Hear me out on this.
With the NFL in full swing, I, along with millions of others around the world, have plunged into the uncertain waters of fantasy football. For those not familiar with this “sport”, fantasy football is a competition in which participants draft “teams” from among the players in the NFL and score points according to the actual performance of their players. For example, suppose I have Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes on my team (which unfortunately I do not). If Mahomes throws a touchdown pass, I would score six points. That’s fantasy football in a nutshell.
So…what does this have to do with fiction writing?
Let’s find out.
Although this number can vary league to league, a fantasy football team typically consists of ten players: A quarterback (QB), two runningbacks (RB1 and RB2) two wide receivers (WR1, and WR2) a tight end (TE) two “flex” players (RB, WR, or TE) a kicker (K) and a team defense (DEF).
In order to win a fantasy football game on any given Sunday, you need your team to collectively score more points than your opponent’s team. This makes it crucial to do everything you can to have strong, high scoring players at every position.
And THAT is what got me thinking about fiction writing.
Similar to a football team, a story consists of a number of key elements that work together to achieve a successful result. Ineffective story elements will lead to a failed novel or screenplay just as ineffective players will lead to a fantasy football loss. (Which I unfortunately have a lot of experience with this year.)
An interesting facet of a fantasy football team is the importance of one position over another. On any given week, certain positions will score consistently higher than other positions. Take a look at the table below:
This is a typical point spread for what a fantasy football team can be expected to produce on any given week. As you glance through, some things should jump out at you, namely that the bulk of points will be scored by top-of-the-line runningbacks, wide receivers, and quarterbacks. This explains why players who excel in this position are snapped up early in fantasy drafts at the beginning of the season.
So how does this pertain to fiction writing? Well, similar to fantasy team positions, there are certain story elements which are of greater importance than others. To help illustrate this, I have recreated the table above, swapping out story elements for player positions. Take a look:
I realize it’s impossible to truly quantify the value of one story element over another, just as it’s impossible to tell with 100% accuracy who will be the top scoring player on any given fantasy team, but as a general rule this table reflects the most critical aspects in successfully reaching your audience.
Ok…so what do the numbers mean? In fantasy football it’s clear enough: you’re trying to score more points than someone else. If your team puts up 127 and my team scores 128, I win. Simple enough. But what about fiction writing? What do “points” even mean? I’m not playing against anyone else right?
Wrong.
You are playing against the audience. Namely, you are playing against the audience’s disinterest. If your audience loses interest in your story, you lose. Game over. Their disinterest scored more points than your story’s interest. For the sake of the comparison, let’s say that for a given audience member, their level of disinterest is worth 150 points. Obviously, this will vary person to person just as in fantasy football your opponent’s score will vary from week to week. But for the sake of this example, let’s say 150. Now we know what we’re playing against. We have to somehow get our story elements to combine for a score of 151 or better.
So let’s take a look at what we’ve got:
Why does premise take the QB slot? Well, in fantasy football you can expect almost any given quarterback to put up between 15 to 20 points on any given week. The exceptional QBs however, score between 25 and 30.
The same is true of a story premise. A generic premise can still do well commercially as long as the other story elements are solid. Truly compelling premises however such as Jurassic Park or Inception give themselves a leg up right out of the gate.
Here we go: the big guns.
Fantasy football teams live and die with runningbacks. Stories live or die with characters. In fantasy, if you’re primary runningback consistently catches, runs, and scores touchdowns, you’re going to be very difficult to beat. Conversely, if you have an ineffective runningback, you’re going to have a stiff uphill climb to victory.
Main characters are the same way. If you have a weak main character, an unrelatable glob of forgettable goo, it really doesn’t matter how great your themes are or how well you use subtle irony. Your story is DOA. But if you craft a character with clear motivations, a complex but compelling personality and a genuinely unique point of view, you will stiff arm your way through your audiences’ disinterest and keep them riveted right to the end of your story.
Do you know what’s better than a great runningback? TWO great runningbacks. The same goes for your secondary characters. Rather than just a solid main character, a cast of unforgettable, thoroughly developed characters will stay with your audience forever. Something to keep in mind: your most important secondary character is probably the antagonist.
What happens if you have good runningbacks but lousy wide receivers on your fantasy team? You still could win, but it’s going to be rough going. Your other players won’t just have to be good, they’ll have to be EXCELLENT to make up the difference.
The same is true of your main plot line. Sherlock Holmes may be the most beloved and widely known character of all time, but if A. Conan Doyle had written a story in which Holmes and Watson do nothing but take a leisurely stroll through London, it’s unlikely many would have read it.
It’s not enough to have fun and scintillating characters, they need to DO SOMETHING. You need obstacles, developments, twists and turns, and most of all CONFLICT. A story without conflict is a wide receiver who never catches a ball.
In other words, a bench warmer.
Can you get by in fantasy football with a single high-end wide receiver? Technically yes, but boy it’s nice to have some backup points. There are going to be weeks when your number one wide receiver has an off day. That’s when you’re going to want your number two guy to step up.
It’s no different with plot lines. Assuming you’re pacing your story properly, (more on that later) you’re going to have times when your A plot slows down and you need to kick over to a B plot. This may come in the form of a love interest or other storyline involving a side character. This switching over to other plotlines is summed up in the phrase “meanwhile back at the ranch.” Relying solely on one main plot line for the duration of your story is like relying on a single wide receiver for the entirety of your fantasy season. At some point, it will burn you.
In the world of fantasy football, tight ends are interesting. Most tight ends score a modest number of points on any given week, usually between 8 and 15. But there are a few top tier tight ends that can score just as many if not more points than a runninback or wide receiver. These players stand out as highly sought-after commodities.
Story worlds behave in much the same way. In most stories the “world” is simply the place where the plot happens. The story may take place in Chicago, but could just as easily occur in New York. These are your average, middle-of-the-road story worlds.
Excellent story worlds stand out just like highly proficient tight ends. They drag the audience in, convincing the reader/viewer that this fictitious place really exists. Granted, genres like fantasy and sci-fi depend heavily on story worlds, but even a standard mystery or literary work can benefit greatly from a well thought out story world.
Flex players are those tier two or three players that you play on the off chance that they’ll have a good game. If they disappoint, it’s generally not a critical blow, but if they excel it can be a real boost.
Similar to a flex player, it’s not likely that pacing is going to jump out as the MVP. If you ignore pacing however, it’s going to stand out, just like a big fat 0 stands out on a fantasy team. Stories should have a natural flow, a rhythm, one scene flowing smoothly to the next in a fluid and logical way. Excellent pacing can put a good story over the top into great, just as weak pacing can tip a so-so story to terrible.
Again, similar to flex players, themes won’t make or break you, but it’s one more opportunity to excel, to “rack up points” against that ever-looming audience disinterest. A story can still be good without a strong theme, but it can’t be excellent. The audience has to be able to come away from a film/novel knowing what the takeaway message was. The more this can be reinforced through visuals, dialogue, and symbolism, the higher your “theme score” will be.
And then there’s the kicker. Don’t get me wrong, there are some excellent kickers out there who can put up a decent number of points, but nobody goes into a new week of fantasy football eagerly rubbing the hands together in anticipation of what their kicker is going to do.
In the same way, no one is going to pick up a book or go to a movie thinking, “Boy, I can’t wait to see clever uses of symbolism and dramatic irony.” Still, these elements are important just as the kicker is important. They both are noticed more through their absence than their presence. If a kicker misses every extra point attempt, you notice it. In the same way, a story that contains no symbolism or use of dramatic irony comes across as “stale” or “on the nose”. Most readers/viewers won’t even be aware what it is that’s missing, but they’ll sense something is off.
Finally, there’s the defense. You should notice something different about this last row of the table. It is the only one with a zero under “weak”. This is because it fits for both defenses and dialogue.
In fantasy football, defenses are more likely to put up a zero than any other member of your team. This is due to the fact that unlike other positions, a defense will start out with points then gradually lose them as the other team scores against them.
This propensity for zeros or otherwise low scores is why I’ve likened dialogue to defense. There is no other area of story that I’ve seen writers put up more “zeros” in than dialogue. In many stories, dialogue seems to be a total afterthought, simply a tool for delivering information.
There is a flipside to this, however. Just as weak defenses churn out zeros, strong defenses can turn out high scores week after week. A well chosen defense can often be the difference between victory and defeat in fantasy football.
This is true for dialogue as well. Well-written dialogue can be the duct tape holding together an otherwise leaking story. It can quicken dragging scenes, electrify one-dimensional characters, and most importantly, capture the interest of the audience.
So now that we’ve gone examined each position of our “team”, let’s run a little test. Let’s suppose we’ve put together a story in which every element is “average”. Not bad, not good. Just ok. What is our score?
Let’s take a look:
136. That’s not so bad, right? There’s just one problem. Do you remember that hypothetical audience member earlier? They had a disinterest level of 150. Looks like we’re losing this one.
Conversely, let’s take a look at a story which has proven itself over time through its beloved main character and irresistible under-dog premise: Rocky. Feel free to disagree with my scoring, I try to call ‘em like I see ‘em:
And there you have it. Where we failed with our middle-of-the-road story, Rocky delivers the 1-2 KO with its timeless story of going the distance.
Hold on though. These are just arbitrary numbers, right? Of course they are. But why not think of them as real? Why not push ourselves to max out in every one of these categories and shoot for “a perfect score”? (253 in case you were wondering). Let’s take an honest look at our writing. Maybe our “quarterback premise” is a solid 25, but maybe our runningback main character is hovering around a 15.
There’s an important distinction between writing and fantasy football: at the end of the day, you really have no say in whether a runningback, wide receiver, or tight end has a good game. But you DO have a say in the effort you put into your writing. Max out your team; go for that all elusive “253”.
Let’s hit the keyboard. Hut-hut!
