Stop telling me it's good just because you liked it!

In the vast majority of cases, I find that when somebody says that some movie or book or TV show is “good”, all they really mean is that they liked it, and when they say something is “bad” or “stupid”, what they really mean is that they didn’t like it. Which is fine and all, but unless I know the reviewer and their æsthetic preferences really well, it’s a pretty meaningless appraisal.

For some time now, I’ve been trying to be more explicit about whether my appraisal of something is an evaluation of its quality, or is a description of my own reception of it.

Good things that I don’t like

The need to make this distinction was driven home to me this week as I read Jonathan Tropper’s novel This is Where I Leave You. 

My full review is on Goodreads, but the gist of it is that:

• I think this book is extremely well executed, and
• I didn’t like it much at all.

That is, I think it is very much a good book, even it it’s not my thing.

In practical terms, this means that I would very honestly and enthusiastically recommend it to somebody whose æsthetic preferences I know run in the direction that Tropper takes his readers. (I don’t immediately know who that is, but I strongly suspect that if you liked The Royal Tenenbaums or Arrested Development, you’ll get some good laughs out of this book.)

Similarly, in TV terms, I might not have liked The Wire, but I would confidently recommend it to fans of gritty police procedurals, and although I ground my teeth all the way through the episodes of Glee that I sampled, I have honestly, wholeheartedly, and successfully recommended it to other people.

Things I like that are not good

In the opposite direction, I’m perfectly comfortable to say that there’s a lot of stuff that I like or even love that isn’t very good in any objective sense. I’m talking about the books, movies, and TV shows that people too often describe as “guilty pleasures” — a term I despise and reject because of its inherent notion of shamefulness at simply liking something that other people don’t like.

Schadenfreude

First, as a connoisseur of truly awful cinema, it’s important for me to distinguish between things I like despite their being not very good, and things I like because they’re really, really bad. The first category recognises that there’s more to æsthetic preference than simply the quality (“how-well-done-ness”) of a book, film, or TV show. The second category just reveals some kind of gleeful schadenfreude on my part.

To put that in perspective, the films I’m talking about in the second category aren’t the multi-million-dollar Hollywood flops that make up the “worst movie” lists of the Internet, but the films that make those flops look like masterpieces of cinematic art. I’m talking about the indie films that can’t even keep a shot in focus, or where (as a product of the script or the edit) whole scenes make no sense at all (“what just happened there?”), or where hapless actors unconvincingly pretend to be terrorised by a giant turkey head made of papier-mâché, or where the whole thing appears to have been shot in one take on a camcorder by some dude who clearly saw The Exorcist that one time. Seriously.

So as much as I enjoy watching these train wrecks, I think my enjoyment of them comes from a different place and does not reflect æsthetic appeal. And yet, I honestly liked Blood Freak and enjoyed the time I spent watching it more than the time I’ve spent watching many highly-acclaimed and competent films (anything by Quentin Tarantino, for example).

Investment in a bigger narrative

Maybe the most common examples of narratives that I (and probably many other people) like for reasons other than quality are individual sub-par installments of  TV shows, novel series, or film franchises. As a Star Trek fan, this investment in a larger narrative has kept me watching “Spock’s Brain” over and over and over again across decades as the episode comes up in my regular re-watches of the series.

My reception of this episode and similar atrocities from the Star Trek and Doctor Who canons can be explained wholly in terms of a belief in the overall quality of the series or franchise. (And I still draw the line at Voyager :P)

Geniune aesthetic appeal

Yet, there are still other narratives I like not for their incompetence, not for their part in a bigger narrative that I like, but simply—for whatever reason—on their own terms. 

For example, consider End of Days. I adore this film. I like its scope, its themes, its look, and its end-of-the-millennium vibe (for long-term readers familiar with my system of appeal characteristics, it scores high on story and affect; and medium-low on craft and idea). However, there’s no way that I’m ever going to try and defend it as a good film, and I have no idea of to whom I could possibly ever recommend it. There’s plenty of other genre films I could name here too, whose appeal to me is entirely disproportional to the skill of their execution or their ability to realise their creators‘ visions.

Conclusion

Next time you go to tell someone how “good” or “bad” you think a book, movie, or TV show (or painting, or dance performance, or game, or album) is, stop for a moment and ask yourself what you’re really claiming. Is the piece really that terrible or stupid just because it doesn’t appeal to you personally? And is your approbation all that’s required for a work to be “good”?

At the very least, framing an appraisal in terms of either “good” or “liked” makes further discussion and debate meaningful: the parameters are defined and explicit.

Liking books, TV shows and movies: Affect

This is the sixth and final part of a series in which I examine elements of the appeal of a book, movie, or TV show. I disclose and discuss my own personal preferences here, but I believe that the approach is more generally applicable: just substitute your own preferences for mine.

In previous installments, I covered character, setting, plot, craft, and idea. As the final aspect, I consider affect. The schema I describe in these articles is a development and extension of a schema proposed by librarian Nancy Pearl.[1] Affect is the second completely new characteristic which I add to hers, and considers how a book, film, or TV show makes me feel.

Generally, I value a story that can make me feel intensely. In some cases, the feelings that a story brings out in me might be my main reason for liking it. One example that springs immediately to mind is Nanni Moretti’s film La stanza del figlio (‘The Son’s Room’). This is an intimate observation of the grief of a family as they cope with the death of a teenager. The characters are unremarkable people, there is little actual story to speak of, and while competently filmed, nothing about its production stands out for me. But I found watching it a devastating, wrenching experience. This is a film which, for me, the main appeal is entirely in its affect. As another example, while I certainly enjoyed the clever and quirky ideas in The Time Traveler’s Wife, it’s the way that the book made me feel that has made it one of my all-time favourites.

I can think of one case, however, where my intense feelings about a book worked against its appeal: American Psycho, which I found gratuitously cruel (yes, I understand that was the whole point). The revulsion I felt at the text meant that I abandoned the book before I got very far with it. This is an exception though.

The appeal of comedy lies almost entirely within the realm of affect. If I don’t find a comedy funny, then it doesn’t really matter to me how well put-together it is, or how otherwise appealing I might have found its setting or characters. Given my strong preferences for science fiction and fantasy, I really expected to like Red Dwarf and the Discworld novels. However, as examples of comedies that I didn’t find funny, any appeal for me in them remains unrealised and theoretical.

‘They’ve jammed the radar!’
Spaceballs, copyright MGM

Conversely, funny is all I really need from a comedy. Sure, great use of language or well-observed characters might certainly add to the appeal, but the sight of goons dragging a giant comb through the desert as they are combing it for fugitives (get it?) is all the reason I need to like Spaceballs.

I like feeling frightened by a well-told horror story, I like feeling romantic from being told a love story, I like the sense of awe and wonder (admiratio) that epic science-fiction or fantasy can instil in me.

As I’ve been outlining appeal characteristics in these articles, I've been looking for interesting things that various commentators have said about each characteristic. I’ve been surprised by how little authors and critics have had to say about the importance of affect. I had assumed that the ability to make a reader or viewer feel something deeply would be a central and prized characteristic of storytelling, but apparently not.

And of all the characteristics I’ve described, affect is certainly the most subjective and the most difficult for which to create a litmus test. The test is the emotion itself. Did I laugh? I probably found it funny. Did I cry? I probably found it sad or tragic. Did I feel on edge and jumpy afterwards? I probably found it scary.

---

That, then, is the system I currently use to think about why I liked or failed to like a book, TV show, or movie. Did it hold any appeal for me via any of:

• its characters
• its setting
• its plot
• the craft (writing or production) with which it was made
• the idea it presented
• how it made me feel

Synthesised, these characteristics might work together something like:

If you’re going to tell me a story about mundane people in some dull place doing unimportant stuff, you’d better have a helluva idea to get across, or your writing had better be effing spectacular, or you better know just how to pull my heartstrings just the right way.

I can’t emphasise enough that all I’m doing here is trying to characterise why I liked or failed to like something. I make no pretence about my personal preferences correlating with anybody else’s, nor with whether a particular book or TV show or film is any good or not in any kind of objective sense.

I’ll write something on the difference between claiming ‘it was good’ and reporting ‘I liked it’ some other time [update: here it is]. I’d also like to present a few practical examples of how this schema might apply to some actual things I’ve read or watched.

Thanks to anyone who has stayed with me this long! :)

Liking books, TV shows and movies: Idea

This is the fifth part of a series in which I examine elements of the appeal of a book, movie, or TV show. I disclose and discuss my own personal preferences here, but I believe that the approach is more generally applicable: just substitute your own preferences for mine.

In previous installments, I covered character, setting, and plot—based on librarian Nancy Pearl’s description of appeal characteristics—and craft, an expansion of the characteristic she calls language.[1] This week, I cover the first of two extra characteristics I use to understand the appeal of a book, movie, or TV show: Idea.

Pearl identified her four characteristics for mainstream literary fiction. However, the appeal of some narratives lies outside these, when the main enjoyment to be found in the work is the presentation of some interesting idea or concept. Neal Stephenson put it like this in an interview when asked to define science fiction:

‘Fiction that’s not considered good unless it has interesting ideas in it. You can write a minimalist short story that’s set in a trailer park or a Connecticut suburb that might be considered a literary masterpiece or well-regarded by literary types, but science fiction people wouldn’t find it very interesting unless it had somewhere in it a cool idea that would make them say, “That’s interesting. I never thought of that before.”’ [2]

Science fiction, and, more broadly other speculative fiction, often asks ‘what if...’ when establishing a setting outside of our real-world experiences. And often, the answer is what readers or viewers find compelling. For example, the seminal dystopias of 1984 and Brave New World are not renowned for their memorable, three-dimensional characters or intricate and clever plots. Their settings are developed only to the point where they allow Orwell and Huxley to present their ideas, and it is for these ideas that these novels are famous.

When I started thinking about idea as an appeal characteristic of fiction, I had thought exclusively in terms of speculative genres. However, a friend (thanks B!) pointed out to me that the appeal of particular narratives in all kinds of genres might also lie at least partially in its presentation and exploration of ideas. For example:

• A romance might revolve around an extremely unlikely couple. 
• The idea explored might be ‘how can true love blossom between two such different people?’ 
• Historical fiction set in the Wild West or in the Age of Chivalry might present an honourable character with conflicting loyalties. 
• The idea explored might be ‘how is it be possible to satisfy both?’
• A contemporary literary novel or art film might follow the ripple effect of a dispute through a community.
• The idea explored might be ‘how could such a small thing end up dividing so many people so completely?’

In each of these cases, the reader’s reaction of ‘that’s interesting. I never thought of that before’ identifies an idea-driven story every bit as much as in a science-fiction story driven by ideas. However, removed from the necessity of fitting into the real world as we know it, speculative genres do allow authors to ask more abstract, hypothetical questions, like:

• What if wars were fought entirely by computer and casualties of simulated attacks just stepped into disintegration chambers when ordered? What would that be like?

To generalise: the more far-fetched and hypothetical the idea, the more interested I’ll probably be. Also, everything else being equal, I’m probably also more interested in questions with bigger repercussions than smaller ones: issues that affect a whole society or civilization instead of just a town or even only a few individuals. For example:

• What if people suddenly stopped dying?

is prima facie more interesting to me than:

• How might the death of one person affect a whole town?

Similarly:

• How could we talk to aliens who only communicate by tasting subtle but rapid chemical changes in each other’s skin?

interests me more than:

• How could an avowed pacifist and an officer in the military overcome their differences and find true love?

 And I’m much more likely to read or watch a narrative that asks:

• What criteria will we use to judge whether we have created computers with consciousness?

than one that asks:

• Should it matter whether the prize-winning cake at the town fair was created from raw ingredients or from a packet? (although the depiction of the fallout from this dispute might be perversely entertaining)

I highly value idea-driven narratives. Interesting ideas are the fuel for my life-long devotion to Star Trek, for example. I like to think that idea is what matters to me most of all; that provided with a suitably interesting idea, I don’t require much in the way of believable characters, well-realised setting, compelling plot, or even good writing or production. However, recent encounters with a couple of science-fiction novels that failed to deliver me anything but a few interesting questions reminded me that sometimes a cool idea might not be really enough to sustain my interest in a narrative!

---

Next week, I’ll conclude this series by considering affect as an appeal characteristic.

Liking books, TV shows and movies: Craft

This is the fourth part of a series in which I examine elements of the appeal of a book, movie, or TV show. I disclose and discuss my own personal preferences here, but I believe that the approach is more generally applicable: just substitute your own preferences for mine.

In his short story, ‘Low Men in Yellow Coats’, Stephen King has one of his characters comment on a book that a boy is reading. He tells the boy that the book (a Clifford D. Simak novel) has a ‘great story’ but ‘not such great writing’. He continues:

‘There are also books full of great writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that. Read sometimes for the words—the language. Don’t be like the play-it-safers that won’t do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.’[1]

In previous installments, I covered character, setting, and plot. I based these three elements on Nancy Pearl’s description of appeal characteristics.[2] This week, my schema and hers start to diverge. Also, the three elements I’ve discussed so far are characteristics of the world depicted in the story itself: the people, places, and events. This week’s installment deals with the first of three external characteristics of the story that I want to discuss.

Pearl formulated her characteristics with mainstream literary fiction in mind. After character, setting, and plot, she considered language as her fourth and final characteristic:

‘...the quality of the writing is what makes [this] novel stand out. The author’s use of language is evocative, unusual, thought-provoking, or poetic... [It] is impossible to talk about [these books] without commenting on the way each of their authors makes use of language.’

To me, she’s describing the writer’s craft, which in a novel is entirely expressed in the words used to tell the story. However, on film or TV, the words of the screenplay or script are only one tool out of a wide range with which storytellers work. For example, I would say that 2001: A Space Odyssey is an ‘evocative, unusual, thought-provoking, [and] poetic’ film, but almost none of this has to do with the text of its screenplay. Rather, the cinematography, visual design, and music do most of the work here.

Therefore, I take Pearl’s notion of language as an appeal characteristic of novels, and broaden it to craft as an appeal characteristic of stories told in other media too.

It’s pretty rare for the craft to be the only thing—or even the main thing—that I like about a book, movie, or TV show, but it can occasionally happen. And if I like the way that a writer uses their words (or a film-maker uses their other tools) I might find myself interested in stories about people, places, and events that might otherwise hold no appeal for me. More often, though, the craft adds appeal to something that I find appealing for other reasons, like the example of 2001 I mentioned earlier, or much European and Asian cinema.

Writing

Wells Tower’s short-story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a recent example of of a book where the primary appeal for me was in the craft. Nothing about this book appealed to me other than Tower’s writing: the stories are about ordinary, shabby people leading lives full of failure mostly in awful places in contemporary rural America—quite the antithesis of the kinds of people, places, and events about which I prefer to read. Yet I enjoyed this book more than most other books I’ve ever read. Kate Grenville’s novel of convict-era Sydney The Secret River is another example. These two books typify two very different styles of prose that I enjoy, one sparse and economical, the other expansive and lyrical. Compare:

‘But it was not a pleasant surprise when I came home one afternoon, and there, in the sunlight on our living room floor, was Jane sitting in her brassiere, Barry’s hands on her bare shoulders. When I walked in with our daughter, Marie, they both jumped up and started laying on about how Barry was just showing off some new shiatsu moves. I then lashed out at Barry with a piece of hose I’d brought home to stick on the bath spigot. I shouted and made my daughter cry. I broke some things. I made promises of more and worse violence, and Jane left with Barry and Marie. I remember her standing in the doorway with an armful of clothes, her jaw muscles standing out and her telling me how I’d rue what I had done.

And she was right: I did wind up ruing it, but after a while, neither often nor deeply. Jane bought out my share of our house at a fair price. I took a place outside of town, a redone shotgun cottage on six acres with a creek running through the yard. The house suited me well, except for a million black wasps chewing holes in the clapboards. The little fellows made an awful grinding racket, and on weekend afternoons when feelings of failure and regret could not be kept at bay, I found pleasant distraction in squirting poison up those holes.’

—‘Down Through the Valley’ in
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, pp.91–92

with:

‘Thornhill’s wife was sleeping sweet and peaceful against him, her hand still entwined in his. The child and the baby were asleep too, curled up together. Only Thornhill could not bring himself to close his eyes on this foreign darkness. Through the doorway of the hut he could feel the night, huge and damp, flowing in and bringing with it the sounds of its own life: tickings and creakings, small private rustlings, and beyond that the soughing of the forest, mile after mile.

When he got up and stepped out through the doorway there was no cry, no guard: only the living night. The air moved around him, full of rich dank smells. Trees stood tall over him. A breeze shivered through the leaves, then died, and left only the vast fact of the forest.

He was nothing more than a flea on the side of some enormous quiet creature.

Down the hill the settlement was hidden by the darkness. A dog barked in a tired way and stopped. From the bay where the Alexander was anchored there was a sense of restless water shifting in its bed of land and swelling up against the shore.

Above him in the sky was a thin moon and a scatter of stars as meaningless as spilt rice. There was no Pole Star, a friend to guide him on the Thames, no Bear that he had known all his life: only this blaze, unreadable, indifferent.’

— The Secret River, pp.3–4

Writing is also a major factor in the kind of comedy I enjoy. I’ll discuss comedy in more detail in a later installment (on affect) but I note here that most of the comedy that I value most highly relies on clever, subversive, or eccentric use of language, or just plain wordplay. This is true whether in a book (Lewis Carroll, Douglas Adams, Jasper Fforde) or as a script (much of the Monty Python and Muppet oeuvres, my favourite parts of Yes, Minister). For example:

Wensleydale:	Good morning, sir.
Mousebender:	Good Morning. I was sitting in the public library on Thurmon Street just now, skimming through ‘Rogue Herries’ by Horace Walpole, when suddenly I came over all peckish.
Wensleydale:	Peckish, sir?
Mousebender:	Esurient.
Wensleydale:	Eh?
Mousebender:	(broad Yorkshire) Eee I were all hungry, like!
Wensleydale:	Oh, hungry.
Mousebender:	(normal accent) In a nutshell. So I thought to myself, ‘a little fermented curd will do the trick’. So I curtailed my Walpolling activites, sallied forth and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles. (smacks his lips)
Wensleydale:	Come again.
Mousebender:	(broad northern accent) I want to buy some cheese.
Wensleydale:	Oh, I thought you were complaining about the music!
Mousebender:	(normal voice) Heaven forbid. I am one who delights in all manifestations of the terpsichorean muse.
Wensleydale:	Sorry?
Mousebender:	I like a nice dance—you’re forced to.

—Monty Python’s Flying Circus, episode 33, ‘Salad Days’

written by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, 

Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, 

and Terry Gilliam

Finally, I very much enjoy writing that uses language in unusual ways or which deliberately pushes language to its limits. Examples include: 1984, A Clockwork Orange, Riddley Walker, the Twilight Zone episode ‘Wordplay’, the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘Darmok’.

Goodparley said, ‘I can as plain the mos of it to you. Some parts is easyer workit out nor others theres bits of it wewl never know for cern jus what they mean. What this writing is its about some kynd of picter or dyergam which we dont have that picter all we have is the writing. Parbly that picter ben some kynd of a seakert thing becaws this here writing (I dont mean the writing youre holding in your han I mean the writing time back way back what this is wrote the same as) its cernly seakert. Its blipful it aint jus only what it seams to be its the syn and foller of some thing else. A Legend thats a picter whats depicted which is to say pictert on a wall its done with some kynd of paint callit fidelity. St is short for sent. Meaning this bloak Eustace he dint jus tern up he wer sent. A.D. 120 thats the year count they use to have it gone from Year 1 right the way to Bad Time. A.D. means All Done. 120 years all done theyre saying thats thats when they begun this picter in 120 nor they never got it finisht til 1480 is what it says here wel you know there aint no picter cud take 1360 years to do these here year numbers is about some thing else may be wewl never know what.’

—Riddley Walker, pp.124–125

Film and TV production

The craft of a film or TV show encompasses more than the words of its script. Some of the most obvious avenues of appeal on the basis of craft would include aspects such as the acting and direction; the visual design including sets, costumes, and special effects; and cinematography. There are plenty of other aspects to film production too, but I think these are probably the ones most likely to provide significant appeal. That is, I’ve never heard anyone tell me: ‘you’ve just got to see this film! The sound effects are incredible!’ However, if you know that really good foley is one of the things that you admire in a film, you should certainly consider that aspect when assessing why you liked or did not like a particular movie.

Acting and direction

I don’t follow many actors or directors; it’s quite common for me not to even know the names of stars who appeared in a movie I’ve just seen. It’s just not something to which I’ve ever paid much attention. I actually believe that most acting and direction in most professional productions is really rather good. If you don’t believe me, I suggest a trip to the local amateur theatre or watching some fan films on YouTube. There’s sometimes gold there, true, but I usually find that it recalibrates my expectations of even the most modest professional performances. If I had to define litmus tests for the kinds of performances I like, the most important one would be the degree to which I’m conned into thinking that the person on the screen is who they say they are and that I forget I’m watching a performance. Really compelling performances like this can certainly make me interested in characters and situations about which I might not otherwise care. Two films that I liked a lot more than I expected to were Taxi Driver and American Beauty, both because of performances that I really enjoyed watching.

Visual design

I honestly can’t think of a film or TV show where the visual design (including special effects) has led me to like something that I otherwise wouldn’t have liked anyway. The closest I can come is the couple of episodes I watched of Mad Men or Boardwalk Empire were so beautiful that they almost lured me in, but in neither case was it quite enough to make me want to follow either series. I know I’m drawn to sumptuous period pieces like Cyrano de Bergerac, La Reine Margot, The Duchess, or Master and Commander, but these are films with high appeal due to their settings anyway.

I’m interested in the technology of special effects, but they are not a strong source of appeal for me. I can take them or leave them, and at most, they add appeal to films that would have appealed to me anyway.

Cinematography

It’s not an original observation, but I find some films are so beautiful to look at that I’d blow up just about any frame and hang it on the wall. 2001: A Space Odyssey is like that for me, but that’s a film with very strong appeal for me from other directions. I’ve also enjoyed wild landscapes like Atanarjuat and... a Japanese film whose name I can’t remember right now (one word, starts with ‘S’) [edit—I have since recalled it was Naomi Kawase’s Suzaku] but whose bamboo forests are as vivid in my mind’s eye as when I saw the film over ten years ago.

Lack of craft

Craft is not a strong source of appeal for me, and poor craft will rarely be an obstacle to my liking something that appeals to me for other reasons. And complete incompetence is likely to provide its own perverse appeal to me as well.

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Next time, Idea.

Liking books, TV shows and movies: Plot

This is the third part of a series in which I examine elements of the appeal of a book, movie, or TV show. I disclose and discuss my own personal preferences here, but I believe that the approach is more generally applicable: just substitute your own preferences for mine.

In previous installments, I covered character and setting. This time I focus on plot, another element that I have adopted from Nancy Pearl’s appeal characteristics.[1] By ‘plot’, I mean the events described in the story, as well as the way in which they are assembled.

Events

The events of a story usually form the answer to the question ‘what do these characters do?’ or at least, ‘what do these characters witness?’ if they do not participate in the events described.

I find some areas of human activity—real or imagined—far more interesting than other areas, and I suspect that most other people do too. Let’s call this the subject of the plot. So, to return to the idea of a storyteller offering a story to me, the storyteller who says:

‘These people are searching for a lost grimoire.’

or

‘These people are hunting an enemy warship.’

or

‘These people interpret barcodes on ordinary household items to uncover evidence of a vast conspiracy.’

or

‘These people are building a spacecraft to put a crew on Mars.’

already has my attention. If the offer is:

‘These people solve homicides.’

or

‘These people are setting up a small business.’

or

‘These people are working hard to save their farm.’

or

‘These people are having mid-life crises.’

I’ll need something more to convince me that this is a tale I want to hear.

The degree to which the subject of the plot can profoundly affect my reception of a book was illustrated most vividly to me by Flashman’s Lady. This book is the sixth in a series by George Macdonald Fraser, depicting the various escapades of a Victorian-era cavalryman and anti-hero, Harry Flashman. Most of the books involve ‘Flashy’ participating (and seeking to avoid participating) in the various colonial wars of the era. As much as I adore the series, a lengthy first part of Flashman’s Lady relates to Flashman’s cricketing exploits: a game about which I know very little and care even less. Trudging through this was a truly miserable experience, even populated with characters in whom I was interested, located in a setting in which I was interested, and in the context of a series that I was already five books invested in. Fortunately for me, the novel progresses to Flashy fighting pirates in Borneo and becoming a pet slave to mad queen Ranavalona of Madagascar—and showed me just how large an effect subject matter can have on the appeal of a tale.

The subject matter of a tale is thrown into greater relief by contemplating what’s at stake in the story. Screenwriter Max Adams reduces the premise of any plot-driven film to:

‘(Title) is a (genre) about (protagonist) who must (objective) or else (dire thing that will happen if protagonist fails).

[...]

Apollo 13 is a drama about three astronauts who must repair their spacecraft or they will suffocate in space before reaching home.

[...]

 Raiders of the Lost Ark is an action/adventure about Indiana Jones, a procurer of lost artifacts who must travel to Egypt and find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis unearth it and use it to take over the world.’[2]

If it happens that I don’t actually care about the thing that will happen if the protagonist fails, I’m unlikely to care whether the protagonist succeeds or not.

Structure

Most narrative does not simply recount events: it claims connections between these events. My favourite insight on narrative structure comes from screenwriter Lew Hunter:

‘In life, things happen one after the other. In structure one thing happens because of the other.’[3]

A story that neglects that sequencing is a very strange tale indeed: the effect is surreal and disorienting. Eschewed deliberately and thoughtfully, an absence or ambiguity of causality between events can produce a masterpiece like 8½. When causality is ignored by a film-maker who shows no evidence of knowing what they’re doing, that same absence or ambiguity produces that hapless handbook on how not to make a movie, The Room.

Most stories relate events in a straightforward linear pattern and deviate from this only in their use of flashbacks, or perhaps a framing narrative. I enjoy complex structures, so any story that goes beyond these fundamentals already offers me something that I might enjoy. For example, I like the unreliable narrators of Rashōmon or The Usual Suspects or Iain Pears’s An Instance of the Fingerpost. I like the multi-linear storytelling of Amores perros, the reverse storytelling of Irréversible, and the ‘what if?’ storytelling of Casomai. 

Engagement

Quite aside of any intrinsic interest I have in the subject matter of a story and of whether I think it’s told in an interesting way, I might still find a story engaging. I admit that I find it hard to define what characteristics might lead to this engagement, but I certainly know it when I experience it. I know that I’m engaged with a story when it passes the Scheherazade test—I feel that I have to know what happens next. Conversely, if after some time I realise that I have no interest in finding out what happens next in a story, I know I’m disengaged and will probably stop watching or reading at that point.

The Scheherazade effect can be a powerful one. I found the characters of The Da Vinci Code unlikeable and dull, the setting uninspiring, and the subject matter tired and ill-considered. Yet, for some reason that eludes me, I found it a compelling page-turner of a novel and I just had to finish it—I really needed to know what happened next. Having-to-know is also the factor that has me hooked on True Blood. Not caring about what happens next is ultimately why I abandoned such highly acclaimed series as The Wire and Breaking Bad.

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The three characteristics that I’ve discussed so far—the characters, the setting, and the plot of a story—are all intrinsic to the world of the story itself (they are diegetic). Next week, I’ll begin to discuss three characteristics extrinsic to that world (extra-diegetic), the first of which will be craft. Before that, I might also write up a summary as an intermission.

Liking books, TV shows and movies: Setting

Carrying on from last week, where I considered the effect of characters on whether I might find a book, movie, or TV show appealing, this time, I’ll talk about setting:

Setting

The role of setting is another appeal characteristic that I take directly from Nancy Pearl’s schema. It is a characteristic of a story that is—in the vast majority of cases—immediately obvious and which requires little explanation or unpacking. Simply, setting is where in space and when in time the events of the story occur.

I know that I have strong biases towards certain settings and against others, and I believe that most other people do too. It would surprise me to discover somebody who would be universally embracing of any and every setting for a tale, but perhaps this is just me over-generalising my own experience.

For a start, I admit that I have a strong positive bias for imaginary worlds, so, for example, a storyteller who says:

‘Let me tell you a story set on an Earth starship in the 27th century.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in the Elven kingdom, in the waning years of the Age of Arlûthtan.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in contemporary New Orleans in an alternate universe where the Confederacy had been successful in its bid to secede from the United States.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in a separate physical dimension—at a time unknowable and irrelevant—inhabited only by sapient flashes of light who communicate by casting three-dimensional shadows at each other’

already has my attention in a way that a storyteller who offers:

‘Let me tell you a story set in the Seattle of today.’

does not yet. This latter storyteller is going to have to find a more compelling hook to engage my interest, when I'm already listening attentively to the others.

For me, the appeal in an imagined world is often the degree of ingenuity and detail that has gone into the world-building. I find tremendous pleasure and delight in this aspect of speculative fiction, and stories told in the real world, past or present have nothing to offer me in direct competition.

Secondly, I admit that I find some real-world historical settings prima facie more appealing than others (and more appealing than contemporary settings). So again, for example, if the offer is:

‘Let me tell you a story set in Thebes during the Middle Kingdom.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in Jerusalem in the 11th century.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set in London in the 16th century.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story set on a French frigate in the 18th century.’

I’m already more interested than in an offer of a tale set just about anywhere in the world today.

For me, the appeal of a historical setting is in its attention to detail and as a springboard for further exploration and learning. I value the novel or film that can transport me to a bygone time and place in which I have an interest, most especially if I come away knowing more than I did when I started. History lessons in fictional form are part of the great appeal of George Macdonald Fraser’s Flashman novels for me; I love fact-checking these as I read, and frequently learning that the full truth of an event or historical figure is even stranger than fiction.

Lastly, I’ll freely admit that familiarity breeds my contempt. This was driven home to me many years ago while watching and enjoying a caper movie from Argentina, Nueve Reinas (‘Nine Queens’). At some point in the course of the film, I thought to myself, 

I’m sure if this exact same story were told in an English-language American film set in New York instead of a Spanish-language Argentine film set in Buenos Aires, I’d have lost interest by now. 

I could attribute some part of that reaction to other aesthetic preferences that I know I have (for example, a far greater reliance on non-diegetic music in most American film compared to films from most other places in the world). But mostly, I admit that the preference is rooted in the opportunity to experience something unfamiliar or even completely new.  

Just as with historical settings, when it comes to contemporary real-world settings, I find that I really enjoy learning a little about a place about which I knew little previously; and if this learning happens via a film or TV show, I like to see foreign sights and hear languages that are not part of my everyday experience. Even a setting as basically unappealing to me as (near-)contemporary New York can become interesting to me if viewed through the lens of a culture that is not my own, for example, in the novels of Chaim Potok.

Taken all together, I realise that my preference is essentially for stories set in worlds (real or imagined) as far from my own as possible. I’m happy to accept labels of escapism or even exoticism to describe this real preference that I know I have. 

Setting as a filter

One of the possible ways that setting interacts with narrative is to filter the types of stories and types of characters that are likely to be presented. When I take up that offer to read or watch that tale set on an 18th-century frigate, I already come primed with a set of expectations. I feel confident that as long as everything else is handled at least reasonably competently, I’m probably going to enjoy this story. An offer of a tale told in contemporary Glasgow isn’t ripe with the same promise for me; I am less certain of what I am getting myself into.

Of course, this also leaves me vulnerable to bait-and-switch, something I find particularly common in science fiction. It’s all too easy to find purportedly science-fiction tales that are nothing but mindless action stories with ray guns in place of Uzis and hover sleds in place of getaway cars. JJ Abrams’ Star Trek effort in 2009 stands out to me as a particularly atrocious example of this.

Setting not-as-a-filter

On the other hand, some tales translate easily between settings. This premise:

The protagonist has to make a decision whether to honour a promise made to a powerful superior and thereby injure a member of their own family; or protect their family member, defy their superior, and face the consequences.

translates equally easily to Imperial Rome, Mediæval England, Tokugawa Japan, Prohibition-era Chicago, Nazi-occupied Europe, folks dealing drugs in the western suburbs of contemporary Sydney, and to any number of completely imagined worlds—anywhere with a feudal-like power structure. 

A litmus test to gauge how important the setting of a particular tale is to me might be to imagine (or see!) that tale translated to another setting. All else being equal, I’d be much more interested in seeing the scenario above played out in any of  the pre-20th century settings I named, or in an imagined world.

Similarly, I have no trouble with The Tempest reincarnated as Forbidden Planet. So it seems that I’m not especially protective of the Elizabethan setting of my favourite of Shakespeare’s plays, at least when one setting I like is replaced with another setting that I like.

However, to see Sherlock Holmes lifted from his home in the late 1800s London (a setting I like very much) and deposited in early 21st century London (a setting that doesn’t appeal to me) in Sherlock left me cold. A large part of the charm had evaporated from the story for me, and while the show was unquestionably well made, I turned off ‘A Study in Pink’ half-way through, profoundly disappointed.

Setting as everything

Finally, setting is sometimes absolutely intrinsic to the tale in a way that makes relocating it impossible. Flatland springs immediately to mind; if the setting doesn’t intrigue you, there’s really nothing else here. The story stands and falls on that alone. But it’s far more common that a personally appealing setting will only be one ingredient in anyone’s enjoyment of a story.


What settings bias you for or against a book, film, or TV series?

Next week, I’ll discuss the appeal of plot.

Liking books, TV shows and movies: Characters

Whether or not I liked a book, a movie, or a TV show, I like to try to understand why I felt that way about it. I prefer to be able to explain my reaction (to myself, or to others) in a way more substantial than simply ‘I love that book!’ or ‘I can’t stand that show’.

In general, I’m also attracted to systems, and in thinking about the appeal of stories told in various media, I’ve become quite attached to the four ‘appeal characteristics’ defined by librarian Nancy Pearl: Setting, Story, Characters, and Language.[1] Pearl developed her criteria for use with mainstream fiction books (specifically, to help librarians quickly gauge what a patron liked about a particular book so that they could be more effective at recommending others). When thinking also about genre fiction and about stories told in media other than books, I find it useful to loosen her definitions around these characteristics somewhat, and to add another two characteristics to the mix.

Over the next few weeks, I’d like to share a little about each of the six characteristics I use when reflecting on how I received a story.

Two things that I don’t set out to do here:

• I’m careful to try to distinguish this personal reaction from any assessment of whether the story was well told (‘good’) or not. I find that a book being well written or a show or movie being well made is a pretty poor predictor of whether I will like it.
  
  I like lots of stuff that is, on any objective assessment, poorly made; and conversely, a lot of stuff that’s won wide approbation doesn’t appeal to me at all. In other words, I find the Metacritic or IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes score has little to no correlation with whether I’ll enjoy watching something.
  
  When talking to people about a book, TV show, or movie, I try only ever to say something is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ if I genuinely think it was well done or not. When discussing my personal reactions, I try to adhere to ‘I liked it’ or ‘I didn't like it’.
• I don’t usually think in terms of dislike or hate: I usually find it more useful to think in terms of an absence of appeal. I try to reserve ‘dislike’ or ‘hate’ for things that I actually find distasteful, annoying, or offensive in some way. Happily, I find that such things are few and far between. It’s much more frequent that I just don’t find anything to enjoy in a particular book, movie, or TV show.

Finally, I’m very conscious of the unspoken pact between storyteller and audience; I’ll keep coming back to the question of what kind of story am I being told, and what therefore might I expect from such a story.

This week, characters.

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Characters

As a reader or viewer, characters might appeal to me in one of two ways: because of what they are or because of who they are.

What

A question of ‘what’ can be examined by reference to their role in the world of the story and by imagining the author or filmmaker saying:

‘Let me tell you a story about a...’

So, to use just a few random examples, if that sentence is:

‘Let me tell you a story about a sorcerer.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story about a sea captain.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story about a rocket scientist.’

chances are I’m already listening for more. Conversely, if the pitch is:

‘Let me tell you a story about a cop.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story about a doctor.’

or

‘Let me tell you a story about a politician.’

chances are I’m already wondering what the teller might bring to the story that would possibly make me want to listen to the tale to follow.

Steinbeck once put it:

[French literary theorist] ‘Boileau […] insisted that only gods, kings and heroes are worth writing about. I firmly believe that. The detailed accounts of the lives of clerks don’t interest me much unless, of course, the clerk breaks into heroism.’[2]

I tend to agree.

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to think that I’m going to dismiss a story just because the central characters don't belong to some pre-determined set of Acceptable Professions for Protagonists. All I’m doing here is acknowledging a set of preferences that I know I have. This is not Procrustes’ bed.

Who

This second way of examining characters is a little more nebulous. It asks whether this imaginary person—whatever their role in the world of the story—is, subjectively to me, interesting as a person. Perhaps a very crude litmus test here would be a variation of that familiar hypothetical question that asks us who, out of the whole world and all of history, we would invite to dinner if we had a chance. Similarly, I might wonder whether the character is someone with whom I’d like to share a meal.

For examples, I can look to books I’ve enjoyed in the last few years that have contemporary settings (to avoid any degree to which setting—to discuss another week—might influence how interesting I find these fictional people).

So, the central characters in Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle are a male porn star and a woman suffering a psychosis.  Davidson portrayed them with such sympathy and tenderness that I felt that I knew and loved both of them by the end of the book. And although not one of the main characters in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex cast a fireball, commanded a patrol boat, or launched a rocket, each of them would be more than welcome at my table too.

Another litmus test: do I actually care about the fate of this character? Have I got anything invested in this imaginary person at all? The most memorable counter-example for me: when a main character is ambushed, shot, and—I thought—killed close to the end of season 1 of The Wire, it had zero emotional impact for me at all. This left me fairly certain that I had nothing invested in that character.  The death of Adric in season 19 of Doctor Who moved me far more, and that was a character I despised.

Considering the characteristics of a breakout novel, Donald Maass suggests:

‘A work of fiction grips our imaginations because we care, both about the characters in the tale and about ourselves. To put it another way, we are concerned about the outcome of the story because what is happening to the characters could happen to us.’[3]

This seems entirely reasonable to me, but the converse is also true: if I don't care about the characters, I’m less likely to be gripped by the tale. Maass’ focus is a little different (he’s writing about the plausibility of the basic premise of the story) but he continues:

‘Looked at that way, the requirement that a premise be plausible is not so strange. If it could not really happen, then why should we bother with it?’[3]

Or, presumably, if I never actually cared about any of these fictional people anyway.

Credibility

Which brings me to the credibility of characters. I've come to understand that some folks highly value psychological credibility in fictional characters: they want these characters to behave, react, and talk as real people behave, react, and talk. They want characters to have motivations that seem like plausible reasons for them to do things they do in the course of the story. I have few such expectations. To quote Steinbeck again (talking about his second novel, To a God Unknown):

‘Its characters are not “home folks.” They make no more attempt at being human than the people in the Iliad.’[2]

Rather, I look for psychological credibility in characters that is commensurate with the kind of tale being told. The characters in Middlesex are ‘home folks’, and I respect and value the high degree of plausibility in Eugenides’ portrayal of them. However, if I’m reading epic fantasy or most kinds of sci-fi, I have no such expectations and probably even prefer characters who are larger-than-life: here I do want ‘gods, kings, and heroes’.

I think much of my dissatisfaction with some recent sci-fi TV franchises is due to a growing trend to try and humanise and naturalise their characters.  The companions of the revamped Doctor Who series are certainly more well rounded than any of their counterparts on the classic series, and to me, the show is all the weaker for it. When a character becomes a companion travelling in the TARDIS with the Doctor, I really could not care less about the home life of the family that they leave behind.

I suppose that for me, credibility intersects with the ‘what’ and ‘who’ in that if I’m interested in a character by virtue of what they are, I don’t need or perhaps even want psychological credibility. But for me to care about who that character is, they probably need to have that credibility as a prerequisite.

Transformation

Finally, a note on growth and transformation, the  expectation that the events of a story should change the characters who participate in them. Writing in 1973, David Gerrold saw this as an essential difference between plays and movies on the one hand, and TV series on the other:

‘In drama other than series television—say, a play or a movie—the event that is being told is the most important event in the hero’s life. It is the whole reason for the existence of a story about this person...

What the hero learns from the event is what makes it the most important event in his life...

The story is about the lesson that this person has to learn—and these are the events that will teach it to him...

[...]

In a series the form has to be turned upside down—the events depicted must not be the most important events in the hero’s life. Otherwise, there’s no point in going on with the series. Everything after that would be anticlimactic.’[4]

Since the 1990s, the rise of TV shows with season-long and series-long story arcs has certainly changed this landscape. Characters on TV now do grow and develop as their counterparts in plays, movies, and novels have done.

I’m certainly open to growth and transformation in characters in all these media, but neither do I insist on it. I’m aware, though, that this kind of character development is very important to some people, and for example can lead to a strong preference for serial TV over episodic (or as Gerrold called it, ‘semi-anthology’ TV).

Again, I think it comes down to the type of tale being told.


Next time, I’ll discuss setting.