The Terrible Reality of Story Arcs

Bob Denver Gilligan’s Island, 1966, CBS Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Think back to all the great stories you’ve heard, read while relaxing on a sunny beach, or watched in front of the big screen. What do they all have in common? Your first answer might be, “They kept me on the edge of my seat and their ending nailed it.”

OK, that might be true. But if you dig deeper, you’ll find they all stayed true to the narrative structure of the traditional story arc—Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution. In good stories, you don’t see this structure. The transition from one element to the next flows seamlessly.

The 1942 film Casablanca, often cited as one of the greatest movies ever made, offers a good example of this. You don’t even notice as the Exposition rolls through a series of establishing scenes from the refugees to Rick’s Café Américain and all the relevant characters therein. You can feel the Rising Action once Ilsa and Victor Laszlo enter the bar. Every subsequent scene moves the plot forward with ever-increasing tension. This includes the scene where Sam plays As Time Goes By and ends with Rick telling Laszlo to meet him at the airport. It’s at the airport where we find the Climax when Rick ultimately reveals how far he’s willing to go to help Laszlo, culminating with his shooting Major Strasser. From here, the Falling Action lets out a sigh of relief. Ilsa and Laszlo board the plane, Rick explains himself (the “hill of beans” moment), and the plane takes off as the police arrive. Although Laszlo got away with Ilsa, that’s not the end of the movie. The final Resolution comes when Captain Renault announces to the police to “round up the usual suspects” before disappearing into the fog with Rick to begin their “beautiful friendship.”

Perfect story arc. Perfect ending. Perfect movie. You left the theater satisfied after watching it, even if you really wanted Ilsa to end up with Rick.

Contrast this with a similar analysis done on the TV series Gilligan’s Island.

The Exposition is easy. It’s in the opening song. Once that’s over, each episode immediately enters the Rising Action stage. And that’s where we stay. Oh, sure, each episode has its own dramatic arc, but in terms of the story arc for the entire series, it never reaches a Climax.

Why not? Because if it did, that would be the end of the series. CBS canceled Gilligan’s Island after three seasons. It eventually became one of the most popular syndicated shows (just like the original Star Trek, a series which also ended without resolution).

Recall what happened to the popular series The Fugitive. The final episode resolved the ongoing mission of Dr. Richard Kimble. Not only did he finally confront the one-armed man, but the episode became the most-watched TV show in history up to that time.

Then what?

Crickets.

With the mystery of the unknown assailant having been resolved, audience enthusiasm waned. Why watch a show if you already know how it ends?

Indeed, it was for this reason that Nickelodeon required original cartoon series created for its network to never have a “final” episode that resolved all outstanding series’ questions. Nickelodeon wanted to keep repeating episodes of a series after new episode production had stopped.

When you read a book, you’ll call a good story “a real page-turner.” The story arc lures you in. You don’t want to stop reading. You want to know what happens next.

Suppose the book has an infinite number of pages. Eventually, you get tired and need to take a break from reading. With each break, your enthusiasm wanes. Ultimately, no matter how compelling the initial attraction, fatigue sets in, and you quit reading.

That’s the downside of serialization, i.e., a story arc that never ends. It tends to frustrate the audience because it goes on and on. Each “episode” just moves the goalpost further back. You can only take so much of this.

How does this explain such long-running series as The Simpsons or Gunsmoke? While these are series, they don’t possess a serial story arc. Each episode is self-contained. It’s as if the show is frozen in time. It’s easier to do this in animation where the characters don’t age. The Simpsons can go on for as long as Fox can get reliable voice actors. Cartoon characters don’t need to age. The same can’t be said of human characters. Gunsmoke fell victim to the age of its actors.

As much as we are drawn to a good story, it’s within our nature to expect closure. We want to know how the characters grow and resolve the conflicts they encounter. In sports, we want to see a winner at the end of the game. There’s a reason why they say ties in sports are like “kissing your sister.” Stories are the same. We want to see who wins. Telling us who wins, how they win, and why they win opens our eyes to the meaning of the story. And we all crave meaning.

Conflict poses the problem with story arcs, but not in the way that you think. It’s not dramatic conflict, it’s economic conflict.

Every author, every screenwriter, every storyteller wants one thing: to sell their book, their script, their story. It’s hard to sell a manuscript or to produce a box office hit. And when you do, the bean counters will tell you to do the whole lather-rinse-repeat cycle again. In other words, they want a sequel.

And that means creating a series—a story that doesn’t end.

What should you do? There are two approaches to take. I’ll call them “The Simpsons Strategy” and “The Fugitive Strategy.”

In The Fugitive Strategy, you set your hero on a multi-act quest that takes several movies (or books) to accomplish. You’ll find “three” is the magic number here, representing the three acts of a typical drama. Good examples here are J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings trilogy and George Lucas’ Star Wars (original trilogy). In both instances, you’ve seen how difficult it can be to extend the series beyond the initial three-part story.

The Simpsons Strategy allows you to create a series of stand-alone stories using the same characters. As far as the audience is concerned, the characters don’t age, even if the era appears to change. Examples here include the James Bond series and the Star Trek movies. In both cases, the characters remain, but different actors will play them. You don’t have to watch the movies in any particular order (although sometimes that helps). You can make these movies forever.

Business models always chase the money. Artists always chase meaning. These separate goals intersect with the “audience.” A bigger audience yields more sales. It also leads to more people seeing the author’s meaning.

Don’t be surprised to discover a new form of story arc will emerge that combines the best of both serialized and stand-alone formats.