Storytelling is a hard and multifaceted thing. You want to have an engaging plot, vivid locations, three dimensional characters, and you want your readers to feel. Now it’s not an equal pie chart, but you do want to include all of them. Sadly, today’s storytelling lacks the complete picture of that. I love movies, but they’ve lacked this picture for the last few years. That’s one of the main reasons why they’re bad.

When you watch a franchise, blockbuster movie, which is all there seems to be in the theater these days, you get an incomplete picture. It’s weird because movies today average between 2 and 2 hours and 30 minutes, far from the under 2 hours they used to be. You would think with all the extra time they’d keep the basics in. But I guess they’re using that time for a messy, CGI battle. To understand the story, you have to read a book, watch a TV show exclusive on their streaming network, read a comic, and play a video game. Who wants to do all that except for the hardcore fan? Most people don’t. Yet companies do it because it’s another source of income and they can add more CGI battles for the average viewer.

I feel like this was done first with The Matrix sequels. They required you to do all the extra stuff, but I never felt as if the Wachowskis were trying to squeeze more money out of you. They had so much story to tell that they couldn’t fit it all in the two movies. It wasn’t all bad and I believe one of the things they did right–The Animatrix. That added backstory to the world with minor characters you wouldn’t spend much time with and showed more slices of life. It showed the story from different perspectives thereby creating different yet similar stories. That’s the way to do it.

While The Animatrix answered questions you didn’t quite know you wanted or would find intriguing, when companies do answer questions, they answer the wrong ones. Did anyone want to know Han Solo’s last name? Does anyone care about nameless clones in the Clone Wars or wanted to see the Darth Vader’s backstory? Maybe Vader would have been interesting had it been done well. On the other hand, sometimes companies ask the questions but never give you answers.



In whatever form of storytelling you plan to do, if you craft a complete story no one’s going to be mad at you. They might hate the characters, think the plot is ridiculous, and that it’s very cliched, but they’re not going to hate the basics of what you were trying to tell. They’re not going to feel as if you conned them from money because they didn’t get what they paid for. They’re not going to feel as if you had no idea where you were going and that you were full of shit.

Don’t cheat the audience or yourself.

Marc Johnson