Why is modern entertainment, especially Hollywood, so bad? One of the reasons is that in Hollywood, writing has always taken a backseat. Writers have always been second, if not third, class citizens behind directors, producers, and actors. Whenever a movie has been nominated for best picture, but the director wasn’t, you’ll hear the question “Do they think this movie directed itself?” However, it seems Hollywood believes that movies write themselves.
Despite this systematic weakness of Hollywood, in the past there were still many good movies and television shows, but now that has almost disappeared. The problem is that Hollywood is violating five basic rules of storytelling. Four of these five rules have been given by five writers and the fifth by an award-winning actor. Once these rules are stated it becomes obvious that today’s Hollywood constantly violates them.
The first one is the Billy Wilder rule. When he was asked about the lack of messages in his movies, writer/director Wilder said, “If you’re going to have a message, be sure it’s sugarcoated so it’ll go down.” In other words, the story should always come first. Today we are getting messages about diversity, inclusion, and equity at the expense of story. It’s not just Hollywood that is making this mistake. Christian movies are just as big of violators when they sacrifice story for the Christian message. If the message comes before the story, then the story will be terrible.
The second rule is the Stephen King rule. In one of his lectures to young writers he said, “I not that interested in plot. I write about characters and situations.” Translation: don’t violate the characters you’ve developed just to move the plot along. The best example of breaking this rule is the eighth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones. They spent six or seven years showing how smart, crafty, and devious some of the key characters were, and then made them turn stupid and naive to keep the story moving. Just a little thought and creativity, and the story could have continued without denigrating these characters.
The third rule is Tolstoy’s shotgun. Tolstoy said that if a writer takes the time highlighting the grandfather’s shotgun in the first act it better become important in the third act. A modern way to say this is don’t forget setup and payoff. How many times do you see some unusual item or storyline get brought up and take center stage only to be forgotten and never revered too again? Or at the last minute something that was never mentioned before comes out of the blue to resolve all the issues that led to that point in the story? I would say far too often, especially for long story arcs that can cover multiple seasons. Once again, Game of Thrones is a prime example of this happening.
The fourth rule is the David Mamet/Jodi Picoult rule. David Mamet once said that if you see a young writer just out of college who’s received several writing awards in college you can bet, they don’t know how to write, because they are still writing for their professors. Likewise, Jodi Picoult said that early in her career she realized that she could be an academic writer that got a ton of awards or a popular writer that has a large audience. In other words, know your customer. Television and movie viewers want a good story not some corny dialogue that would get an ‘A’ in an English class. Unfortunately, that’s all Hollywood seems to be doing these days. Today’s writers want their work seen as innovative the way James Joyce was with stream of consciousness in his “masterpiece” Ulysses. The only problem is that Ulysses is never read, except by English majors and then only if forced to for a class. Remember, you’re writing for the audience and not the awards committee.
The final rule is the Kevin Spacey rule. He pointed out that he tries to feel the rhythm of the dialogue and speaks as quickly and as succinctly as he can, eliminating unnecessary dramatic pauses. In short, get to the point. Viewers don’t want real world speech with its pauses, nor corny melodramatic talk in their shows’ dialogue. They want good, snappy speaking that moves the story along and gives insight to the characters. Too often, there is dialogue and even entire subplots that add nothing to the main story nor explain a character’s motivation, it’s just padding. This seems to be especially true in television where whole episodes are given that add nothing to the story and are a waste of time.
True, just following these simple rules won’t ensure a good story. After all there have been bad movies and television that have followed them. However, violating them will ensure you get garbage, and that is all we’re getting from entertainment these days.
#Hollywood, #WritingRules, #BadStorytelling