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Always Keep a Door Open
This one goes out to the world of dark, twisty fiction. Your more idealistic stories will never have a problem with this.
Dark, twisty fiction is all about closing doors, but remember: always keep a door open. By that, I mean always have a proactive force your audience can root for.
Warhammer 40K fans may cry foul at this, but that is because they're in a wholly separate medium. They're playing a game, and the fact that they are personally in the place of the Imperium of Man, or the Tyranids, or the Dark Eldar, provides the emotional stake they would lack as a mere observer.
This principle has never been more clearly demonstrated than in Story X. Story X begins with Faction A and Faction B, both with a teasing sort of moral ambiguity to their actions that encourages you to pick a side, but not to commit too heavily. This is not the status quo for long, though; in short order, Faction A begins doing some rather despicable acts, and for many in the audience, that closes the door on Faction A.
And yet, at that same time, we're more properly introduced to Faction B, and what we see, while far from squeaky-clean, does let the newly-disenchanted members of the audience find something to sympathize with. They keep watching, and meanwhile, the ranks of Faction A in the audience are still far from thin.
That works well for a good stretch. But then, Faction B suffers a brutal, crippling massacre. The way that it transpires causes even many of Faction A's stalwarts to turn away in disgust, but at the same time, Faction B as we know it is finished as a power in the story. There is no indication at this point in the storyline of any other faction worth mentioning, and that causes mass desertion of Story X right there. Those that hang on and wait for the dust to settle find that Faction B has splintered into Faction B1, which has none of the passion of the original Faction B, and Faction B2, which is arguably worse than Faction A. The audience, more often than not, is forced to root against Faction A, or root for bit players - and neither option provides true satisfaction. Because no doors were kept open, it is often said Story X took a nosedive after the massacre.
Don't let this happen to you.
There is also the danger that, whatever doors you have open, you may close off so many promising hallways that the audience, fatigued and jerked around, will look at those open doors with a deep misgiving. Without going into details, I would like to give a big, fat hello to George R.R. Martin.
By all means, writers, let your story wander around the dank, twisty little passages. You may even permit that journey to come to a bad end. But without some light source, your story will be eaten by the Grue of Indifference.
--Webmaster dePlume, April 2, 2010
The door is open to the main page.
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