The Use of Bad Stories

Every book on writing will tell you to consume good stories to learn from them — about your preferred genres, about word-craft, about plotting. It’s a very valid writing advice, too — by studying the works of others, you can learn a lot, especially in a trade that’s mostly based on soft skills which are harder to teach than hard ones. There’s one more aspect to  ‘learning from other people’s work,’ though: learning from bad stories. At first, this might seem weird. If a story is definitely bad, what can you learn from it?

First of all, you can learn what not to do. Sometimes, it’s just that easy. If a movie, novel, TV series, or other piece of media does everything wrong, that’s a lot of stuff you can avoid doing in your own work. Most of the time, though, some things work out. Some parts of the media work, but others do not. That is when you can see what exactly has gone wrong.
I’ve recently dipped into Dark Corners Reviews where they regularly do bad movies reviews which are both short (so I can watch them at my leisure) and fun. If you want to, give them a look as well — I feel this channel is criminally underrated.
One important aspect of a review of a bad movie is to see where it went wrong. Where are the problems with this one? Is it a half-baked story relying too much on sex? Are all characters horrid and you can’t connect to any of them? Is the setting or theme at odds with the story? There is a lot which can go wrong with a story and it pays to look into stories where something did go wrong to see where it went off the rails.
Let’s look at different aspects and how they could go wrong.

Is the story half-baked? This is more often a problem of movies or TV episodes than of full books, but it can happen with those, too. Sometimes, a story relies too much on novelty or suchlike (like sexy women in few clothes from the 70s onwards) and doesn’t put in enough work when it comes to the plot.
A story needs at least one plot which goes from beginning to end. Most stories above a short story have more than that, though. If the plot is lacking, you get a story where people wonder at some point what’s happening. Sometimes, solutions for problems come out of nowhere. Sometimes, there’s several setups for a plot and all of them peter out without being really finished properly. Sometimes, the motivations of the characters are at odds with the stakes presented or the overall plot.

Are the characters unlikable? This can be a problem in all types of media, but it is less problematic in games and suchlike, where the main character is controlled by the player to a degree and story usually doesn’t play the most important role. Still, it can become a problem even there, especially when the likeability problem comes out while you can’t control the main character or when everyone is just unlikable.
Some characters have no redeeming features — which is fine when it’s a villain you don’t want to see redeemed (fans will still write fan-fiction about it, trust me) —, others do things that cannot be forgiven. Some characters are cardboard cut-outs with no real character to them, which makes them boring to watch and doesn’t get the audience interested, either. Some seem to have no impact on the plot, but are given too much screen time.
This is also where internal plots come up. There are external and internal plots. External ones are driving the story as a such — they’re based around the conflict and help raise the stakes and push the tension. Internal ones are driving the characters’ development — they’re based around character flaws which the characters must overcome to win or fail to overcome to lose in the end. If an internal plot arc doesn’t work, it is hard to see why the character wins or loses at the end.

Setting and theme are another thing where a story can go horribly wrong. The setting and the genre usually define the expectations of the audience. Recently, I wrote about a cosy mystery I read which didn’t deliver on the ‘mystery’ part. In a mystery, people expect a major crime. In a western, I want that ‘high noon shoot-out’ the genre promises. We all know what to expect from our favourite genres and stories which fail to deliver it usually fail as stories.
If a story uses a specific historical period, but it is clear that whoever wrote the story or produced the visual bit of media has no idea what that period is about, it’s going to be a let-down. If a story sets up as a ‘high school’ story, but then goes in a completely different direction, ignoring the rules of a high-school setting, it’s going to make the audience lift their brows and vote the story down in some way.
Theme, when existing, is another thing which can go wrong. A theme is an aesthetic thing most of the time, but it can also go much deeper, into philosophical territory. A lot of people didn’t like the sequels to the original “Matrix” movie. They felt that “Matrix” had promised philosophical discourse on which the sequels didn’t deliver. So if you promise a deep look into the nature of man or the reason why humans are violent only to throw it out later, the audience will not be happy.
That is the gist of it.

Watch good movies, read good novels, play good games, but also leave yourself room for the opposite. While it pays to ask yourself why you liked a piece of media, it also pays to ask yourself why you didn’t like a piece of media.
Sometimes, that’s actually going to give you more insight into storytelling than a good piece of media might. It might be hard to understand how all aspects of a great story really fit together, because it’s like it always should be. It is often easier to understand how aspects of a bad story refuse to properly work together, even if some might be fine on their own.
When you look at a bad movie — and there are many lists circulating with bad movies you might pick from your favourite genre —, you are looking at a movie which failed to do some aspect right. Sometimes, it’s a question of money, but there are movies on a shoestring budget which still manage to be good, if not great. More often, it’s a question of getting an aspect of storytelling wrong, be it plot, characters, or setting/theme. Sometimes, the aspects are even at war with each other.
The same goes for other bad stories. When you really can’t get through a novel from a genre you normally like, ask yourself what keeps you from enjoying it. What is missing or lacking for you? Where did the enjoyment go? That will show you where the storytelling failed and help you understand the process better.

Generally speaking, consume media. If you want to write stories, no matter what medium you want to write in, consume that medium beforehand. Learn from those who’ve already done it, the ones who did it right and, especially, the ones who did it wrong. Failure can always teach us something — it’s good to keep that in mind.