13. How Approaching Story with a Bias Breaks Your Audience's Trust

EPISODE DESCRIPTION:     

In story, your characters and their world must be credible and believable. The job of the storyteller, first and foremost, is to tell the truth about the world as you know it, and about the people who inhabit that world. The acid test of how well you’ve accomplished this is always and forever the same: does it ring true to the audience? 

One kind of believability has to do with the characteristics of the character him or herself. Have you given them the right characteristics to effectively convince the audience that he or she could do whatever it is they end up doing in the story? 

But there’s another way to undermine the believability of the story, and that’s when a characters simply aren't real enough. They don’t feel like real people. They’re not fully fleshed out as three dimensional beings. They're sketches. One thing that can lead to this:

When the storyteller holds a prior commitment to a certain philosophy that limits their willingness to explore the true depths of character

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SPECIAL THANKS

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Transcript

Ep 13 - Transcript

Tue, 10/13 9:03PM • 15:12

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

character, reality, writer, world, write, story, explore, believability, true, audience, podcast, simply, sundance, truth, violate, pollyanna, today, undermines, creating, depths

SPEAKERS

Zena Dell Lowe

Zena Dell Lowe  00:00

INTRO: Hello, and welcome to the Mission with Zena Dell Lowe, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through story. 

Zena Dell Lowe  00:13

TOPIC INTRODUCTION: For a number of weeks now, we have been focused a good deal on craft, the execution part of storytelling. However, I'd like to return today to one of the philosophical foundations we've been building, and I want to get back to some of the questions I posed in some of the earlier episodes of this podcast. To do that, let us first return to last week's podcast, where we explored the issue of credibility and believability in storytelling. Now, if you remember, I said that the acid test of all storytelling is, does it work? Or in other words, does it ring true to your audience? So, the first thing we have to recognize as we enter the arena we're about to explore, is that it all comes back to this issue of telling the truth. The writer's job is, first and foremost, to tell the truth about the world as we know it and about the people that inhabit that world, as they really are. And the acid test of how well you accomplish this is always and forever, does it ring true to your audience? Does it work? To that end, the primary philosophy, or overarching principle that we were exploring, was that we must create characters, or a picture of the world that is truly believable and credible. And we generally do this by creating a character that possesses the right characteristics to effectively convince the audience that their actions are credible. But that's only one kind of believability. There's another kind, and this kind is less obvious and more subversive. And that's when a character simply isn't real enough. That character does not feel like a real person. That character has not been fully fleshed out as a three-dimensional being. It's like they're shallow. They're sketches. They don't seem to have much depth. And what accounts for this? Well, generally speaking, it is because the artist has approached the work with a bias, which leads us to the fundamental issue that we're going to explore today. 

Zena Dell Lowe  02:24

PRESENTATION: One thing that undermines the credibility or believability of a work is when the artist has a prior commitment to a certain philosophy that limits their ability to explore the true depths of character. So, once again, it comes back to this idea of truth-telling. Anyone who holds a prior philosophical commitment is automatically limiting their ability to explore what's true. For example, are we to believe that man evolved from the muck over billions and billions of years, or is it more likely that we were created by an Intelligent Designer? Now, regardless of which side you fall on, both parties are guilty of the same thing, namely, they both often enter the forum with pre-existing biases, which preclude them from honestly engaging the data. Thus, they are unable to follow the evidence where it leads. Evolutionists, for example, presuppose that miracles are impossible. So, if any evidence comes to light that favors a miraculous explanation, they wouldn't even look at it, because they've already ruled out the possibility of a miracle. In the same way, intelligent design advocates will often brush past any evidence that goes against what they already believe. In both cases, pre-existing bias prevents them from honestly following the evidence where it leads. The problem is philosophical, not evidential, and the same exact thing happens in story. 

Zena Dell Lowe  04:00

Many storytellers approach their stories with a preconceived bias, which often thwarts their ability to tell the truth. This tends to happen to those who are trying to write for a certain genre or sphere, such as children's books or the Christian submarket, or, as in the case of one of the Sundance films I hated, any market where foregone conclusions seemed to be the rule. Children's authors, for example, sometimes struggle to present an honest picture of the world, because their audiences are so young. They don't want to violate the kids or frighten them or somehow present material that is inappropriate or harmful to their emotional development. And so they often fail to show the dark side of the real world, which means they end up presenting a false reality instead of a real one. And I get it, the temptation is to hide the hard things from kids out of a genuine desire to protect them. But in doing so, we either end up lying to them, which leaves them wholly unprepared, or we condescend to them since they know that what we're feeding them isn't real. They know these things, and when the false view that we offer them doesn't match their own everyday experiences, we confuse them and we actually cause them more harm. Children should know what evil looks like, so that when they encounter it, they recognize it. When we shield kids from reality or sugarcoat things that are truly hard to endure, we may inadvertently be rendering them all the more helpless. Story is the very thing that can prepare a child to face the harsher realities of this world, and the characters they love serve as an example of how to respond well in the inevitable suffering they will face. 

Zena Dell Lowe  05:48

When you put a positive spin on everything, even things that call for sadness or discouragement, you're being dishonest. You're being naive like Pollyanna, but our job means telling even kids the truth. Now, of course, we don't want to prematurely expose kids to ugly realities in a way that violates their mental, spiritual, or psychological development. But that's a question of "how," not "what." How should we show these things in a way that's appropriate to their particular stage of development? "How" is about technique rather than content, because we already know that whatever we're writing must always and forever be true, which is why those who write for the faith-based community often fall prey to the same mistake. Without meaning to, they often end up presenting an inaccurate picture of reality. Again, this stems from a well-intended desire to write stories with virtuous characters who appeal to that particular audience. Often, however, this prior commitment to creating wholesome content forces the writer to avoid anything that they may consider bad, harmful, or offensive. They tend to think that a good story is one that lacks sex, language, or violence. And their goal is to write "clean stories" that bring hope and goodness to the world. But a story is never good because of what it lacks. It's good because of what it offers. In so far as a story accurately reflects the truth about the human condition, then that story is good. 

Zena Dell Lowe  07:28

Writers who allow themselves to be guided by this criteria often fail to explore the reality of a character's turmoil, their shame, their struggle with sin, or the pain that simply comes from living in this broken, fallen world. Oftentimes, this prior commitment can inadvertently cause the writer to propagate lives. We become so gung-ho to present a clean perspective of the world, that we end up creating something overly simplistic, which actually undermines the power of God's redemptive grace. As Barbara Nicolosi said, "I would rather see an R-rated truth than G-rated lie." Overly simplistic characters or explanations of the world's ills do not do anybody any good. All they manage to do is cheapen God's grace and heap more shame on the person who can't find comfort in such platitudes, usually because they are actually being honest with themselves about their pain and their confusion and their brokenness. A worldview that doesn't adequately account for our brokenness, our suffering, our pain, the depths of our struggle within our own souls, is not a true worldview. You cannot have redemption without depravity. You cannot ignore the bad and reveal only the good. We must be willing to paint an honest picture of reality. Anything less is a lie. 

Zena Dell Lowe  08:52

Now, please hear me on this. I am not, therefore, advocating that a story must contain sex, language, and violence in order to be good. Just as I'm not advocating that children's authors write material that is shocking and damaging, so am I not advocating that those writing for a faith-based audience start infusing the narrative with obscenities or curse words or sex. We can see from the example of network television that it's possible to tell a compelling story without the use of crass language, overt sexuality, and gratuitous violence. So, you don't have to say or show these things in your work, but what you cannot do is simply replace offensive language with innocuous language. If it's a prison scene, you can't have a character say, "Oh, shucks," when they would really drop the F-bomb, because it just isn't real. It won't ring true. So, what do you do? Well, you have to find a whole new way of expressing the emotional reality of that situation. You have to go back to the well of creativity and find a better way that still rings true. TV writers have managed to do this, but not by substituting words. They do it by going back to the well of creativity and trying to wrestle with what is really, truly going on inside that character, and how they can express it, given the limitations of their particular venue. So, you write for a Christian audience. That's what you have to do. You have to grapple with the hard issues and find a creative way to acknowledge them, even as you fulfill the requirements of those who publish such works. Once again, it's a question of "how," not "what," because we must tell the truth. So, if you are a writer with good technique who can't seem to create that emotional bond between your characters and the audience, this might be an arena worth exploring. 

Zena Dell Lowe  10:53

On the flip side, however, it's important that we don't slingshot in the opposite direction. I've encountered many faith-based writers who are determined not to write what could be seen as Pollyanna content. However, they choose to take the so-called gritty route and end up with characters who are more akin to cartoons. [Lulu. Honey, baby.] These are the writers who seem to intuitively know that they can't ignore the darkness within their characters, but their attempts to show true depravity fail to make their characters any more real or credible or believable. Their characters are not grounded in reality. They're forged in the fires of assumptions, cliches, and lies. They fancy themselves as super edgy, but in reality, they're only propagating caricatures. By the way, this is why you often hear the phrase, "Write what you know." It's not because people aren't capable of using their imaginations, it's because when you write what you know, it's more likely to come across as true. Unfortunately, far too many writers who go to the edgy route simply have no clue what they're writing about. They don't understand the nuances of this character's struggles. They're not drawing from their own experiences or knowledge. I can tell when a writer is just making stuff up because he thinks he grasps the nuances at hand, when in reality it's simply beyond his scope.

Zena Dell Lowe  12:23

A telltale sign is when a character gets swept up in some kind of grandiose hot topic, like the world of sex trafficking or drug addiction or pornography, and then, the writer paints a superficial sketch, a cliche portrait of that character in that world. The goal is to tell the truth. So, unless that author firsthand experience or knowledge, that story is beyond his scope. It will inevitably come across as melodramatic and over the top and unbelievable. These are subjects that no one should touch unless a) they are truly passionate about the subject, b) they can draw from their own firsthand experience and can therefore offer some genuine insight, or c) they have researched the subject exhaustively, thereby earning the right to explore it, because now they truly know it. Unfortunately, many people who attempt to explore such subjects simply make it up as they go, but there are some things that you just can't touch unless you've either lived it or truly researched it. Only then can we write what we really know. And point of fact, this was precisely the problem with one of the films that I had such a problem with at Sundance this year. So, next week, I will actually unpack the film Farewell Amore from Sundance, and I will explain how it too violated this principle.

Zena Dell Lowe  13:52

RECAP: As far as today, what we've learned is that characters must be credible and believable. And one thing that may be undermining the believability of your work is if you are rigidly clinging to a preconceived bias, which prevents you from honestly engaging the material, which would be either the character or the world in which the character lives. 

Zena Dell Lowe  14:18

CALL TO ACTION: I want to thank you so much for joining me today, and if you've enjoyed this podcast, please do consider subscribing. Also, if you have a question about any of this material or something else pertaining to story, I would love to hear from you. You can go to my website www.missionranchfilms.com, and on the side of the page you will see a button that says "podcast voicemail." You can click on that and actually leave me a voicemail message. Or if you prefer, you can simply send me an email: zena@missionranchfilms.com. I would love to hear from you. 

Zena Dell Lowe  14:59

OUTRO: You have been listening to the Mission with Zena Dell Lowe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better through story.