: Re: What Kind of Story can Achieve Cult Status? Note: I have rewritten this question, upon realizing it was being misinterpreted. Please reread the question and provide new answers accordingly. Star

@Annie587

Vote Up Vote Down

I don't think you can find a formula for the stories that are truly great and memorable, because what makes them great and memorable is precisely that they DON'T follow a formula. The most memorable stories are those that are original and creative.

Any time a Hollywood movie is successful, you always see a horde of imitators. These imitators almost always pick the most surface aspects of the story to copy. I read an article a few years back where they quoted some Hollywood producer saying that the success of the Harry Potter movies showed that Americans were interested in "movies about British school children", and so he was planning on making such a movie. I don't recall what his movie was or if it was successful, but his analysis was absurd at a dozen levels. At the very least I'd say that he completely missed the point of Harry Potter. I think few went to see it saying, "I want to watch a movie about British school children". More likely they were thinking, "I want to watch a movie about magic and fantasy."

But even at that, just because a story about magic was successful doesn't mean that all stories about magic will be successful, or even particularly that stories about magic are more likely to be successful. Adding some scenes about magic to an otherwise non-magic story is unlikely to improve it. It will probably make it worse.

An example suddenly occurs to me. Almost everyone is interested in sex, so lots of stories including sex scenes or subplots. I don't doubt that can help a story's popularity. But I've read many books and seen many movies where they throw in a sex scene for no apparent purpose. I recall a sci-fi story I read once about a female spaceship captain that had nothing to do with sex, except there was a scene where she's walking down the hall of the ship and then suddenly steps in to the cabin of one of the other officers, they have sex, and she leaves. There was no lead up to it and it never comes up again. It has no apparent affect on ... anything. It was like the author or the publisher just decided they needed a sex scene so they flipped open the manuscript to a random point and threw one in.

What makes some stories popular is that they are original and creative in some way, that they have interesting plots, that they have engaging characters, and that they are well written. There's no formula for that. It's more of an anti-formula. It you set out to write a story saying, for example, "people like stories about time travel" or "... about brilliant detectives" or whatever, that's of virtually no help in writing a good story. If you set out trying to apply a formula, you will almost surely end up with a trite, run-of-the-mill story.

Of course that doesn't mean that there's nothing to be learned by studying popular stories. Just the opposite. There are all sorts of tools and techniques that one can pick up. I think the tool analogy is a good one. If someone asked, "how can I paint a great painting that will be remembered for centuries like the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper?", there's no formula we could give. It would be foolish to say that because the Mona Lisa has lots of browns that therefore the secret to great painting is lots of browns. But it is fair to say, "start by learning to use a paint brush" and "learn to create the color you want by mixing paints" and so on.

(0)

Login to post a comment!