The Formula

Anybody read the piece by Malcolm Gladwell a couple weeks back in the New Yorker in the media issue? It was called The Formula and it was about these people who have developed a system that can often and with a sometimes startling degree of accuracy predict hits in movies and music.

Could we do this?

Is there a way to systematically and quantifiably just about guarantee or at least heighten considerably the chance that your story will resonate with readers?

An excerpt:

Pink estimated that they had analyzed thousands of movies. "The thing is that not everything comes to you as a script. For a long period, we worked for a broadcaster who used to send us a couple of paragraphs. We made our predictions based on that much. Having the script is actually too much information sometimes. You're trying to replicate what the audience is doing. They're trying to make a choice between three movies, and all they have at that point is whatever they've seen in TV Guide or on any trailer they've seen. We have to take a piece here and a piece here. Take a couple of reference points. When I look at a story, there are certain things I'm looking for-certain themes, and characters you immediately focus on." He thought for a moment. "That's not to deny that it matters whether the lead character wears a hat," he added, in a way that suggested he and Mr. Brown had actually thought long and hard about leads and hats."There's always a pattern," he went on. "There are certain stories that come back, time and time again, and that always work. You know, whenever we go into a market-and we work in fifty markets-the initial thing people say is 'What do you know about our market?' The assumption is that, say, Japan is different from us-that there has to be something else going on there. But, basically, they're just like us. It's the consistency of these reappearing things that I find amazing.""Biblical stories are a classic case," Mr. Brown put in. "There is something about what they're telling and the message that's coming out that seems to be so universal. With Mel Gibson's 'The Passion,' people always say, 'Who could have predicted that?' And the answer is, we could have."

Another:

"Locale is an extra character," Mr. Brown said. "But in this case it's a very bland character that didn't really help."In the Epagogix secret formula, it seemed, locale matters a great deal. "You know, there's a big difference between city and countryside," Mr. Pink said. "It can have a huge effect on a movie's ability to draw in viewers. And writers just do not take advantage of it. We have a certain set of values that we attach to certain places."Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown ticked off the movies and television shows that they thought understood the importance of locale: "Crimson Tide," "Lawrence of Arabia," "Lost," "Survivor," "Castaway," "Deliverance." Mr. Pink said, "The desert island is something that we have always recognized as a pungent backdrop, but it's not used that often. In the same way, prisons can be a powerful environment, because they are so well defined." The U.N. could have been like that, but it wasn't. Then there was the problem of starting, as both scripts did, in Africa-and not just Africa but a fictional country in Africa. The whole team found that crazy. "Audiences are pretty pa-rochial, by and large," Mr. Pink said. "If you start off by telling them, 'We're going to begin this movie in Africa,' you're going to lose them. They've bought their tickets. But when they come out they're going to say, 'It was all right. But it was Africa.' "

And another:

"It's funny," Mr. Pink said. "This past weekend, 'The Bodyguard' was on TV. Remember that piece of"-he winced-"entertainment? Which is about a bodyguard and a woman. The final scene is that they are right back together. It is very clearly and deliberately sown. That is the commercial way, if you want more bodies in the seats.""You have to either consummate it or allow for the possibility of that," Copaken agreed.