Let's Look at Good Story Telling

As those who read my blog hopefully know, I am writer, a story teller. I hope I’m good one. I get little feedback on that, most of it being from my family and they may be a little biased. However good of story teller I might be, I can still see what is and is not good story telling elsewhere. This post is going to focus on good story telling.

So now, where to start. Let’s go with Gravity Falls. I wrote a post some time ago about just how well done the last episode of Gravity Falls was, and it was brilliant.  The whole series was. There was beginning and an end to the story, with an entertaining journey to get us there. We got to explore the world and get to see characters develop as the story progressed. We were given some well-done twists and surprises along the way. And while not every episode revolved around the core plot, those episodes were not forgotten and were entertaining as something more than filler. When we reach the end we have been on a highly rewarding ride we were not expecting. And it ended well.  The creator said he was not going to stretch it all out for more seasons, because he had a story to tell and was able to tell it in two. He did what so many other shows have failed to do because they keep going too long: he told a full story. He ended it before it got old. And that is one important thing some story tellers need to learn. There are "epic" stories that need not be so "epic".  Length does not equal quality. There are some series I have given up on because they have not figured out how to end things.

So next I want to talk about another animated series, and this one is one of the most brilliant things you will ever see on TV. Avatar: The Last Air Bender. Here we were given three season of a strong, well thought out storyline that has it all. Complex characters you love and hate, a real sense of the world and how it got where it is, heroes that are  learning how to be heroes as well as make mistakes, sometimes huge mistakes, and an ending that wrapped it all up, connecting back through the whole of the adventures we had been going through. During the three seasons we see our heroes at their best and their worst. They are flawed, they make mistakes, they are relatable. The events trigger our emotions as we laugh and cry with these characters. There is loss and redemption with twists and turns everywhere. You really cannot guess how anything will turn out.

Now I am going to go back and talk about the heroes failing and dealing with their failures. For me this is one powerful tool of storytelling. Avatar and its follow up series The Legend of Korra were both great at showing the heroes dealing with their failures. When you have a  hero who is perfect and never fails, it gets boring. There is no depth there, nothing relatable. To see a beloved hero fall can be painful, but when done right that hero comes back and shows they have learned from their failures, grown because of their mistakes, became something more than they were before, and they keep going no matter what, that is heroic. They have a power that is not them just being more powerful. They come  back with a realization as to why they failed, which mostly revolves around seeing their own flaws, which is often related to their ego and over confidence. These are the stories that stir our emotions and give us heroes to cheer for. A super person who is all powerful, never making mistakes is boring. There is a popular show out there with the heroes failing, but instead of showing us any character growth or learning form their defeat, they just go and find new ways to become stronger so they can beat up the bad guys better. I got bored with that series quickly. As a story teller, I want my characters to be something more than just powerful and with Avatar you get that. Aang’s choices are powerful because he realizes in the end it is about more than power, it is about how you use that power to stay true to who you are. That is powerful storytelling.

So now I’ll go to live action shows. One of the best ever for getting the story telling down is Babylon 5. Regretfully it took a bit to get things going, with season one not being what it needed to be to draw everyone in. You also get season five which was  rough due to them wrapping most everything up in season 4 because they did not think they were going to get season 5. But season 2, 3 and 4 tell a great story that really works. We see our characters really grow and change, becoming the heroes the galaxy needs. Every character gets a story arch with their ups and downs, overcoming their failures and in the end pulling it together for the greater good. The story arch for G’Kar and Londo might be the greatest character development story ever: what those two go through, who they become compared to who they were at the beginning, with all they went through followed by a truly cruel twist of fate. These are characters who you really would never have believed you would feel sorry for if you just watched the first season. It also has one of the most powerful, well done final episodes I have ever seen.

So for my final example of good story telling, I am going to be a little controversial, in that the third film in this trilogy was not well received and it does have its flaws.  But despite that, there is one very well done story throughout the trilogy that often is over looked due to the flaws of the third movie. I am talking about Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. The first two films are perfectly done and highly enjoyable. The third one falls apart at places. Yet if you take all three films together and look at the interconnected story between them, you find a brilliantly done story line. I am talking about the Peter Parker/ Harry Osbourne storyline, nothing else here. We get to see the two of them as great friends as Harry works hard to impress his father while seeing Peter needing no effort yet getting the accolades Harry desires. Even after his father’s death, Harry is still trying and failing as his big plans in the second movie go awry.  Then in the third movie he really takes on his father’s legacy. To  fail and then to learn it is not who he really is and in the end he is a hero. If you look at those movies as being Harry’s story, ignoring all else, you get a real powerful tale of a young man trying to live up to his father’s expectation at the cost of being himself, but in the end becoming someone stronger than that who sacrifices himself for all the right reasons. As Harry’s story, those three movies tell a really intense, character-driven story that is highly relatable and well plotted. Just ignore just about everything else in the third movie though. I find there are times when there is a great smaller story over shadowed by the mistakes for the bigger story that was being told.

Those are a few of my examples of powerful storytelling. There are a lot more and of course there are examples of weak story telling out there as well, and I believe as a story teller I can learn from both. I do hope my writing reflects the better examples of storytelling. If you have not seen the examples I have given here, I do highly recommend them and would be interested to see if others agree with me or not

Link to my Author Page:  https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B006JD2YUG


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