look at the sports women appear to enjoy most AS SPECTATORS (audience members). Women gravitate toward volleyball, baseball, tennis, and golf (sports with optionlocks) more than football, hockey, basketball, and soccer (timelock sports). At a broad level, this is a tendency, but the tendency has its roots in Mental Sex and that’s why it shows up as an important aspect of stories.
5 Jim // Jan 24, 2008 at 11:20 am
Minor?
You know, when I wrote that last night I had a feeling that something was wrong - the logic didn’t work out quite right. But I knew I had the basic idea down…
Thanks!
6 C.O. // Jan 28, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but perhaps one might conceive of a story that has both Story Limits, or rather, two separate stories intertwined so closely that they diverge only in the Story Limit. Men and women might typically take away something different from such a dual story. I think you could still have two well-defined limits, but just combine them in the same work and have a “simultaneous climax,” so to speak.
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