I’m typically not one to be overly critical, especially when the subject is outside my realm of expertise. In the professional lives of arguably my two closest friends, one is a doctor (GI his specialty) and the other an accountant (money his). When my doctor friend tells me I’m in bad shape, do I stomp my feet and tell him he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about? When my accountant friend says I’m in bad shape too and I really need to stop giving away things for free, do I show him how clueless he is and give away even more stuff? Tempting for sure, but no on both counts.
Now, when it comes to story, I do feel infinitely qualified to state my opinion. I wouldn’t exactly call myself an expert on the subject, but a certain level of understanding does come from putting in thousands of hours over the years and writing what I’ve been told by countless people are some pretty good ones. Naturally “story” is subjective. What turns one person’s crank may not even get a sputter out of someone else. But there are certain things inherent in good stories. That isn’t to say every “good”-contributing element is present in every “good” story. Tension, conflict, a sympathetic character or two, brilliant dialogue, fast-paced plot, etc.; there are countless permutations to these and many other elements in a good story.
It’s the bad ones, those bad stories that stick out like an aching, stepped-on thumb.
A friend once came to me with a screenplay he’d written. He wanted my opinion. So I gave it a read. And the story failed ten pages into the 110-page screenplay. Why? There were some elements that were actually quite good, but when you have a protagonist (I don’t recall his name, so let’s call him “Fred”) who possesses a gift that allows him to roll any number he chooses on a pair of dice, and he desperately needs to make about $1,000 so his mom’s hydro won’t be shut off, and as a result he gets hooked up with a shady crime boss who takes him to an underground gambling parlour and uses him to win money and all hell breaks loose, you know there’s an irremediable problem. No, the irremediable problem wasn’t the fact the stakes were too low. If that was the case, make it a cool $100,000 owed to that shady crime boss and the crime boss’s “muscle” is just days away from breaking every bone in Fred’s mom’s body and the screenplay’s main obstacle suddenly becomes tension-riddled and credible. The story still wouldn’t be saved, though, because unfortunately the “irremediable” is this: Instead of getting hooked up with some shady crime boss, why not hop on a plane and head to Vegas, win a grand at Ceasars Palace and save the day? Heck, in that case I see a bright future for our Fred; after he saves the day and his mom could once again pop popcorn in her microwave and make some KD on the stove (it was electric, I’m sure), why not have him win just a few thousand dollars a day so as not to arouse suspicion at the various casinos, and do this day after day as the story fades into that awe-inspiring Nevada sunset? Naturally my friend couldn’t write it like this because there would be no guns, no violence (apparently chaos reigns in underground gambling parlours), and no story, at least not a worthwhile one, anyhow.
When I offered this irremediable hurdle to my friend, he replied, “He can’t afford a plane ticket to Vegas.” When I answered, “Okay, what about a $20 bus ticket?” The last time I checked, buses went to Vegas every day.
It comes down to credibility-slash-believability. If the obstacle facing our main character is easily solved and the writer doesn’t address it and show why things aren’t quite that easy for our hero, then the story loses all credibility and fails. It’s like that proverbial elephant in the room. Your audience sees it. You need to address it. You can’t sweep that elephant under the rug and hope nobody notices. (Elephants are damn big; you’d need an impossibly enormous rug.) My friend didn’t address that elephant and his screenplay was about as useful as kindling. What if he had made Fred cripple? That might work, but still a stretch as obviously people with disabilities visit Vegas every day. Yes, kindling for sure. Or, wait, how about Fred was recently released from prison and as a new parolee he is forced to wear an ankle monitor and can’t leave the state . . . ?
If you read my last blog, you know I love dill pick chips for obvious reasons. You also know I love Netflix too and in particular their true crime documentaries. Don’t get me wrong, I also like lots of other stuff on their streaming platform. How can you not love Stranger Things? (Set in small town Indiana in the 1980s, rife with humour and endearing characters, not to mention heroism.) And what about The Queen’s Gambit? (Just as good as the Walter Tevis novel, and yes, yes, I admit it; I’m in love with Beth Harmon.) Needless to say, Netflix produces some great fictional story.
Which brings me to their production, The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window. I mean, the title was a tipoff, right?
Wrong.
You should never judge a book by its cover (or TV series by its title). And I didn’t. It’s why I threw good sense to the wind and sat down to watch The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window (allow me to take a moment here to thank the person who invented copy and paste from the bottom of my heart). If you haven’t seen the series but plan on watching it, I’m issuing the semi-proverbial “semi-spoiler alert” now as what follows is my critical eye kicking in . . .
The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window (just testing here to make sure my copy and paste is still working—sorry) had a lot of good-story elements; likeable main character (Kristen Bell was great), likeable minor characters (my favourite was Cameron Britton as handyman Buell—his efforts to repair a mailbox over seven of the eight episodes was hilarious in an understated sort of way), good tension and conflict, a plot that moved, dialogue that didn’t exactly sizzle but was good, and a climax that fell flat on its face.
That’s right; SPLAT!
The tip-off that there could be an issue with the story occurred in episode three when we find out the main character’s young daughter, Elizabeth, died when her psychiatrist dad—who works with serial killers—brings her to work and while doing his thing treating Massacre Mike (the man apparently killed and ate thirty unlucky souls), he is called from the room by a police officer for an apparent “emergency” and, well, you know what happened to Elizabeth alone with Massacre. That whole narrative didn’t work on oh so many levels, the least of which was “funny.” (Since I only issued a semi-spoiler alert I’ll say no more on this and in particular the aforementioned SPLAT climax when the killer—yes, there are murders—is revealed.)
What I’m trying to get at here is we all have a good grasp of story. What’s that tagline, “We all have a story”? Maybe it should be: “We all have and know story.” And it is through this understanding that each of us also has a critical eye. When something isn’t right, we just know it. I saw this quite a bit when I was in the corporate world fighting it out in boardrooms. (Okay, I’m not that tough so “fighting” may be a bit of an exaggeration.) I’d get in conversations with people and there were times I found they just couldn’t grasp what the heart of the problem actually was, or where the correct solution lay. That wasn’t the writer in me raising those red flags back then. It was simply my critical eye understanding the business I was in quite well and speaking up when the “story” went a little sideways or sometimes completely off track.
I think there is a message here for everyone. If there is, it might be, whenever you are pursuing your line of work or hobby or passion and things don’t seem right, don’t just ignore that elephant, instead look him straight in the eye and let your critical eye do the talking.