As part of my winter writing goals, I’ve been reading Story Genius by Lisa Cron. Though it has its flaws (assuming that all stories are character driven instead of just most of them), I’m enjoying the thorough take on how to construct a character arc for your story before you start writing. My NaNo novel definitely suffered from a lack of planning in this department–I stalled out 1/3 of the way through because I had no idea how to pull the character out of her depressed funk. So I feel like the lessons learned in this book will be helpful in getting my next book going.
Story Genius also helped me with a problem that’s been rolling around in my head: why I don’t like Frozen 2. Ever since watching the movie over Thanksgiving, I’ve been wondering why a movie with such ostensibly powerful messages ended up feeling so hollow for me. I think Story Genius has given me the answer: what Frozen 2 wants to say, the story it wants to tell, isn’t backed up or earned by the plot that we see on screen. Sure, the songs are fantastic (you can’t fault Frozen on lyrics), and there are some great empowering one liners, but these end up falling flat because there is no substance behind them. It doesn’t come off as believable character growth, which means that it just comes off as a preach fest with lyrical interludes.
And so, without further ado, my attempt to fix the character arcs in Frozen:
Continue reading “Story Genius and Frozen 2: When the Story Doesn’t Match the Plot”