Life gets weird sometimes. It’s illogical and random. A loved one dies unexpectedly, you get fired without warning, a car blows through a red light and plows into you. There’s no reason behind it, just erratic happenings.
It doesn’t work that way in stories. Every scene needs a reason to exist. They must either drive the story forward or add depth to a character’s development. They shouldn’t just exist.
My husband and I watched a film over the weekend and things kept happening. No reason. No motivation. No consequence. They just happened because the plot needed them to happen. That is not how stories are supposed to work.
In one scene, the family caught a ride through an insurgent area (following a natural disaster). Being able to move through the contentious landscape was essential, so when the driver died and the van ruined, it should have mattered. It did not. The next scene was the family arriving at a destination that had been one hour away by car. No mention of how they made it through. No grief for the driver. No worries at all.
Also, no point to the driver’s death. It was made meaningless. Like so much of the film.
Stories need reason and logic. Readers and audiences need to know why things happen and that they matter. If they don’t, there is no reason for them to be part of the story.
This film’s ending was just as bad. It didn’t wrap up the journey or give resolution to the characters. It ending in narration—not a wrap up as much as a sermon, preaching the point of everything that had happened.
What?!
If you have to tack on your message at the end (in voice-over, no less), then you have a problem.
Any message or underlying theme should be woven into the story itself, not tacked on at the end. And no, that doesn’t mean slip it into dialogue like some clunky telemarketing script. Make it shine through the character’s motivation and actions. Through the struggles and fears. Weave it into the fabric of the story itself, a motivating factor for the character to keep going.
Or skip it entirely. Make the story about what the character cares about and use that to imply a bigger message without every resorting to preaching at your audience.
Stories fail because:
They break the core promise of the story:
We’ve all been there. We saw a trailer or read a blurb that promised one type of story only to find it was a ruse. The story we got wasn’t anything like what we were promised. Or worse, the story started out as promised and then shifted at some point and became something else entirely. It missed the core elements that would have made it the story they promised.
They have characters we don’t care about:
Characters don’t have to be likable for us to care. Tons of books and films feature unlikable characters and we still root for them, or against them. But when faced with complex characters filled with flaws and foibles, a strong backstory that helps us understand why they act the way they do, we invest emotionally in them. We care what happens. But we don’t if those same characters are passive, inconsistent, or emotionally flat. There is no reason to waste energy on them if there is nothing there to hang onto or care about.
There is no movement:
A story has to keep moving. Go too slow, and the audience gets bored. Go too fast, and you risk losing or overwhelming them. Pacing matters. The story has to move enough to keep readers hooked and turning pages. Each scene needs a purpose and reason to exist—action, reaction, character development, and moving the story forward. If it doesn’t do at least two of these, you need to rewrite it. If the plot wanders, repeats itself, or delays the inciting incident too long at the start, then the story stalls.
There’s no point:
When there is no throughline or underlying theme, the story falls flat. There is no guiding principle to hold it together and help it move forward. Instead, it becomes a list of happenings, not a story. You need a throughline to provide that motivation and support the story logic supporting the plot. Without it, readers/audiences lose interest. It’s the difference between reading your to do list out loud and telling a story of your day, with an overarching theme holding the random things together and making them evidence to support your theme.
The conflict is underpowered or too easy to solve:
Conflict drives a story. The push and pull of a character’s actions against seemingly impossible odds. That’s what makes a story work. But when you present a weak conflict or one that could be fixed with a single conversation (I’m looking at some bad romance novels here), the story fails. Stories don’t work without tension. There can be little tension if the audience figures out the solution two minutes into the story. The outcome to any conflict should not feel inevitable. It should feel earned. They protagonist needs to overcome serious obstacles and hardships (or deep inner conflicts) to succeed. Without that, the ending feels flat and meaningless.
The stakes are unclear:
Like conflict, the stakes need to be high enough to cause tension and anxiety. We need to worry that the protagonist might not overcome them this time. Or that it will cost them more than we would like by the end. The best stories are the ones we can’t see how it will resolve. The stakes seem too high to overcome. The obstacles too great. The risk too big. That’s what makes us want to keep reading or watching. It’s what makes us invest in the outcome. When that is missing or unclear, our mind wanders and our hearts check out. We end up not caring.
The ending doesn’t pay off what the story set up:
Every story should include a dramatic question—an open loop that must be closed by the end of the story. The dramatic question (or throughline) is what drives the story forward. It promises a resolution by the end. Not the resolution the protagonist often anticipates, but the one that is best for the story and character. This is about wants vs. needs. A great story ends by providing what the character needs. But a terrible story doesn’t give either—the want or the need. It just ends. Or it throws in a twist that makes everything that happened before meaningless. A story needs to pay off what it set up. Every time. As Anton Chekhov said, “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”
There is a simple way to avoid these mistakes. Ask yourself:
- What does the protagonist want?
- What blocks them?
- Why should we care?
- What changes by the end?
If you are unclear on any of these answers, the audience will feel it, even if they can’t explain why.
Next week, we will tackle the issues to watch out for when writing. What needs to be included? What should be avoided? What elements tend to be to blame for stories going off the rails.