Story

Some of my readers asked me to provide more details about what makes a good story. The best definition of a good story that I ever read is on page 462 of Which Lie Did I Tell?, a book about screenwriting and the movie business written by Academy Award winning screenwriter, William Goldman.

"A good story is something with an interesting premise that builds logically to a satisfying and surprising conclusion."

Goldman's book mainly focuses on screenwriting, but this definition is true for all sorts of stories -- novels, television shows, webisodes, songs, everything. Goldman uses the example of the children's story "The Little Engine That Could." Aren't we all just rooting for that train to get those toys over the mountain?

The most popular programs on television have the most compelling stories. Despite what the judges say, American Idol is not the top rated show because it is a singing competition. it's a top show because it's a singing competition repackaged as Greek tragedy. A group of characters we know well are fighting for their lives (a singing career that would change their life) and surviving intervention by the gods: the judges with human foibles who also have the power of miraculous intervention on their behalf (the judges' save).

By the way, you could do worse than imitate the story lines from Greek tragedy. I wish all of our work would last as long as the plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides.

But we were talking about story. Develop the most compelling story possible for your idea. You want the audience wondering "what happens next?" The story matters much more than the particular platform the program is placed, or its genre.