Between the Act and the Audience

Last month or so, I wrote about the sweet spot between accessibility and epic-ness. If you swap adventure for epic, then you have a generalized description of narrative fiction. The audience must have enough to grab onto to enter the imaginary world. Without any connection in the characters or, secondarily, the setting or plot, the audience is an uninvited outsider. Any who watches French or Chinese art house film probably feels as alienated from the film as the obscure director did from general society.

Yet, the story must have enough difference with real life to to be worth the price of admission. Too much similary creates a banal storyline that the audience can see out of their window.

This dichotomy seems like a truism, but number of misses that come to mind makes me think that there's something too this.