Almost ten years ago to the day, Matt Stone and Trey Parker crashed a class at NYU and talked about something pretty heavy. No, it wasn’t about the upcoming HumancentIpad episode or the one after where Ike watches the little mushroom people of Nova Scotia screaming in horror at the Canadian royal wedding.
(seriously one of the most random laughter outbursts I’ve ever had)
They talked about the importance of arranging your story beats in such a way that your story would be exciting and compelling and therefore, NOT BORING.
What do you mean by this?
Boring happens when your story doesn’t build to an interesting or exciting or cathartic ending. When things just kind of happen to your characters and they don’t mean anything in the whole scheme of things. As so many movies in the past have tended to, they can only be explained to a friend over dinner by reciting the events with an “and then this happened.”
Well, what happened after that? “Then this happened.” “And then?” “And then…” BORING. I was getting bored just TYPING that crap.
So what did the South Park creators talk about in the class? Simply put, an easy-to-remember rule when constructing your story.
Between every story beat, use the phrase “therefore” or “but.”
As Trey put it, which I will paraphrase, this happens, therefore, this happens, but! THis happens, therefore THIS happens.
Again, this was about a decade ago when they presented this idea. Question: Do they use this successfully?
I went to the immediate first episode of the season to find out. HumancentIpad, which is still a running joke with my brothers over the “vanilla pudding/cuttlefish” joke (and if you have a bad stomach, PLEASE don’t want this episode).
In the story, Kyle skips reading the infamous “Terms & Services” of his latest itunes update and simply accepts them.
Because this happens he [therefore] has volunteered for some strange research project, [but] the project is actually a sick, twisted take on the human centipede movie. When the project happens, Kyle wants out, and is [therefore] offered a chance out by signing a paper, BUT he once again didn’t read the paper and is THEREFORE going to be a HumancentIpad.
Even when things are going terribly, he gets a chance to sign out, BUT didn’t read it and THEREFORE gets stuck again!
There’s a great B story of his dad trying to get him back and quite a few funny moments of the recurring “he didn’t read the agreement?” line. That story ALSO follows the same but/therefore rule.
When applying this handy dandy tool, you’ll keep the beats of your story connected, and hopefully escalating the stakes while you do.
Hope this helps!
~Nic
