Adam Gopnik recently wrote in the ‘New Yorker’ about the Hollywood boy genius, Irving Thalberg. Mr. Gopnik mentioned that many writers, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, believed that there were secrets of storytelling.
Yet most films have a simple story line — “Raise the stakes, place insurmountable obstacles before the protagonist, have the protagonist somehow surmount them while becoming braver and better. What works for Dorothy works for Rocky.”
Bringing it home, one of my editors shared the sad fact that in my sex-forward stories (‘Housewives’), there were no real obstacles to prevent frequent bed-hopping.
True.
However, I’ve come to understand that my three remaining readers want to cut to the chase even faster than I’ve been doing.
A conundrum … try to write better, more believable stories? Or give in to the craven … well, you know.
Paige