Creating Emotional Depth in a Story: With Values

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Do most modern films and television shows bore you?

Do you hunger to make your stories impactful for a big audience?

The answer to creating compelling and resonant stories is simple. In theory.

A story’s gut punch comes from the values it dramatizes. Audiences react emotionally to the value laden ideas that underpin characters and their choices, conflicts, and actions.

Creatives today struggle to craft stories with universal important values that audiences can empathize with. If creatives understand the importance of values, they can make their stories resonate more with audiences.

Values

The devil is always in the definition.

What do I mean by values?

Values are those core desires and ideals we act on to attain a fulfilling life. Values can be physical or psychological. Freedom or self-esteem, for example.

When you respond emotionally to a story it’s not to the goals, conflicts, and events of the story themselves. What you are really responding to is the values that underpin these actions. To the value-based ideas that these actions represent. When you are bored with a story, it’s because it doesn’t dramatize big values of yours. Ideas that you care about.

James Bond

As a simple example of the consequences of low and high values in a story, think of the action film cliché, the car chase.

Do we really care about scenes of speeding and crashing cars? Not for long. Such action is one layered. Purely physical. A low value conflict. We would watch a car chase much more avidly, care much more about it, if deep human values were displayed and at risk during the chase.

Imagine this type of car chase:

We learn that a female character we have fallen in love because of her high values is trapped in the pursued car and about to be viciously tortured by her kidnappers. We care more and feel deeper emotions during this car chase because our deeper values are under threat. A woman we admire and cheer. Then we learn that she is the only character who knows the plot of the villain that will kill a million innocent Londoners. If she dies millions of innocents will be murdered.

These conflicts (and others) are from a high values/stakes car chase in Moonraker, Ian Fleming’s James Bond masterpiece, and arguably the most riveting car chase in literature. Bond is hunting Hugo Drax and his persuader (torturer) on the A20 Motorway while the heroic Gala Brand is trapped in the villain’s Mercedes trying to steal evidence of his plot.

Fauda

Also consider a recent television example of high value writing – from the hit Israeli television show Fauda. Its stories are generally well-constructed action suspense conflicts. Season four, for instance, features the dangerous threat of a massive missile attack on Israel. A terrifying physical threat to millions of innocent Israeli civilians. We care for them. We want them to live. So we are emotionally involved in this story.

But a physical threat generally does not have enough big values at stake to lift a story and audience to the highest emotional level.

This Fauda story compounds the missile threat when a top Israeli spy master is captured by the Palestinian terrorists behind the missile plot. This storyline adds a more personal conflict of high values. This Israeli spy master is a character we like from earlier seasons because of his courage, competence, and love of freedom and security.

But that is still not enough. We need to see his values -- and thus ours -- in crisis, in action. The deeper conflict that rivets us most in this story is the psychological and physical hell this spy master suffers at the hands of the terrorists. And the choices and consequences in action of that hell. Will he break and betray his self and country?

The important values these Fauda storylines dramatize include loyalty, honesty, resilience, and moral strength. The audience recognises these high values in the actions, choices, and events of the story and thus feels stronger emotions than they would if only physical values were at stake.

Saving Mr. Banks

Let’s consider the vital importance of values in the feature film Saving Mr. Banks.  

This 2013 film dramatizes the dilemma and character arc of P. L. Travers, the creator of the Mary Poppins books. The story depicts the struggles of the broke Travers not wanting to sell her literary creation to Walt Disney.

The big universal value Saving Mr. Banks dramatizes is how to overcome the psychological damage of childhood. Most, if not all of us, stumble through childhood to emerge with many good beliefs and values but also with psychological scars and unresolved personal conflicts. P. L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks is still a prisoner of her childhood.

As we watch the film, we explicitly or implicitly recognise the ideas and values related to childhood damage and resurrection that underly the conflicts and events of the story. We respond emotionally to these ideas and values. What would be the level of drama and the impact of this story if the vital idea of overcoming childhood loss and pain were excised from the film? We would be much less involved and moved by these story events.

Why?

Because overcoming childhood psychological scars so we can live happier adult lives is a big personal value to us. Thus we are deeply invested in Travers and her psychological struggle and big life affirming choice in the climax.

In short, the values dramatized in Moonraker, Fauda, and Saving Mr. Banks are big and compelling ones that deeply connect with and move audiences.

While every storyteller wants to express their values as they wish, it should be noted that all values are not equal. Not in life nor in story.

A story with shallow values will not be compelling. Those stories that are most resonant are generally those that dramatize the deepest values. That is a fundamental lesson for all creatives.

Actionable Creative Takeaway

Focus explicitly on the values that drive and underpin your characters and story. Just because you like the values in your story doesn’t mean others will. Let’s try to make your story more resonant by deepening the values of your characters in their goals and conflicts.

Develop the values in your story by asking yourself these four key questions:

1) Are the values motivating my characters big and universal?

2) Are the values in conflict important and life changing?

3) Are the stakes large personal values?

4) Are the values a character is choosing between their highest values?

Answering the above questions will help you create more compelling stories for a wider and more emotionally stimulated audience.

Values are the core of your story. Skilled writers know not only the mechanics of writing, but also how to dramatize big, important, and personal values. That is a key way of how you can write resonant and marketable stories.

Want to amplify your story’s impact? Hit reply with VALUES.

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