Story Flow
Ink2Quill February 2018 Editorial
www.ink2quill.com

One aspect of story telling that is particularly important in visual entertainment like films, (blogs excluded), is story flow. Yes, how a story moves along is a very important part of say, for example, a good film. So of the most brilliant films, inspired from great books have had poor viewer attendance because of bad story flow. One such example is the film “Dune” which should have been two or three films or even a TV mini series to explain the story correctly. The book is easily one of the best sci-fi stories ever written but the film, even though done by great talent, was not so well understood by audience so it did not have the attendance it should have had. Another example is the film “Prometheus”. Too much of the story was left out to maintain story flow and so the audience did not understand what was really going on, and that was still a great story.

So what are good examples of a good story flow? Well, the TV mini series “Westworld” is one. In spite of having so many interesting characters and great themes the story moves along very well and does not feel stuck at any point. You also don´t feel that the story has been skipped over in parts like for the two first examples above.  Other movies with very good story flow include “Carlitos Way” , “The Silence Of The Lambs” , “Passengers” and “Valerian” to name a few.

Now it is only fair to explain the constraints Hollywood is forced to work under and how the culture of cinema and good TV has changed. Less people go to movies as movies become more expensive to make. Directors are forced to chop up films in ways they might not want to or cut short shooting for budget reasons. All of these factors contribute to problems of story flow.

So my final piece of advice is not to judge a book by its cover or a movie by its story flow if it is done well. A good movie or project does not have to be perfect to be good because there might be parts of the project that the creators got spot on.

Take care.

Written by John

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