The Point Of A Story
by James HudnallAt the dawn of mankind our ancient ancestors huddled around campfires and told stories to entertain each other. But the smarter ones realized there was a way to make the stories more effective for the audience. And that was the origin of storytelling technique.
Any artist wants their work to be appreciated. And most artists want to leave a lasting impression. In order to do that, you are either naturally gifted and can do that through your instinctive performance, or you can do it through an understanding of the driving forces that make it happen.
Most people fall into the second category. That does not make them lesser artists. Even the people with natural talent can improve it by honing their craft and learning new tricks.
Where all this falls into the realm of this discussion centers around what I call the point of a story.
Think of it like the business end of a sword. If a sword is dull, it has less a chance to do its job effectively. Of course, most of us writers don’t want to hurt anyone with our work. We want to entertain. Enlighten, if possible. But some have lost track of why they’re doing this. Whether intentionally or not, they are hurting people with their fiction. They are doing harm. Their sword is being put to bad use.
We’re attracted to stories because we not only want to be entertained, we want to feel something. And for a story to do that, it needs to speak to us personally. It needs to tell us something we can relate to. Something we can understand. Even if the subject matter or situation is absurd, there has to be some kind of truth in there.
The stories that stand the test of time are the ones that hit home in some way. They are the ones we can get some kind of personal insight or meaning from. The reason? Stories act to make sense of the senselessness of our existence. They’re a tool for putting reality in perspective.
Reality is a vast, complex and often scary place. If you were to bother to look up the size of certain heavenly bodies for example, you would find you could fit around a million worlds the size of the earth in our sun. And as big as our sun is, you could fit 350 million Earth suns into the star Antares. And Antares is just one of a nearly uncountable number of stars in a possibly infinite universe. Which may only be one universe in an infinite amount of parallel universes. So, yeah, we’re pretty small in relation to all that. Even George Clooney’s ego.
It’s hard enough for contemporary people to take in our crazy world, but imagine how it was for our ancestors who knew almost nothing. They had to figure out why things happened and they had to get really creative. They didn’t have Google. They had to wing it.
Fiction was invented, in part, to provide a context for life. Religion (depending on your point of view, of course) sprang from a need to lay down some ground rules so a society could function properly. People learned that certain actions had bad consequences. So they wrote down rules that said: “Don’t do that, stupid!” And when people did that anyway, they said: “Do that again and you’ll regret it!”
in 350 BC, Greek Philosopher Aristotle explained how fiction worked in The Poetics. He explained that people can relate to cause and effect in a story. This is because in real life, actions often equal some kind of result, either good or bad. And we can all relate to that.
But we can’t relate to stories where a character does something that doesn’t make sense to us. And the result of their actions makes even less sense.
We’ve all seen those movies. Throw a rock in a video store and you’ll hit one.
The problem with a lot of entertainment today is that mindset has dominated the scene that tells us illogical things. Things that don’t ring true to us living in the real world. This is because the producers who commission these stories, the editors who supervise them, the writers who slap them together are either coming from a place of unreality and delusion, or they are trying to impose some kind of vision of reality that they want to believe on the rest of us.
This often results in bad fiction. Whether it’s in comic books, plays or films, even if it comes in the lyrics of a song, or a comedian’s joke, fiction is trying to pass on a version of reality to the audience. And many creative people today are passing on a negative, defeatist or depressing message that doesn’t really offer any solutions, hope or lessons worth a damn.
Stories don’t have to be uplifting or even positive to be good. But they have to have meaning to be relevant or effective. The meaning passed along by many of today’s entertainment is neither helpful or constructive.
Some creative people today are making fiction that seeks to tear down society, through slurs and condemnation. But they offer no ideas, no constructive solutions, and for many of us, no reason to agree with them. But to young impressionable minds, this is harmful because it makes many kids think it’s a form of reality. As I said, fiction can serve to put reality in perspective. The perspective many kids are getting is one of hopelessness, anger, fear and paranoia.
Science Fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon had an axiom that 90% of everything is crap. He said that in the 1950s, so this isn’t a new problem. But if we want to make a difference and improve entertainment, we need to start focusing on solutions instead of sitting off to one side throwing bottles at the walls of the institutions we’re annoyed with.
We have to bring our convictions, values and ideas to the table. The naysayers will try to beat us down, but guess what? We don’t need their approval. Opportunities and new paths are always opening before us. The Internet is creating all kinds of exciting avenues to bring our work to the masses. When people band together they can achieve great things. Pulling our resources together we can make things happen.
Art is a calling. When you answer the call you have to bring it to make a difference. The people who were your heroes and inspiration when you started didn’t get there by playing it safe. More than likely, they broke some rules and rattled some cages.
If we’re to bring back a sense of balance and true diversity of thought to entertainment, you know what to do.
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33 Comments
Great article, Mr. Hudnall. I couldn’t agree with you more. My little story involves the very controversial writer, Ayn Rand. I have heard her mentioned on other conservative blog sites, which piqued my interest in what she actually had to say. I have bought her books, which I will crack into after I re-read George Orwells 1984. (scary stuff). While searching for a DVD to watch on the Blockbuster website, I ran across The Passion of Ayn Rand, starring the extremely talented Helen Mirren, Peter Fonda, and Eric Stoltz, which I rented. All I have to say is, WOW. That movie really spoke to me. Ms. Mirren portrayed Ms. Rand as a critical thinker, but a woman who also had flaws and not so good ideas. The cast and writers of the movie inspired me even more to read her books.
“The naysayers will try to beat us down, but guess what? We don’t need their approval.”
Many of those naysayers are lit agents and publishers whose approval we need to get published. I’m not trying to throw up a roadblock here, but how to we get around them?
Pam, I’ll have to check out that movie. Thanks.
…
Going ‘indy’ is about the only resource available now, for anyone who has anything different, anything that is not already being stamped out like some sort of entertainment-world chunk of conblock. We have to go around the current paradigm, come up with our own networks and resources – just like this website/blog. It is about time, people – some of us have been at it already for years.
At the end of 2004, after being let go from a corporate job that I had begun to dislike very much, I began writing a novel about an event on the 19th century frontier that hardly anyone had ever heard about, and when I had done it, everyone who read it (and a good number of those readers were not related to me, and had no reason to fake it)I went looking for an agent and a publisher. And I had a couple of agents take a look, and say lovely things about my ability – but they also said regretfully that my historical novel just wasn’t sellable in the current market. There wasn’t much sex, hardly any violence, it was about a story that no-one had ever heard of. It was, in fact, about a group of people bonding together, and facing an almost insurmountable challenge. The major romantic relationship was between a couple who had been married to each other for years and were still crackers about each other.
I went to a POD publishing house, paid a relatively small amount for formatting the body of the book and having a custom cover designed – and there you go – “To Truckee’s Trail” has sold very well ever since, as these things go. Not in thousands of copies, piled up at every Barnes & Noble, but enough to bring in a trickle of fairly respectable amount of royalties. I had so much fun, I sat down to write another unknown frontier story, but when I was about halfway through, I got involved with an on-line group of other people who had written historical novels, and published them through POD or tiny boutique publishers. Within a couple of months, we formed the Independent Authors’ Guild, with a website and newsletter and everything. (it’s here – http://www.independentauthorsguild.com ) The IAG has been going now for more than a year, way longer than this kind of collective usually lasts! We share marketing strategies and suggestions, edit each others’ books, give advice, swap blurbs and reviews, share knowledge and expertise – and some of the members have considerable experience in small publishing. We network like crazy, and it’s all in the service of bringing independently published books to a wider audience. You say that we have to start focusing on solutions, bring our ideas and creativity to the table, that the internet offers us unparalleled opportunities to improve matters, and bring fresh new work to an audience that is sick and tired of the same stale old stuff? It’s been growing all around, faster than you might have thought.
Just for fun, check out the IAG, and some of the links on the home page to other independent outlets and sites. It’s already happening, Mr. Hudnall.
Mr. Hudnall,
Thank you for this piece. I will throw in my two cents which reflects on your comment regarding religion. You said, “Fiction was invented, in part, to provide a context for life. Religion (depending on your point of view, of course) sprang from a need to lay down some ground rules so a society could function properly.”
My point of view is that all story is man’s attempt to understand God and how that relationship works. Sometimes the story is obvious (LWW) sometimes it is not so (Key Largo) and sometime it is so corrupted by our own sin that the analogy doesn’t come close (our flourishing porn industry).
All story is a reflection of the Great Story of God’ creation, man’s disobedience, and God’s redemption. For more on this one can turn to John Eldridges little volume, Epic.
Thanks again!
Very good artical and some good reminders. The thing is this: People who try and beat you down do it out of fear. You can harness that fear and use it.
Pam,
Please check out the Fountainhead. In fact, if you don’t have time to read it, I would highly recommend the movie. Ms. Rand wrote the adaptation, so it is very faithful to the tone and purpose of the book. It fits in perfectly with what James is talking about here. The story is based on the ideas of objectivism and the forces pulling against it through the eyes of an architect with a singular vision. After reading it during the past year, I can tell you that it is very relevant today.
The other thing that all great fiction has in common is that it continues to remain relevant because they are touching on timeless concepts. I love to watch the old epsiodes of the Twilight Zone because of the timelessness of the stories. They always end with either hope for a better future or a lesson.
There will be great fiction out there, it is just harder to find through all the noise.
I’ve found for a while now that very few of the films I watch have any sort of point. Some of them even win Best Picture.
For instance, can anyone tell me what the point of The Departed was? It’s a well made film with some very good performances, and a plot which in summary form is clever. But what does it mean? What’s the point? What was accomplished during the film? No one becomes a better man. No one betrays his principles. Nothing of any moral consequence at all occurs. Bad people do bad things to each other, a bunch of them die, The End.
In contrast something like Gone, Baby, Gone had a huge impact on me. The main character is forced to make moral choices which have a real and tangible affect on himself, on his moral view, and on his day-to-day life. That film intentionally disagrees with the idea that because things are muddled, we don’t have to try to do the right thing.
Even the Lord of the Rings films, which could so easily have devolved to spectacle, stay grounded and interesting by interspersing small moments we can relate to, between the epic battles. Like you say, it feels like people have forgotten that a film needs to have something to say in order to mean anything.
Hud,
You wrote:
“The problem with a lot of entertainment today is that mindset has dominated the scene that tells us illogical things. Things that don’t ring true to us living in the real world. This is because the producers who commission these stories, the editors who supervise them, the writers who slap them together are either coming from a place of unreality and delusion, or they are trying to impose some kind of vision of reality that they want to believe on the rest of us.”
I think there’s a third and far more common reason for the illogic: laziness. It’s simply easier to slap together a bunch of “sure-fire” elements and call it a “story” when it isn’t. You and I have seen this a lot in comic books: e.g., pointless crossovers. Stick “hot” characters like Wolverine where they don’t belong for a sales spike. Mainstream TV and movies have their own tricks to attract audiences and try to hold their attention: e.g., one-liners. A collection of cool things doesn’t add up to a coherent, meaningful story. It’s like a bird with pretty feathers but no skeleton. How can such a half-formed creature even hope to fly? At best, the audience might walk out of the theatre remembering this or that SFX scene, but they won’t be thinking about what they just saw. There’s no message – positive or negative – left in their minds to ponder. No substance. People may not realize it, but they hunger for it. And the internet is giving them new ways to feed that need.
Kevin Webb: Thanks for the suggestion, I had forgotten they made a movie out of that book. I sure will check it out!
SGT. Mom,
What you did is what I’ve been doing most of my 22 year writing career. Going independent. I have worked for the big publishers in my field, but I have mainly struck out on my own. It can be, and usually is, the harder road to travel, but it is also the most satisfying in some ways because you get to do exactly what you want.
If you come to a barrier on your path, what do you do? Turn back or find a detour around it? I never turn back, I find another way.
One of the things I am suggesting in this piece is we are making our voices heard now in places like this. We are meeting each other while seeking answers to these problems. Those of us with like minds should get together. Join forces. Pool our resources. Make things happen.
Your group is a shining example. I believe that is the way of the future.
Think about it: What did film makers do when there were no studios to make movies? They created them. Many failed, but plenty flourished and we often forget that there was a time when there was no Hollywood. That was in the lifetimes of some people living today.
I agree with this sentiment in theory, but I am drawn to something else in the current book I’m writing. The truth in the story is there, but I’m still condemning an entire group, namely liberals with Bush Derangement Syndrome, without offering solutions. Essentially, by the end of the book, I’ve made the point that they are criminally insane and invent entire worlds in their head. Maybe that disqualifies my work as art and it even further disqualifies it as something people would want to read, but it’s what I feel like saying. Perhaps I would be better served making the point that they are misguided, but how do you write something you don’t believe? My story is an evil little, overzealous caricature of my true beliefs, but writing off the insanity of the left over the last eight years would be insane on my part when I truly believe it needs to be called out.
What’s a guy to do with that conflict? Scrap it for something that gives solutions? Change it to make it a shell of its original point? Power through and hope it still speaks to someone when you’ve finished?
SGT. MOM,
I looked up Truckee’s Trail on Amazon.com, looks interesting.
Brian,
While it’s helpful to get stuff off your chest, you’d be limiting your audience to those who agree with you. Which might be a lot of people, who knows? Ann Coulter does pretty well*.
But if you are trying to convince someone of your argument, you have to understand the other side. Where they are coming from. So you can pick their arguments apart one by one.
People on the other side believe they are in the right. They believe their ideas are the “good ones”. Many of them have the same kind of anger you feel, however, it’s directed at people like you, who they see as the “bad ones”.
If you are writing what amounts to a social commentary, you can say whatever you want, but I think the rules of good fiction apply equally to good non-fiction. If you want to reach people outside of the choir, you have to make your arguments something others can relate to. Which means, you can’t turn the other side into cartoons of your rage. That’s what they did with President Bush. Which is why they turned off a lot of voters in the middle (Bush got re-elected by a decent margin).
The rules of good fiction state that the villain of any story (and they are the villains of your argument, which is a kind of story) are the champions of their argument. Villains almost always believe they are doing things for the right reasons. Your goal is to show why what they believe is for all the wrong reasons. But you need to try to understand their point of view, because they’re human beings, and they came to their beliefs from somewhere.
If you are coming from a better position, you need to demonstrate why you’re on the high road.
(* I think Coulter does well because she laces her work with a lot of humor which makes the books more accessible to those who are not as right wing as her).
Mr. Hudnall,
Good article. I was particularly interested in the following:
“The problem with a lot of entertainment today is that mindset has dominated the scene that tells us illogical things. Things that don’t ring true to us living in the real world. This is because the producers who commission these stories, the editors who supervise them, the writers who slap them together are either coming from a place of unreality and delusion, or they are trying to impose some kind of vision of reality that they want to believe on the rest of us.”
By this are you saying that the liberal vision of reality is false or somehow less true? If so, what about those good films by or about liberal visions of the world? I struggle to think of examples at the moment but there must be some.
No, I was not talking about “liberal” views, specifically. I use the word liberal in quotes because a lot of what conservatives call liberal isn’t liberal at all.
What’s I’m talking about is the “reality” that many in Hollywood see is not the reality that the rest of us see. Most people don’t live in mansions and have staff and have unlimited money. Yet if you watch a lot of movies and TV shows, you’d think a “poor” person in Manhattan can get a place like the one on Friends. Everyone in the real world isn’t trim, fit, metro-sexual and talks a certain way that’s common in Los Angeles.
The way Hollywood portrays people in different parts of the country is often insulting and unrealistic. The way it portrays certain groups is absurd, offensive or laughably bad. Part of this portrayal is coming from laziness, poor research. But a lot of it comes from contempt and willful ignorance. Many of them think Christians are like the people in “Jesus Camp.” Or that gun owners are all crazed survivalist cranks.
Talk to a minority who worked in show business in the past and they’ll give you an earful about how limited Hollywood’s view of their people was (and is).
A good movie can come from any political persuasion. A good storyteller does not resort to cliches and stereotypes to tell their story. They show fully realized characters and situations. One of the best films ever made is “The Bicycle Thief” which was made by a Communist and has some coded Communist themes, but it’s a classic and because it’s art, it has a universal message. You would never know a commie made it.
Please check out the Fountainhead. In fact, if you don’t have time to read it, I would highly recommend the movie.
I can’t second this enough. I saw the movie on TCM last year, and I was spellbound.
[...] Any artist wants their work to be appreciated. And most artists want to leave a lasting impression. In order to do that, you are either naturally gifted and can do that through your instinctive performance, or you can do it through an understanding of the driving forces that make it happen. — Big Hollywood | Read The Full Article [...]
Excellent stuff, Mr. Hudnall.
You have nailed exactly why so many movies — or other works of art or entertainment — fail. They break the rule that the work must have a point and that point must be truthful. (Although you can make terrific entertainments that have no point; they just won’t stay with the audience very long.)
A spectacular example of this kind of failure is the movie “Crash.”
Sure, it won Best Picture in 2005. But that’s because all the right people liked it. Or admired it, I suppose. It’s tough to think anyone actually liked it or was entertained by “Crash.” Maybe that’s because the theme of the movie — it’s point — is that we all see life, and our relationship to every person we encounter, as based on race.
“Crash” hits us over the head with its point repeatedly: Everyone in this country is infected with racism. Everyone!
Except those who made “Crash.” And those who voted it Best Picture.
The problem, of course, is that “Crash’s” point is total crap.
Really. I mean who believes that, in this country, poisonous, intractable race hatred is at the center of our lives? Now, I may not get around much, but I’m old enough to remember what a disaster Carter was and I’ve lived in four different states on both sides of the country, and I can’t name a single soul who defines others based on their race and hates them because of it. Not a one.
But I could show you the names of hundreds who openly hate, HATE people who hold political views that differ from their own, even if they’ve never met.
Just go to the Hollywood Creative Directory. Every page is a gold mine of intolerance, I’m sure, but let me suggest you start with the people who made the “Best Picture” of 2005.
BTW, I agree with, and I’m impressed by, SGT.MOM and his/her efforts at independent publishing. Good for you and AIG! I’m on the indie side myself and would love to pull off something similar with filmmaking and distribution.
Loved Dirty Harry and happily surprised to say it goes double for Big Hollywood.
Is that Barney Frank in the picture? I can’t stand that quy.
Not Barney Frank. That first picture is Peter Falk telling a story to Fred Savage (his grandson in the story) in the movie the Princess Bride.
Thanks for the fulsome reply. Bicycle Thieves is indeed a good example. Now that I think about it De Sica’s “Umberto D” also makes a compelling emotional case for the possible degrading effects of Capitalism.
I look forward to more columns.
Hudnall,
“That first picture is Peter Falk telling a story to Fred Savage (his grandson in the story) in the movie the Princess Bride.”
A KISSING Story! YUCK!
Thanks for the vote of confidence – and there are heaps of independent writers out there, just like me. And we have been able to find each other on-line, and to mutually support each other in a way that wasn’t possible, ever before. Just for an example – two members of the IAG edited by most recent book (it’s the Adelsverein Trilogy – all about the German settlements in the Texas Hill Country)another member took the georgeous color pictures that we used for the covers… and one of the editors, who does his own little boutique publishing firm allowed me to market it under the aegis of his firm. The going thing now is that many of us are considering setting up as our own publishers, so as to get a better price cut from a printing service like Ingram… oh, book-publishing-marketing talk. Sorry to bore – but things are just now beginning to gell. Very shortly independent authors will be out there as much as indy musicians and filmmakers are.
Yes, you’re correct, a big reason movies are failing is because they’re becoming a scavenger art – stealing visual scenes and plotlines from other movie.
James, once again another great article. I’m also intrigued by SGT MOM’s posting and intend to research her book, I’ll bet it’s a good read. I’ve found when the political positions of even minor characters in a sitcom annoy me, I’ll sit with the wife and read her a book. One of my favorite authors is Dean Koontz. His books can be unsettling when read with the lights low, but the main characters always overcome with a faith in God and their sprituality. It also doesn’t hurt Koontz identifies himself as a conservative, giving money to the primary campaigns of Fred(wish you had tried harder)Thompson, and Mitt Romney. These views haven’t seemed to hurt his career, and he’s a helluva good read. Good luck with the book SGT MOM!
I think you must have lost concentration when writing this, “Some creative people today are making fiction that seeks to tear down society, through slurs and condemnation. But they offer no ideas, no constructive solutions, and for many of us, no reason to agree with them. But to young impressionable minds, this is harmful because it makes many kids think it’s a form of reality. As I said, fiction can serve to put reality in perspective. The perspective many kids are getting is one of hopelessness, anger, fear and paranoia.”
Your call to produce art with a purpose is valid in and of itself without resorting to ‘do it for the children.’ It seems out of place with the rest of the piece.
Actually, you’re right. I did not want to make it sound like a “Do it for the children” argument. That’s a bête noire or mine. It was more of an after thought that put this sentence in there.
But, if you talk to a lot of kids these days and they think, from all the dystopian, negative futures in Sci-Fi to all the conspiracy laced TV shows and internet memes, that the future is bleak. It doesn’t have to be.
My point is that many people are “informed” by what they see in pop culture and so much of it is negative nowadays. And negativity is not constructive. We need to think positive to achieve positive solutions.
That’s more along the line of where I was going with that.
I love this website! Authors responding and being a part of the discussion enriches the experience, and I thank you. I agree with you for the most part. The art of story-telling seems to have been lost to many, and instead we have art which seeks to shock. I would say though, that art with conservative ideals doesn’t necessarily have be positive to be effective at changing views. A futuristic view showing the negative consequences of unimpeded progressive rule would not be a pretty sight. Likewise, a comedy pointing out the obsurdities of leftist practices wouldn’t necessarily be positive-it could be a comic tragedy, but would be effective. The Monk clip posted on this site is a perfect example.
Regarding bleak portrayals of the present and future: Most “creative” people I’ve mentioned this to reply with something like “Well, just look around!” It’s a chicken-and-egg problem. Are the sensitive, passionate ones just responding to a genuinely dysfunctional world, or are they creating it?
My take on the issue is that the human world has always been dysfunctional and that it’s only people of goodwill – especially creative ones – who make it tolerable and worth living in. If those people give up, as some artists seem to have done, then only bleakness is left.
A solution for independent writers and others in the entertainment business will be through the Internet. Interesting that just a a brief comment about a novel led to Amazon and plans to read (buy) the book. A website that reviews objectively the work of independents could be a start; it could also allow persons to download for a fee.
Someone once said something like “The difference between fiction and real life is that fiction, after all, has to make sense.” Fiction *should* make sense, or why not just make a documentary?
Bugs,
People who say “look around” in response to why fiction is so bleak are people who are either ignorant, unimaginative or clueless.
Look around? At what? The world is a lot better off now than it was during WWII when millions were dying in horrible conflicts. Or the depression before that when masses of people all over the world were dying in poverty, poverty VASTLY worse than what people today call poverty. It was real poverty.
Or how about WWI? How about the 1800s when it was even worse then the 20th century? And keep going back. Things have only been getting better for humanity in so many ways. Yes, there is a long way to go and we’re enduring a very tough time at the moment with the world economy. But we’ll get through it.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to speak out on places like this. I am not that political. I’m more critical of politics. The stuff I have issues with are those things that have a negative impact on society. That hold us back. And the kind of thinking you were talking about is part of the problem.
James,
I appreciate what you’re doing. And I’m glad there are more places on the Internet for creative people who don’t mindlessly channel the Zeitgeist.
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