Last time we went over the essential problem with telling a story in serial installments.

The audience gets hooked by a complication, and are satisfied by a resolution to that complication. If they don’t get that resoultion, they get mad. So, how do you satisfy an audience if you have to stop telling the story until the next episode? Especially if, as in video games and movies, it might take years to make the next installment?

The trick is to make a chain of interlinking stories within the overarching plot.

One complication drives the whole series, but smaller secondary complications get introduced and resolved each episode.

If you were to diagram it in an outline, a trilogy would look like this.

Episode 1

-Overarching complication introduced
-Episode 1 complication introduced
-Action
-Episode 2 complication introduced
-Episode 1 resolution

Episode 2

-Episode 2 complication restated
-Action
-Overarching complication re-introduced
-Episode 2 resolution

Episode 3

-Overarching complication restated
-Action
-Overarching resolution

I’m leaving out things like introductions and denouments to keep it simple, but you get the idea.

The important thing to note is that the complication for the next episode gets introduced before or at the same time that the complication for the current episode gets resolved. That’s what I mean by “interlinking” stories.

(This is distinct from the “cliffhanger” ending. The complication introduced at the end of an episode gets solved at the end of the next episode, not at the beginning as in a cliffhanger.)

If you’re a writer who actually gets paid for your writing, you can use this to your advantage. Linking the stories of episodes keps your audience hooked. Hooked audience keep coming back. That means work for you.

Let’s use Star Wars as an example.

At the beginning of the Star Wars original trilogy, the driving problem is that the evil Empire is making life miserable for the peace-loving citizens of the galaxy. Also, the Empire is going to wipe out the last hope for freedom, the rebellion, with a big fricking space station.

The overarching complication, the Empire’s opression, isn’t going to get resolved until the last episode, but blowing up the Death Star gives the audience enough closure to hold them over until the next movie.

The hook for The Empire Strikes Back comes before the end of A New Hope, as we see Darth Vader stabilize his ship and fly off. The empire is still out there, and the next movie will open with Vader leading an assault on the rebels.

On a side note, Empire manages to pull off the “bad” ending, a more difficult resolution to a conflict. When Luke faces Vader he finds out in the process that Vader is his father. The protagonist is defeated, but in the process, killing Vader becomes the goal no longer. The new complication of his parentage drives Luke’s story arc for the third and final movie.

A few notes:

The complications you choose for individual episode should drive the story towards the final overarching resolution. Don’t test your audience’s patience with filler.

However, you’ll notice the final episode focuses on the overarching resolution, with the audience being reminded what it is at the beginning. Since you’re wrapping up the story, it’s going to drive the last episode.

By now, many in the movie and tv industry pretty have a handle on serialized stories. The video game industry, though, is still in its infancy, and hasn’t totally figured out how to do the narratives yet.

Halo 2 is a notorious example. It begins with the Covenant forces invading Earth, something that we were told in the first game would spell doom for the humanity. It ends with… the Covenant invading Earth. You sort of leave and shoot some guys and come back, but it doesn’t resolve the complication that was presented at the beginning of the story. Winding up exactly where they started, many players were left feeling like they hadn’t really done anything at all.

The action stops with the Arbiter, a new character to the series, killing the chief of a newly introduced faction, keeping them from lighting the Halo rings and wiping out all life in the galaxy. This wouldn’t be a bad resolution… if the lighting of the ring had been the central complication driving Halo 2. The other faction’s plans to do so were introduced late in the game.

Bungie says the cliffhanger ending resulted from cuts due to time constraints, but I have to wonder what could have wrapped it up satisfactorily, given the setup. There was no Death Star to blow up, so to speak. I don’t think Bungie gave themselves an out.

The lesson here is that planning up front is vital. If you want to keep an audience, you need to know what the structure of your own story is and plan accordingly. Making a simple outline will save you a tremendous amount of tears and frustration later on.

If you can pull it off, though, you can look forward to some very happy audiences… and a loyal fanbase to boot.

Popularity: 3% [?]