A Little Thought On Stories

I recently purchased the book Directing the Story by Francis Glebas, who did storyboard work for a number of Disney productions including Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas and more. It's fascinating to read as Glebas presents the inner thoughts of the Disney story process. The mantra is that the director directs the story and through it, the audience's emotions with the goal of bringing about an emotionally satisfying ending. Glebas continually makes reference to the audience being "lost" in the story, if the film is well put together and the crew has done its job correctly.

Even more, though, a certain idea he presents caught my eye:

Many books that I have found on filmmaking say that we willingly suspend our disbelief when we watch a movie. There is no "willing suspension of disbelief."

Let's say I go to a movie. I buy a ticket—check. Buy popcorn—check. Find a seat—check. Willingly suspend my disbelief—what? I cannot remember ever going into a movie theater and willingly suspending my disbelief. I don't even know how. Belief is automatic. As long as the structure presents a filmic world that is seamless and doesn't break the spell by calling attention to itself, we get sucked into the world of the story.

While the nature of belief is worthy of its own long investigation, I think Glebas has a significant insight into the way we watch movies or read books. Why are we ever affected emotionally by fiction? Some works have deeper impacts on us than others, with impacts varying from passing glee or sorrow to a rich catharsis. But, the fact remains that they affect us.

In essence, I think Glebas is right, we don't "willingly suspend our disbelief" to watch or read stories, instead, we are all too ready to believe.

We believe because good stories are cast as little worlds or realities with their own rules and regulations, their own visual and narrative designs, a crystal rock whose intricacies refract and split the sunlight into infinite tiny beads of color that slide and dance as you tilt it.

Also, I'm beginning to wonder if the emotional impact of stories might not have something to do with my thoughts about the nature of perception as the most significant and basic act of the human being. There is obviously a perceptual difference between watching a movie about an explorer and being an explorer, but if these both document similar events, then we get to experience some small part of being an explorer when we watch the movie.

This may be messy, but basically stories/films/novels, allow us to experience the thoughts and emotions of being someone different. By being privy to the events in a character's life or the events of a plot arch, we become confidants of the narrative itself, like gazing through the intricacies of the crystal and take away the experience and insight into something that is at once smaller and larger than us.

P.S. - I recently checked out Timeless Way of Building, and plan to work through that in the next couple of weeks. Perhaps we'll have some good discussion out of it, your last post piqued my interest in it.