Style As Service
Do you remember being 8? 9? 10? maybe even 11? Remember when you first learned that the brain is the thing in your body that keeps your heart pumping? And like, without your brain your heart would stop and you would die?
Yeah, Crazy - you are dead without your brain.
But then you learned that your brain needs your heart. Like, if your heart stopped pumping, your brain would not be able to function due to the lack of blood flow.
Get This - you are ALSO dead (Totally Dead) without your heart.
We internalize these truths side by side. It’s all good. Nothing's wrong.
Until that one kid asks the most divisive question anyone on the blacktop can ask:
What Is MORE Important - The Brain or The Heart?
The swingset groans, the jungle gym braces itself & the playground holds its breath as every kid, and I do mean every kid, takes a side.
BUT YOUR HEART COULDN’T EVEN PUMP WITHOUT YOUR BRAIN!
BUT YOUR BRAIN WOULD DIE IF YOUR HEART WASN’T KEEPING IT ALIVE!
PEOPLE IN COMAS ARE KEPT ALIVE BY THE HEART NOT THE BRAIN!
GUILLOTINE’S CHOP OFF HEADS FOR A REASON!
Elementary school is never the same. The debate rages right up the halls into middle school and inevitably fizzles out by the time we reach high school.
Why? Because when most humans reach the 9th grade they know they need both a brain and a heart to be alive. Arguing over which vital organ keeps us MORE alive is dumb, so we stop. Most of us anyway.
More on that in a minute, but first it’s time for a confession…
I love Story, I love stories & I love storytelling.
Among storytellers, there is a hotly contested dichotomy as divisive as the Brain vs Heart discourse from my school days.
I am talking about Story Structure vs Style.
If you care to look, you will find a version of this conflict in every creative field. Comic book authors invest more time in crafting a story’s structure, whereas artists may pay more attention to the visual aesthetics of the book. A Cinematographer may give more thought to the tone and mood of a film while a screenwriter’s focus will rest on the story’s structure.
It is totally normal to view your own role as the most important & I am not exempt. I write stories, and yeah, I favor structure over style. Ok so, I also draw my own comics but that’s only because no one else will! (If you want to see what I mean, check out THE DEVIL’S LEFT HAND. I am proud of the narrative and ok with the illustration.)
As a writer, I do not think you can over-emphasize the importance of a story’s structure. Stories are like cars in this respect: You don’t need to be a mechanic to drive a car that is in good working order. But if a car is inoperable, you actually need to know how it works to get it up and running. That’s why understanding the mechanics of how stories work is a fundamental skill when crafting them.
You might think I am ready to launch into a diatribe of why a story’s structure is more important than a story’s aesthetics, but I’m not. I am actually writing this article to push back against my own tribe.
As I see it, Structure vs Style is just Brain vs Heart redux.
It is my earnest belief that when storytellers neglect style and genre considerations, we diminish both the impact and potency of the story we are crafting.
Stories are gifts, plain and simple. They exist to pass on survival information. Hit up literally any episode of You Are A Storyteller if you want to hear more. Luke Skywalker. Samwise Gamgee. Miles Morales. You know how they made it because you know their stories. As children drinking in these movies, books and comics, we were lost in the joy of consumption. Before we know it, we find ourselves full-grown adults leaning on our children’s stories to survive. The people who told these stories had gifts to give and we received them with open arms.
The dynamic between storyteller and audience, on its most fundamental level, is gift giver to recipient. This makes the act of storytelling an act of service.
I am halfway through the article. You ready for my thesis? Here it is: a skilled storyteller will use the whole story (style and structure) to serve their audience. I learned this truth watching a horror movie. Not some artsy A24 flick, this was a sludgy gorefest from 2007.
My wife and I recently watched The Mist. Based on a Steven King novella by the same title, the movie was written and directed by Frank Darabont, whose film credits includes writing and directing both The Green Mile and The Shashank Redemption.
The Mist has it all: weird carnivorous tentacles, flying foot-long locusts whose mouths are filled with human teeth, giant spiders with chest-bursting larva & the Steven King Special: cultish New England suburbanites.
Its age did imbue the viewing experience with a certain b-movie aesthetic that both my wife and I enjoy. The 2007 CGI looked a little rough at times, but all was forgiven because we like this stuff.
The entire film was a blast, but what stuck with me was the ending. Now imo keep it spoiler free, so all I’ll say is this: buried in the schlock, grime, guts and several cameos by The Walking Dead cast, The Mist provided a piercing, poignant statement about hope in the face of hopelessness. This story gives you a reason to keep fighting to the end. It teaches you to keep your finger off of suicide’s trigger. I expected to enjoy The Mist, but I did not expect to be impacted by the film.
This weird scifi/horror flick made its point with emotionally potent logic that hits like a Mack truck and stings like killer bees on a swarm.
The Mist is medicine for those of us who ideate about suicide. Who needs this medicine? As a rule of thumb, it’s not the people with sunny dispositions. I do not want to over-generalize because internal struggles are invisible things, but I want to ask this question: In what sub-cultures is suicide a common struggle? Goths, punks, emos, etc. Every hardcore subculture is marked to some degree. Now here’s my follow-up: who is a gory b-movie for? Who is going to watch this film? Who will be served by this story?
It’s people like us.
In The Mist, Frank Darabont had something to say. He had a gift to give to a very specific audience and he made the appropriate stylistic decisions to serve the people this film needed to reach. He did not make this movie for the film academy - AND WE KNOW HE COULD HAVE. We are talking about the director of THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. There was no way The Mist was going to edge out The Departed for Best Picture in 2007, but it continues to reach its audience. This makes it a success & a wild one at that.
There is a wisdom in understanding what something is for. I am not talking about pandering & I am not talking about advertising. I am talking about serving.
Writers: we often look to serve our audience by delivering our stories with a sound structure. But what would happen if we gave equal attention to our stylistic choices? What if we gave equal weight to both The Brain and The Heart of our creative process?
What gifts we could give.
I’ll catch ya next month on the 3rd,
JT⚡
