Over at Mighty God-King we have a critique of the new series, The Event. Now, I haven’t seen the show, and from what I’ve been reading about it, I don’t have any desire to, but MGK’s post brings up some very good points that are not just applicable to series television, but to fiction generally. I can boil it down to a general rule of thumb; in your book/trilogy/film/TV series, no matter how complex the story is going to become in terms of plot and style and world-building, in the hook— the first chapter/episode/etc.— you need to keep the focus tight, the action straightforward, and the narrative as comprehensible as possible. A reader must have a emotional investment in the story before they’re asked to follow truly convoluted plots or intricate world-building, or major structural slights of hand. Without that, they just aren’t going to invest the mental energy to follow what you’re doing, or care about it when they do figure it out.
Anyway, read the post, it makes sense.
PS- Want to know my theory why Lost succeeded where all these other shows bomb? It was a character drama first and foremost, all the mythology stuff was a layer on top of all these people’s stories. Which is why it sort of makes sense that it ended how it did.
