Tip # 33: Writing

By Anant Mathur (February 4, 2013) 

Often I'm told by people that they're fed up of the run-of-the-mill stories they see in films and on television. My first response is that I agree with them but then as we converse further I explain why this exists today.

The film and television medium are not anything new; they've been around for many decades and generations. Hundreds of thousands of stories have been told over the years and as the audience watches more and more, they develop a better understanding of how stories are constructed and are able to figure out scenes and plot points before they are revealed to them; this makes the story dull and boring for them. The reason this happens is because over the years the people who first started in film and television have created formulas for writing for the big and small screens.

Today, we live in a world where filmmakers and television artist are trained from some school or the other, a place where they have learned these formulas. The problem is that these formulas don't work anymore. As mentioned earlier, people today have watched enough television and films to figure out the end of a story within the first 2 minutes. I can usually figure out the whole story from a trailer - that's how dull stories are today.

Love stories have been done to death, especially in India, and now whenever someone goes to see a love story they know that the couple is going to end up together even before they get into the theater, how the story gets there is irrelevant. 

Same is true for a murder mystery, you already know one of the characters has done it and chances are you'll know much before you're told who the killer is and won't enjoy the rest of the story. Gone are the days when you could stretch a storyline till the cows came home. Now people get bored. The audience is a little forgiving towards television programs because they don't cost all that much to watch, but films are expensive and if they disappoint they really turn an audience off.

So how do you write a story that keeps the interest of the audience? Glad you asked. For starters you can't just have one problem in your story. For example, you can't have a love story where the only issue is that the parents don't like the guy or girl and you spend the whole time trying to convince the parents that the guy or girl is the right choice. As a writer you need to give them more than one problem to deal with. One problem is solved and another one has to be solved then another two or three, each problem may only last 5, 10 or 15 minutes but it should keep the viewer glued to the screen. Similarly in a mystery, it's the opposite, you can't keep throwing twist after twist after twist into your story, it makes your story unreliable and very frustrating for the viewer to follow. The best mysteries are the ones which have one amazing twist at the end and the killer isn't one of the characters you've been following for the last 2-3 hrs. 

When films were first made there were no formulas or styles, people just told stories the best way they knew how. Today, filmmakers get so wrapped up in formulas, style and the technical aspects that they forget about telling a good story. Going to film school is not about learning the technical aspects of filmmaking - which you can learn while on the job. Film school is about learning how to tell a brilliant story that people will enjoy for generations. If you can't make a classic what's the point of being in this field? Stop thinking about it as a business/cash cow and start thinking about it as an opportunity, an opportunity to tell your audience a story they haven't seen before. Tell your story the way you think it should be told, forget formulas and style, each story should be a unique experience and not a factory product.

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