Perspective on Storytelling

I suppose before I go on my detailed reviews that it's best to post something on how I feel about stories. Well, I usually like stories with depth and/or personality to them.

What is "depth"?

I would say the complexity of characters involved and the complexity of the world the writer created. These aren't the only important things. If you create a world with rules and characters with their own personalities, you have to be consistent with that. A kindhearted charitable individual we see doing good things suddenly turning into a jerk for no reason is typically bad writing.

If you have a character do something out-of-character, you need to have a workable, logical explanation for it or have it suit the theme of your story in some way or another. Otherwise, it kills the consistency of the world you've made and damages your story.

Personality comes more in the form of the characters and perhaps some aspects of the world that has been created. While personality is important and often comes with character or story depth, I don't believe it can hold something expansive.

If you have a serial drama, you can't run off the charisma of the actors and the personality they have for eight seasons. You can with a comedy if the comedians involved are good and the writing is stellar, and you can hold most movies on the personality and charisma of the actors as long as you have good, consistent story writing to go along with that. Indiana Jones and Star Wars are not complex movies, but they do have personality in their characters and world. But I strongly doubt they would work as live-action 12 episodes a season series if they lacked depth. This is a difference between television series and movies.

Not to say movies can't have depth. Many, many do. But it's easier to pull off a film with more charisma than depth than it is to do the same for something that takes up twelve hours of your time. Even the patient would get tired of something like The Fifth Element if it were weekly and not just a two hour quirky sci-fi movie.

This is sort of meant as a reference for when I inevitably review bad movies or TV series and rip them apart. I like the occasional movies that breaks all the rules and turns bad, of course. I love Armageddon, but I would never defend its integrity as a story or as a film. It's objectively bad from a writing perspective, but I had tons of fun watching it.

However, I can't say the same for serials. I have never seen one poor quality television series that I ever looked back fondly on. So, uh, watch out for my rage mode when we get to Dexter's later seasons. It'll be fun to write my rage review of that show's eighth season even if I'll burst a vein in the process.

Across my many long-winded forum posts that start a debate on whatever sort of subject, I've never known how to end a post. So I end by saying that I may further elaborate or storytelling-related subjects in later posts. These are easy to write and I enjoy writing them.

Thank you for reading. My first review of a film or TV show will be up within a day or two.