When I read a story, or when I watch one in a movie, on television, or on stage, I find that the element which intrigues me the most is the relationships between the characters, and how they react to each other.
I ask myself, “What makes them sad? What pisses them off? What elevates them? What pushes them over the edge?” In essence, when I see, hear, read a story, I want to know “What makes these people tick?” I want to know what their individual stories are, and how these stories determine the course of the overall plot.
Each character is like a rivulet, a creek, a crack in the pavement overflowing with water from the hose. And, at some point or other, these bubbling, brewing brooks meet up with other similar tributaries in order to form a stream (or rapids. . . whichever:).
This stream is the overall story.
But it’s not just this one plot or one story line flowing at a steady, rolling pace. It’s this tumultuous hodgepodge, this intertwining and interweaving of these different characters each with their own pasts, their own paths, and their own emotions coming together, perhaps by chance, but most likely because they are compelled by the forces of their own natures. It is a compulsion that brings them together in one torrential river, in one crazy story.
The characters, like the tributaries, each come from different places. They all have their own sources, and they all have their own paths that they have traversed in order to reach this point. And when they do reach this point they discover they are all on the same course, and that somehow (because they have no other choice) they’ve got to flow together. They have to interact.
Sometimes the results of these interactions are as smooth as a still pond (If that’s possible. To quote a famous Buddhist poem, “The old pond/ a frog jumps in/ Kerplunk!”), and then sometimes (okay, who are we kidding here? USUALLY) they are far from smooth. Usually, these characters go right over that cliff in a rush of churning water and spray. They don’t just fall in a smooth current, they crash into the rocks below! And they do it with a loud rush that ends in an even louder boom. (Sidenote/segway/tangent on this confusing metaphor: Really, they shouldn’t be called waterfalls but rather watercrashes. The word fall just doesn’t possess the volume needed to describe what the water does.)
But that crash, that boom, that collision of the different characters with their different paths, traveling from different sources, and then mixing together and then failing together, or maybe even succeeding together. . . that. . . that. . .that right there is what makes a damn fine story.
That’s what makes it interesting.
It’s not genre, it’s not politics, it’s not science, or any other gimmick. Those are just settings, frameworks, backgrounds. Because really, when it all comes down to it, people aren’t going to connect to government conspiracy, murder mystery, science fiction, romantic comedy, or law and order.
In the end, people always connect with people.
People are the story.
Very well done and very well thought out. I have to agree. This is exactly the kind of formula that so many television shows follow. What would Star Trek be without this kind of character interaction?
When I read a series of books, or pick up a new television show I enjoy watching, the ensemble of characters has to be just right. I have to be intrigued by the way they fit together again and again.