Aesthetics

I used to think boring your audience was the greatest sin a storyteller could commit. Maybe I still do. But here’s another one that may be just as bad: confusing your audience.

Look. Sometimes we like to get fancy, to play around with the structure a little, to dabble in the second-person, to try a new voice, to play with the order of scenes. Sometimes this works (21 Grams, Memento, Michael Clayton). Sometimes it’s infuriating (Donnie Darko). All I’m saying is that when you make a decision to tell a story through any other method besides third-person beginning-middle-end, you’re making your own job more difficult. Which is OK. Difficult can be good. It just means you have to work twice as hard to keep your audience under your spell, to keep their eyes where you want them. Remember that. One time I wrote a story backward, with each successive scene happening earlier in time than the one preceding it. One person really loved it. Everyone else was confused. Maybe it was sorta cool. More likely it was pointless.

Innovative structure and experimental voice are two roaring chainsaws. Leave them alone until you really know what you’re doing.