What Is In A Good Story?
If you know me long enough you will find that I am a rather conflicted individual who hates reading, yet loves all different kinds of stories. Well how the hell could you find stories other than books? You guessed it, games and movies. Story-driven games especially. It is becoming more and more mainstream and being recognised for another great way to tell a story.
But what makes a good story GOOD? Well, welcome to the rumblings of me shitting on some of the horrible traits in stories that I have seen in recent years.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a literature major student nor an author nor a screenwriter nor a game designer nor anything (yet). I'm just someone who has passion for good stories that I want to talk about what I have summarised.
Driving Force
Any kind of stories needs a connection. A driving force for the characters and events. Why are the characters doing this? What or who are the characters doing this for? What I found about most of the stories today all have this problem. There is no driving force for a character. It's like you walk into a movie and see a guy just kills for... what exactly? Even some story tellers try to force a reason for their characters, it always seems to be so un-relatable.
How the hell can you make a story that catches everyone's attention when no-one really understand why the character is doing what they are doing? Not everyone can be superman for no reason, okay? Even superman himself does his shits for justice or for Lane. There should always be a clear and appropriate driving force that pushes both the characters and the story around. Without it, you are making the story, especially the characters in it, like a zombie without a brain doing whatever it's doing.
Characters
Speaking of characters, let's talk about characters. A good character design needs to have reasons too. Not only reasons to drive them forward, but also reasons for details that show more characteristics of them. But do not take it wrong! Not every single god damn human being has to have a pocket watch that means a lot to them. Yes, using symbols such as pocket watches is a good way to present your character with more depth, but why do they care about it? Your audience needs reasons, well designed reasons, to know more about your character.
Another important trait about your character is, again, being relatable. Audiences don't need perfect protagonists because there is nothing, especially for humans, that is perfect. Characters in a good story feels. They grief and anger when facing loss. Even add in a few evil traits to a character can make him or her much deeper than before. Let your character be selfish sometimes, make him cruel when he needs to be cruel.
Take The Last of Us for an example, at the last part of the game where Joel interrogates an enemy by shooting him in the dick, many players were shocked: What a terrible thing to do (translate: that fucking hurts)! Yet they feel the awesomeness of this scene because the story had already hook them up. They know that Joel would sacrifice saving the world to save Ellie, they understand the reasons behind Joel's cruelty and why he couldn't afford to lose another daughter figure.
When a story teller put all these together, the character seems like a real human being who the audience understand. We all know Joel isn't the perfect guy, and what he did might be something that we will do when facing his situation. All relatable in this sense, isn't it? Then why are there still stupid stories where the character saves the fucking world again and again like it's a piece of cake and they don't even give a shit when they do so?
The rage will continue...
