Narrative Drive: Desires, Stakes, and Questions

What drives readers and viewers to stick with a narrative until the very end? How do we write a story that hooks the audience up front and keeps them on the line until the very last page or scene?

No shortage of ink has been spilled on identifying what gives successful stories their 'Narrative Drive' - a catch-all term that may refer to anything from a book or screenplay's pacing and style to the author's intentional ordering of information as it is presented to the audience (mystery, suspense, and dramatic irony). But do we come to a great story and stay throughout based on intellectual admiration for voice and structure alone?

In this Scene-a-Matic Storytelling episode, we explore the emotional side of what drives the audience forward through story: connection to character. Mainly through the shared knowledge of the desires, stakes, and questions every story, act, sequence, and even scene contains. And these all must be made explicit, even if they only appear visually or subtextually. After all, the audience can't engage with a story scene if they can't agree on what it is the character is after, what dangers come with a pursuit of that desire, and what specific questions are left open by the scene's end.

Find out how successful writers build their scene's shared knowledge in a way that keeps the audience in their seat and engaged with the character through the 'I Want' Moments, 'If/Then' Statements, and Dramatic Questions.

Examples include Jungle, Boardwalk Empire, Little Miss Sunshine, and Nightcrawler.

#writing #scene #narrativedrive




Chapters
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0:00 Intro: This is Your Brain on Story
1:27 Episode Preview
2:55 What Drives Narrative?
9:06 Desires: The 'I Want' Moment
13:43 Stakes: The 'If/Then' Statement
17:35 Questions: The Dramatic Question
21:04 Scene Examples
30:05 Application & Outro