Predictability in storytelling

I don't consider myself to be any smarter than anyone else. If you listen to my 5th grade test scores I have above average intelligence, but that was 5th grade and if you ask me nowadays I'd say I'm pretty much just an idiot.

Which is why I can't figure out why it's so easy to predict the supposed plot twists of so many stories. I'm not talking just books. I'm talking all storytelling-- tv shows, movies, books, manga, anime, you name it. If it's fiction and someone's starting to tell a story, all too often I can figure out where it's going from the first poorly hidden clues.

It's why I didn't like Sherlock Holmes as much as other people do, because in the first half of the anthology I read, I either figured out what the big reveal was in the stories from initial clues, or there was no way TO figure it out because the key information wasn't given to the readers at all until Holmes explained he'd noticed it ages ago. But that was partially due to the times the stories were written and they got more complicated as time went-- about the time I stopped reading. I wouldn't ever claim to be smarter than the bad ass fictional hero Sherlock Holmes, because I'm definitely not, but in the end I still stopped reading the stories because I lost interest.

I've had the same thing happen with a number of tv shows. I noticed the subtle things they showed and extrapolated what the end game was going to be. Then in those particular shows, I stopped paying as close attention or they started making things less obvious, I'm not sure which.

It's really not hard to spot. In so many stories, details are not included except when they're important. So if you get a tidbit of information that seems out of place and random, chances are that's going to be part of the big reveal. But you're not supposed to know that ahead of time because I guess you're supposed to ignore the information they're giving you until they present it to you again at the end, this time with flashing neon signs and a pat on their back for a job well done.

Recently I watched a Hollywood movie and as happens all too often I had a running commentary in my mind of what everything was leading to while I watched it. "This guy will be the bad guy" because the music was dramatic and they zoomed in on his face. "He's going to force a nice guy to do something bad" because he smiled tightly as he offered help. "This random thing is going to be what saves the good guy at the end when something terrible happens in the process of redeeming himself for his flaws" because they showed something 'miraculous' happening, and other clues along the way, including conversations about what was wrong with the good guy.

In so much storytelling, if people stand around outright listing what's wrong with the hero you know it's going to be directly (and often obviously) addressed by the end to "redeem" him, and remove from him anything that could be the quality of a "bad guy." If something random and miraculous happens, you know it's going to come back to the advantage of the good guy. The bad guy doesn't even have to project what he's planning (although oftentimes he does, especially in superhero stories) because so often it's so completely straightforward it's a wonder how he ever got to be as powerful as he did.

How hard is it really to analyze a bad guy? If you have all the information at your fingertips, why would you not project his future moves and be there to stop it before it happens? It doesn't take a psychic detective to figure out if an unstable guy holds a grudge that he'll get revenge for it.

Reading a manga series today, there were other so-typical-it's-becoming-boring clues. The hero randomly mentions some mysterious savior from his childhood, who appeared briefly to put him back on the right path and has been missing since. Not long afterward, the Big Bad is shown cloaked in shadows. Gee, I wonder if it will turn out to be that past savior? Oh, look. It did. Cue the emotional turmoil within the hero to decide whether he can hurt his childhood savior in the name of his current altruistic goals. Yep. He can. But because of this storytelling style, no one is REALLY hurt in the end. The savior is vanquished as the Bad Guy and gets to stick around redeeming himself back to the good guy of the hero's memories.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

All these dramatic moments that are there to test the resolve of the hero are only superficial. They don't have lasting consequences. They appear and are resolved as casually and insipidly as someone watching the weather and planning for it to rain, only to learn they can take off their rain jacket after all.

Sometimes, it bothers me so much.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not writing this blog as a writer. I'm not saying AND AS YOU SEE, ANYTHING I WRITE IS ABOVE THIS BY FAR! because I highly doubt that's the case. I'm quite certain that if you were to analyze things I've written, I've probably done similar things. But I've also never written anything for the purpose of publication, and had it go through all levels of analysis that SHOULD be happening along the way including multiple editors and proofreaders and many eyes looking over the same work to ensure its quality.

And even if I wrote something that did go through all those checks and balances and a piece or two slipped through that fell into these lines, that's human fallibility.

Instead, I'm saying it as a reader and consumer. And as a reader/consumer, I'm not saying I'M SMARTER THAN ALL THESE CREATORS because that, too, would be completely false. That, in fact, is exactly the issue I have with all this.

I completely understand how insidious it can be to let simplified plot mechanics slip through into a story. I get how you can write something without thinking it through at the time because you just need to get past this damn scene that's been holding you up forever. I get being lazy on some parts of an overall story because you're focused on other, more impactful pieces.

I totally get that so even as a reader, I don't mind it when I see predictability showing up on the side lines. It's probably quite difficult to make NOTHING predictable in any storytelling, particularly since there is such a long history of people producing different facets of the same human stories over and over.

But what I don't understand is when that's the main focus. When the main plot is flat and straight as a Midwest highway, and when no attempts seem to be made to come up with red herrings along the way. It's not even that difficult. You could write the same archetypal characters with the same downtrodden-hero-saves-the-day-and-is-loved-in-the-end as anyone else, but introducing one small twist (the person introduced as the villain turns out to be a good guy) could go a long way in redeeming an otherwise copy/paste piece of work.

And what I don't understand is when they do that in movies, because those are extremely expensive to make. Are they just banking on the weight of the names of the actors or producers or characters to push through a large initial run, and to hell with the repeat traffic that could have gained more traction with an interesting story line?

In these predictable story lines, do the creators honestly believe that no one will see what's coming a mile away or do they just not care? Are they relying that strongly on the predictability of human emotions compensating for any gap in logic or intrigue?

I just don't understand what the goal is. And as a consumer, sometimes it simply perplexes me, sometimes it annoys me, but mostly is exasperates me and makes me lose my interest quickly.

Because the thing is, I'm not particularly intelligent. I'm not any smarter or quicker in thought than the average creator or reader out there. So what I don't understand is how so many things are produced that are obvious from the start even to someone as average as me.