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So What Makes A Story
So Compelling
By Luke Mitchell
(Sci-Fi author) 2023
I've got a
question for you, today..
What do you get when you mix a sprawling space adventure with dashes of
political intrigue, daring space battles, and sinister forces seeking to topple
everything and take over?
I'd stand up and shout that you get Star Wars. Right?
Sure.
But isn't it also true that you maybe get Battlestar Galactica? Or The Expanse?
Or the Hyperion Cantos? (Just to name a few.)
How about when you mix some good old fashioned archaeological intrigue with
evil forces bent on conquering Earth?
Could be Indiana Jones and those pesky nazis. Could be the Michael Bay
Transformers movies. To some extent, it could even be The Da Vinci Code.
I'm not expecting any of this will strike you as a Robert-Langdon-sized
epiphany.
It's no surprise that many stories within a genre end up using similar
elements, right? Or that you can even find plenty of common patterns between
stories across many different genres.
But what exactly is it that separates Battlestar Galactica from The Expanse? Or
The Witcher from Game of Thrones? Or Indiana
It's kind of a big question, and there are nearly infinite answers, ranging
from "basically everything" to "almost nothing," depending
on how broad or nuanced a view we'd like to take.
Entire books could be (and have been) written about what makes a story a story,
what makes it unique (yet universal), and why it is that two authors can take
the EXACT same premise and outline and STILL end up with wildly different
stories at the end.
There are a ton of interesting facets to unpack here.
But the one I want to talk about today is tone.
... Which would normally dictate that I define what I actually mean by
"tone." But I don't have an especially insightful definition to offer.
Tone, in my mind, is something that's too pervasive in too many different ways
from story to story to really pinpoint the breadth of it.
It's there in the bleak, gritty aesthetic and dramatic camera cuts of
Battlestar Galactica, just as it's there in Star Wars with the whimsical
blaster/hyperdrive vocabulary and the mythical stature of Jedi Knights and the
Light Side vs. the Dark.
It's there in Indiana Jone's fedora-capped quips and roguish grins (and don't
forget the whip!), just as it's there in Robert Langdon's tense races to delve
through all that well-researched exposition in order to solve the puzzle and
move deeper into the metaphorical (or actual) labyrinth before the evil
henchmen catch up.
If I had to assign a simple word or two, I'd say that tone is the mood or
feeling of a story. Maybe even the texture—the unique fingerprint that
distinguishes it from myriad similar (or sometimes nearly identical, as in the
case between Black Panther and Aquaman) plots.
And sure, these might just seem like surface details. The paint job that lets
you recognize your car from your co-worker's doesn't actually affect what's
happening under the hood, does it? (That's a serious question. How do cars
work?)
And true, in some stories, tone really does end up feeling like something that
was pasted on after the fact, once all the meat of the story was already in
place. (e.g. all the movies that inexplicably started throwing everyone into
weird black trench coats following the wild success of The Matrix.)
But I'd argue that, in an "effective" story, tone is actually an
invaluable tool for amplifying, highlighting, and sometimes even challenging
whatever themes, emotions, or points the storyteller is trying to get at.
Tone can be a significant part of what makes a good story really feel cohesive
and complete.
Much like a well-matched character can lend serious emotional gravitas to a
given plot through their growth and self-realization, a well-paired tone (as
opposed to random, ad-hoc one) can make a story feel immensely more meaningful.
And that, in my not-so-humble opinion, is a big deal.
Imagine how much different Lord of the Rings would've felt if Frodo had been a
prophesied Chosen One and Gandalf had gone running around waving a wand and
casting spells willy-nilly with Latin incantations (a-la Harry Potter) rather
than working the sort of deep, slow magic that we see him work when he
absolutely must (and facing the toll that it so clearly takes on him when he
does).
Small details at first, maybe. But think about how they begin to seep through
the entire story and erode the emotional weight of what these characters must
go through to complete their respective journeys.
(Note: this is not at all to say that I think Harry Potter lacks emotional
fortitude, or anything of the sort. I love Harry Potter. I'm just offering one
little example of how tone and "small details" can deeply affect the
kind of emotional resonance a story might evoke.)
Think about the last few books you read. (Especially the ones that were from
markedly different genres, but gripped you all the same.)
What drew you to those books? What was it (specifically) that you enjoyed as
you read? Was there a common feeling, mood, or character archetype you can
identify across all of these stories?
When you pick up a book, do you find yourself craving a particular genre, or
are you in fact seeking your favourite tone?
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