How to Make Your Audience Stick to The End: The 1 Reason the Greats Succeed
What I learned analysing “Arrival” like a madman without a social life
TLDR: The Art of Storytelling.
There you have it. You can go now.
But if you are still here, you won’t be disappointed.
Prologue
In essence, no matter the medium, content or the job, storytelling is contrast. It is ups and downs. A setup and a payoff.
The craft of storytelling is not simply in the realm of artists and creators. If you are a living breathing person, who wants to make friends, woo your boo, or simply make money, storytelling is key.
A story can be boring or nail-biting depending on how you present it.
A cliffhanger is interesting only if you can take the audience all the way up to the cliff and betray their trust as you attempt to shove them off of it.
‘Et tu author.’
Act I. How I Stumbled Upon This Very Obvious Answer
A couple of years ago I decided to up my game as a filmmaker. I was good, but good wasn’t good enough. I had hit a plateau and it was time to level up.
I learned enough along the journey to know where I had to improve. I needed to sharpen something everyone knows but very few understand — Storytelling.
How did I do it? I reverse-engineered a movie.
I got myself a copy of the 2017 sci-fi masterpiece ‘Arrival’ directed by Denis Villeneuve and added it to an edit timeline.
For those who don’t know, Arrival is the story of Louise Banks, a linguist who is hired to translate the language of the aliens who have arrived on Earth.
I wanted to figure out what the original shot division looked like during the pre-production phase. The shot division is the visual outline of a movie. It is the structure of the visual storytelling before a single frame of film or pixel is shot.
You can either present a movie like a newbie throwing shit against the wall, hoping something will stick, or you can weave it like Denis, a master storyteller.
That was my goal. To not throw shit against the wall with fingers crossed.
Once I added the movie to the timeline, I found every point of edit and manually cut it.
Now that the easy part was done, it was time to embrace the real workout. Analysing the movie from beginning to end—shot by shot.
I created a document on Google Sheets and laid out all the data over a span of three months.
And then something interesting happened.
In the process of discovering the secrets of the original shot division, I found something more profound.
Act II. The Meat And Potatoes
Let’s take a small scene from Arrival and analyse it.
In this scene, Louise Banks arrives at the site of the alien spaceship in a helicopter. Simple enough, but how do you dramatise it?
Let’s look at the 5 shots highlighted above:
- Shot 1: “Drone view of the giant crowd waiting outside the perimeter at Montana.”
This shot builds tension by establishing a sea of humanity gathered in the middle of nowhere outside the perimeter to get a view of the alien spaceship. Something big is happening!
- Shot 2: “Louise looks out the helicopter at the crowd below.”
Louise Banks observes the situation from high up above in her helicopter. We observe our protagonist observing. Simultaneously, we are also shown that she has arrived at the scene.
- Shot 3: “Louise’s point of view: The crowd disappears as the helicopter crosses the perimeter into the landing site.”
This shot fully immerses us, the viewers, into the mind of the protagonist. We see what she sees. She is finally deep inside the plot. Dorothy has left Kansas. We are now past the point of no return!
- Shot 4: “Louise squints her eyes and notices something that makes her reel.”
The tension builds up. We, as the audience, are vicariously experiencing the goosebumps that Louise feels as she sees —
- Shot 5: “The spaceship! It is a massive behemoth, floating gently above the ground. The military camp, with all its bells and whistles, is but a tiny campsite in comparison.”
We finally see what everyone else is trying to see. It hits us like a ton of bricks. And then, the tension and desire that was built up to this point is released. The spaceship is here!
But, now what? What happens next? What’s Louise going to do?
A new iteration of tension slowly builds up within us, as these questions pop into our heads.
So, what does it all mean?
This next section is going to be a little dense. So, buckle up:
- Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency — Every shot/phrase/idea must have a purpose. Within a series of five shots, Villeneuve concisely makes us feel the dread of what is about to happen and reveals the spaceship. The sea of humanity in the first shot creates tension through social proof. The second shot establishes Louise arriving at the scene. The third shot from Louise’s POV shows her crossing the perimeter. The fourth is her reaction to what she sees, priming us for, the fifth shot — the grand reveal! A wasted shot is a wasted instance of holding the audience’s attention. This holds true across all mediums.
“The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.”
— Henry Green
- Your artistic flourish must have a purpose beyond showcasing your skills—Let’s look at the final shot, where the spaceship is revealed. It is a cinematic gem. The dark spaceship contrasted with the white clouds draw our eyes to it. The long, single-take shot does not feel gimmicky because it establishes the spaceship, the campsite, and the never-ending parade of helicopters. All providing a sense of urgency. It serves two purposes here — firstly, it creates dread and awe, secondly, it sets the geography of the drama along with all the chess pieces. Remember, every artistic choice must have a purpose. Even great works of art that don’t seem to have a purpose have an inherent purpose — to evoke emotion.
“The technical afterthoughts of a truly great artist can appear to be divine inspiration to the lesser artist.”
― Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning
- The Art of Pacing— And finally, possibly the most important principle of storytelling — pacing. It is the speed at which the information is delivered. Storytelling is a dance between tension and release. The macro and the micro. Activity and dormancy. Each part blending seamlessly into the next. The scene begins by establishing tension. Followed by Louise’s reaction, and her POV. Each shot slowly ramps up tension until the reveal. The final reveal is impactful because of all the shots that led up to it. If the scene began with the shot of the spaceship it is a punchline without a setup.
“Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.”
― Khaled Hosseini
Act III. What on God’s Green Earth is Pacing?
While it is true that pacing is the speed at which the information is delivered, that only scratches the surface. Because what is the right information to deliver? This is where the following idea becomes useful.
Pacing is really the speed at which emotion is delivered.
Whenever a person scrolls through social media, opens a book, clicks on Netflix, or browses Medium, all they are looking for is something that will make them feel and think a particular way.
Note that I wrote feel before think intentionally. Through the lens of storytelling, feeling comes before thinking.
For example: two articles, each talking about the benefits of meditation can have completely different readership, depending on how the topic is broached by the respective writers.
It does not mean that one of the articles traded logical consistency for emotional resonance, but that emotional resonance was used to sell the underlying logic.
In Arrival, we follow the personal and professional struggles of Louise Banks, a linguist, as she translates the alien language to establish a communication channel.
It is her emotional ups and downs as a result of the plot unfolding that keeps us hooked to the screen. What’s going to happen next? How will she react? What are the consequences?
You are not watching it as a case study on language, communication, tribalism and the perception of time. Even though these are the pillars on which the story stands.
As a storyteller, your job is to take control of the audience’s pulse and not let go until the job is done.
You are a storyteller whether you’re narrating an alien invasion, or you’re enumerating the 7 best ways to grow a startup. Whether you’re Villeneuve or a mere mortal Medium writer, you are a storyteller.
And now, the —
Act IV. The (Re)Solution
Desire and obstacle. That is what pacing depends on, and that is what good storytelling depends on.
Look at desire and obstacle as two points on either end of a line. Everything is calm and stable. But imagine if desire slowly started moving towards obstacle. An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.
Suddenly, what was once calm and stable is now turbulent. It builds anxiety and tension.
But it also builds interest, because human beings are vicarious creatures. Like watching a burning building, we just can’t stop.
Desire: Humanity must figure out why the aliens are here on Earth.
Obstacle: Humanity. And its inability to communicate effectively.
As Louise slowly understands the aliens, she comes to the realisation that it isn’t the aliens that humans don’t understand, but each other.
Desire: Apple must sell the new iPhone.
Obstacle: The previous iPhone. The competition. The high price tag.
When Apple launches a new iPhone, months of campaign build up the hype — desire — until it is finally released.
You will observe that the campaign becomes most fervent as the release date nears, generating more impressions.
Desire approaching obstacle. This is pacing in real time in real life.
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make but about the stories you tell.”
— Seth Godin
Now if Apple launches an even newer version of the iPhone only a week after the initial launch, it won’t have the same impact. The obstacle of novelty has not been overcome. Nor has enough time been spent creating anticipation.
A new iPhone feels exciting because you’ve let the old one become sufficiently old enough to create a desire for a new one.
This is why Apple’s marketing is a continuous narrative, where each campaign builds on the previous ones. The storytelling doesn’t end with the product launch. It evolves with user feedback, updates, and new features.
This continuous narrative keeps the audience engaged long after the initial excitement fades.
Act V. And Now My Dear Reader
We have arrived at the denouement of this piece. The contents of which I hope have served you well.
If not, it is because I have failed to overcome the obstacle that was desired by you the reader.
In either case, if you have come this far, that in itself is evidence of the attention generated by desire and obstacle at play.
“Law 29: Plan all the way to the end.”
— Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power
Remember: Pacing is key and every choice must have a purpose. Each chain of desire and obstacle must deliver the right dosage of emotion and must lead to something.
In a movie or a novel, it is the climax — the end of the hero’s journey.
In a marketing campaign, it is the maximisation of the sales.
This is the mental framework that you must use at every point of the storytelling process.
What innate human desire am I presenting, solving or leveraging? What obstacle stands in the way?
How can I overcome this obstacle?
Only you — writer, filmmaker, content creator, marketer or simply the storyteller of your own life — can answer this for yourself.
All you have to realise is that —
Storytelling is problem-solving from a meta perspective.
Like their ship or their bodies, their written language has no forward or backward direction. Linguists call this “nonlinear orthography,” which raises the question, “Is this how they think?”
— Ian Donnelly, Arrival
