Stories Exist for One Purpose: Meaning

March 5, 2007

It is my belief that that is the only reason someone wants to be told a story - to see something familiar. Familiar so far as they’re able to accurately synthesize something greater out of it. An audience wants and expects a greater understanding of life that they cannot receive any other way. From the Dramatica website:

We look to stories for meaning, for answers to everyday life experiences. More specifically, stories are arguments that provide us with solutions to problems we may encounter in life– they provide a way to examine inequities with an eye toward resolving them. We use different points of view available to us (I, You, We, They) to examine conflict created by the inequity at the center of a story. And, by looking at the conflict in the context of the perspective, gain insight into the nature of the inequity – hence meaning.

You cannot look at your own life objectively. Conversely you can’t look at someone else and know what it’s like to be in their mind. Both contexts are impossible to achieve at the same time - except in a story.

But someone who has a proven track record of success in Hollywood knows better, don’t they? “Following the same old formula is boring. Audiences want something new - something unexpected. They’ll love my new way of telling a story.”

And then they’re shocked with the lack of applause.

You cannot cheat the audience of meaning for the sake of your own ego.

The human mind searches for meaning in everything. From the beginning of time we have survived because of our ability to recognize patterns: Large paw prints and flesh-stripped bones signal dangerous animals lurking nearby. Bushes with this color berry are good, bushes with that color berry are very very bad.

Nothing has changed.

Do you really think audiences nowadays are somehow beyond looking for a greater meaning in a story? These are the same people who see the Virgin Mary in potato chips. Of course they want your main character’s actions and the world around him to mean something.

And it’s not enough to simply make the main character likable or have him change at the end of the story - there has to be a reason for it that has been setup from the very beginning. Meaning comes from a progression of story events and that meaning starts with the potentials you put in place during the first act.

It’s like a great powerful electric circuit that courses through the audience’s mind for 2 hours. You can’t give them that jolt at the beginning and then not provide the conduits to allow that current to run its course.

You cannot cheat the audience of meaning for the sake of your own ego.