Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Originality, conformism, and "the formula"

Most of you have probably heard at some point or another that nearly all Hollywood screenplays follow a formula. They must be 120 pages long, the main character is introduced by page 5, a certain type of event must happen on page 30 and page 90. Evidently the full formula is a lot more detailed. See for example the Wikipedia articles Three-act structure and Monomyth.

While developing my current work in progress, I wasn’t thinking about any formulas; I was just trying to write a good story and do what I think will work well toward that end. At this point I’m well through editing, and the plot and the development of the main characters are already well established at this point, and in my own mind at least it’s a pretty strong story. So then this Hollywood formula comes to mind, and I realized that on several key points it maps pretty closely to that formula.

And now, I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one paw, there’s a reason why so many screenplays follow this formula, which is that it works; it makes for a strong story. On the other paw, it feels as if that formula is conforming, following the crowd, and stories that follow it too closely are somehow lacking originality.

Any thoughts on this?

I’d stick with the first paw in this case. :slight_smile:

It’s certainly possible to end up with “formulaic” writing by adhering too closely to edicts from, say, Save the Cat! (which has been blamed, perhaps a little unfairly, for the state of Hollywood blockbusters today). But the fact that you say you weren’t thinking of any formulas when you were writing and just happened to come up with something that seems to fit that archetypal formula is almost certainly a good sign, not a bad one; it means you’ve got a naturally well-structured story.

I don’t deliberately try to follow these sorts of recipes, but I’ve learned a few, certainly internalized some of the lessons, and I know my writing’s gotten stronger for it. (And when I was revising it a couple years ago, I realized that “A Gift of Fire, A Gift of Blood” followed that general classic structure in a lot of ways, even though I hadn’t learned it yet – and I can’t help but suspect that’s part of the reason it got as popular as it did back in the fandom’s stone age…)

Honestly, I think there’s a reason indie films have become more and more popular over the past ten years >.> While the ol’e saying of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ holds a lot of merit, people do start to sense the redundancy, even if on a more instinctively level. If I remember right, there’s a good chunk of indie films that break out of the formula, and have done well doing so because they fulfill that craving movie-goers tend to get for something different. In a way, they fill a void, a need that the big budgets that follow the formula don’t.

**** all that and just write what you want.

Thanks, some interesting points made so far. I don’t watch movies very often these days, often because I’m too busy reading and writing to have time for them, but it’s also in part because too many movies nowadays just don’t do that much for me. For instance I have yet to watch Avatar, though I’ve been told that it’s the same basic story as Dances With Wolves and Pocahontas with more big-budget special effects. When I watched Rango a couple of years ago it seemed like it was nonstop overused cliches.

Save the Cat! was published in 2005 and it seems like the worst it might have done was to raise awareness of how formulaic Hollywood’s output already was for decades before that.

Anyone see Big Hero 6? That movie is so formulaic it doesn’t even try to hide it.

House M.D. also had a formula. Most every episode followed a predictable pattern.

I think formulas evolved through much trial and error on part of hollywood and the publishing industry. Paying attention to what movies did well and what movies did not. What stories sold, and what did not. Over time, patterns emerged, and now people are taught to emulate those patterns in their own story because they have the best audience response. And they sell.

Problem is, the more the formula is used, the more mundane it becomes. When you reach the point where you recognize the formula (this goes for songs, movies, TV, writing, art, anything), it’s time to try something else. Few places want that because anything that deviates from what sells is not guaranteed to sell.

Right now I just prefer to write and hope to be the one who sets the trend :slight_smile:

Creativity, I’ve heard it claimed, lurks in the nebulous borderlands between Order and Chaos. I think the same is true regarding “The Formula”. We need some “formula” to give the whole a workable overall shape, but also must apply a little stardust here and there in order that our work not end up indistinguishable from everyone else’s. There are only a limited number of viable plotlines available to a writer-- I once heard a scholarly type claim there are exactly fourteen, in fact, and several of them aren’t useful in Western literature because they don’t emotionally resonate with our culture. (One of these was a standard plotline about a brother avenging a death and then taking over his sibling’s spouse and social role; my memory is vague but that was the essence of it, I think.) That said… I make it a point to sit down and actively figure out what my reader expects to happen next at every major plot point, and then if all possible-- and 98% of the time it is-- have my protagonist do something entirely different for reasons that seem perfectly valid to him. Or perhaps key equipment the reader was just sure was about to come into play will fail. Or something. I often see the word “unpredictable” in comments I receive as a result, though at the “macro” level this is absolutely untrue. (The hero is ultimately going to find the treasure and get the girl, etc. Just not in the manner the reader expected.)

I think that this sort of “halfway” approach may be the best most of us can realistically hope for, in terms of plot/flow originality. Certainly it’s the best I’ve been capable of achieving so far.

I have two thoughts on this subject:

One, I read a fascinating article about a study where they asked two different groups to design advertisements, and then they rated those ads to see which were most creative. One group was taught about standard advertising tropes; the other was not. When their resulting ads were rated, the ads made by the group which had been taught the tropes were found to be more creative. Unfortunately, I can’t find a link to this article just now… But, I thought the conclusion that a fundamental knowledge of the tropes allowed people to attain greater creativity than if they were inventing ideas from scratch was fascinating.

Two, today’s Wondermark comic is on this topic: http://wondermark.com/c1104/

Okay… this is not the article or the study that I’ve been looking for, but it’s related and also interesting:

The conclusion of the above article: experts in the field of advertising are more creative than computers, but computers trained by experts are more creative than people with no training in advertising.

Translation: it helps to know the tropes.

In short I stand with Dwale here, however at length, it really depends on what you want to do and where you want your work to go. If you’re looking for success in the popular marketplace, then it makes sense to follow their rules. You can sometimes make it by writing something different which then sells because of its originality; publishers are always looking for something new. It is a risk however, and you may well find that they don’t take the story on. I’m not sure, but I think there’s been a discernable trend since the whole economic crisis in 2008 that publishers are less willing to take risks, and this can be exacerbated by the growth of ebooks and other formats. If you’re not looking for that, then you shouldn’t worry about formulas. If writing literary, good works is your concern, rather than churned out cash crops that most genre fiction turns into, then you just focus on writing your best story.

Personally, I’m more concerned with making something that is good, different, and stands as a work of literature. One can say formulas work, but that’s a bit of a trick. Styles are always changing, and believe me on this, literature is always changing its style. A lot of academics say it, but literature very much is a snapshot of its time. A popular book from the 18th century, such as Pamela, is totally different to another popular book from the 19th, such as Bleak House (which was first a monthly fifty page serial). My point is, the standards we work now aren’t going to stay this way forever. Things change slowly and over time, and good writing is more trying to anticipate where literature is going (what readers are going to want before they’ve read it) than trying to reproduce what it is now.

I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg - there are other considerations like the demographic you’re writing for and where you’re submitting your work. My general belief however, is that you shouldn’t worry about formulas and just try and write strong fiction that is interesting, unpredictable, and something that can stand on its own merits.

Are you referring to the 36 dramatic situations?

I suppose if you compress some of the related ones, you’d get 14 or so.

It is a good idea to know what’s out there, what’s been done, what worked, what didn’t work. That’s true in any field, creative or not. Almost every song follows a formula, and they succeed. The ones that don’t follow a formula tend not to succeed. The big successes often take the formula that already works and change an element or two. That’s quite common. What I don’t have patience for is following the formula to the letter because you’re sure it’s going to sell. Sadly, that is often the best way to make money.

Save the Cat! was published in 2005, but it’s definitely had a significant influence in Hollywood, one that not everyone feels is positive. (See Peter Suderman’s “Save the Movie!” for an impassioned grump about Snyder.) While I think Snyder’s book has value, he takes existing formulas and pushes them a little farther than they should be pushed by turning them into a Storytelling for Dummies checklist. When people think about “formulaic writing,” Snyder’s guidelines are pretty much what they’re thinking of.

If you step back from such draconian prescriptions, what we’re really talking about is sussing out (in Suderman’s phrase) the theoretical underpinnings of storytelling. Screenwriters have made something of a science of this, I suspect because they simply have much less space to work in–structurally, a screenplay is much closer to a novella than it is to a novel. Syd Field’s classic Screenplay is a good example of digging into the theory. Dramatica Story Expert, an eclectic piece of software designed to help you ferret out story structure by offering inscrutable directives like “Describe how the relationship between Gail Simmons and Bright Sky centers around a manner of thinking,” is an even better one.

Yet I don’t think anyone’s going to argue that Casablanca, Blade Runner and Tootsie are largely indistinguishable from one another, despite the fact that all of them can be analyzed in terms of (say) Dramatica’s “Theory of Story.” Obviously, those movies weren’t written using that theory as a blueprint–but that’s kind of the point. What elements do these stories have in common?

A lot of it’s just thinking about storytelling in a more rigorous way. What does your protagonist want? What does she need, which is almost certainly something entirely different? Who stands in the way of what she wants and what she needs? You start to look at stories in terms of arcs, both the overall plot arc and the character arc. Does she succeed in the story’s overall goal? Does she change as a character or remain steadfast? Does she change by gaining a new aspect or understanding, or by giving up one that was causing her problems? Whether she succeeds or fails, how does the audience feel about that outcome? (You can “fail” to achieve the goal that drives the plot and still have a good ending, or vice versa.) Once you start looking at “formulas” that way, they stop sounding quite so formulaic.

Write what you want to write is always good advice–the point of learning about these theories shouldn’t be to get you to write stuff you don’t want to write, it should be to get you to write what you want better.

This was something that was brought up at a furry writing panel I attended once, by someone who seemed quite educated in the academic sense in literature. (I have no such academic background, just a certain amount of practical experience.) Perhaps that’s what he was referring to, perhaps not. I have no way of knowing. However, the concept rather intrigued me and stuck in my head.

As an aside, the more I actively think about this sort of thing beyond a certain point the harder actual writing becomes. For me, plot and core-idea generation are things that happen naturally and organically, almost spontaneously. I’ve been doing it for self-consumption for as long as I can remember, certainly much longer than I’ve been actually producing books and stories for others. While literary craftsmanship is most assuredly a learned thing for me and worthy of active study, well…

I once made the mistake of looking at the “TV-Tropes” web pages. In under ten minutes I did so much damage to my “story-maker” that I then immediately had my longest literary dry spell ever. It went on for over twelve weeks, and I thought I was washed up. Every time an idea came, instead of exploring it and filling it out and being a happy, prolific author I immediately tried to assign it to a trope-category. Meanwhile, my subconscious screamed “Don’t bother writing that one; it’s been done before!” It wasn’t until I finally-- and deliberately-- began to forget even those few “tropes” articles I’d read that I got back on track. Ever since then, I’ve refused to follow a single link to that page. Ever. Under any circumstances. For me, that kind of literary analytical thinking is pure poison to creativity. It may serve others well-- I’m not questioning that. But for me, the best answer to questions like the one facing the group here is often to cover my ears and shout “La, la, la!” just as loud as I can. Once things hit a certain depth-- and it doesn’t take long!-- that kind of rigorous analysis/logical breakdown of storymaking makes me overthink everything and feeds my corrosive self-doubt. Again, it clearly serves someone’s purpose somewhere, or there wouldn’t do so much of it and degrees available in it. But for me overanlysis at the creativity level is nothing but artistic kryptonite.

Maybe, friend Mwalimu, you too should simply shout “La, la!” yourself and keep right on making your fans happy in blissful ignorance? It works for me.

Evidently I’m not so easily bothered by what I read on TVTropes. But thank you. I have a long way to go before I’ll have as many fans as you. But if I get there it’ll be by doing what “feels right”, not by following any formula. Whether or not the result matches any formula, so what.

I have a writer friend who steers clear of TVTropes because he fears the site would kill his creativity. I make fun of that by saying it’s like being a chemist who fears learning of the periodic table will cramp his style… but he’s made a lot more money at this than me so far.

There’s a good book on attempts to make Artificial Intelligence that’s creative, which involves defining creativity. Their (mostly Douglas Hofstadter’s) opinion is that creativity involves having a finely honed taste in your chosen field, coming up with variations on existing ideas, critiquing them mercilessly, spotting patterns in them, and changing those ideas so much that they often drift far from the original inspiration while still scoring well with your taste. (For instance, I jotted down some ideas for a story yesterday and started to notice a pattern, then went “aha, that can be a theme” and began to develop that theme consciously.) By that theory, being good at creativity involves being exposed to a lot of ideas that you can then deconstruct and play with, not trying to invent something totally original from scratch. See eg. TVTropes’ page about writing the tropeless tale: don’t use any recognizable plot structure, setting, character types…

I find it helpful to pay attention to tropes. Not necessarily looking them up, but watching movies, TV shows, reading other books, finding things that just strike me as “typical” sci-fi, or “typical” fantasy… or “typical” furry. It helps me learn which conventions to avoid. Not consciously, but as I’m letting a story grow organically, knowing what’s been done to death helps it avoid grown gin those directions.

It’s one reason I don’t make a rigid outline. As Stephen King wrote on On Writing, heavily plotted stories tend to be stale, formulaic and repetitive of all the tropes you’ve seen before. Not that I don’t make plans, but there should be a lot of room for characters to take action on their own.

Way back when, I used to argue Star Trek: DS9 versus Babylon 5. These arguments generally dead-ended since I hadn’t watched B5 and my friend who loved B5 hadn’t watch DS9. (We were high school students. High school was boring, so we argued sci-fi.) However, my friend liked to pull out the argument that “Babylon 5 was completely pre-planned from the beginning!” like it was some trump card about how brilliant B5 was.

Years later, I got around to watching all of B5… and the above quote pretty much captures how I now feel about using the argument “it was completely pre-planned from the beginning!” as a defense of a story’s quality.

Since I have not seen B5 myself, I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not :slight_smile:

I think if you have a huge story arc, it doesn’t hurt to plan that ahead of time, and the results can be quite surprising (Doctor Who). Sometimes making it up as you go doesn’t lead to a satisfying conclusion (Lost). having an idea for where you want a story to go isn’t a bad thing, as long as you’re open to change if the story has a better idea.

My hero. <3