Breakin' Rules

A lot of current fiction is serialized. Television is the obvious example, where we tune in to a new episode each week, usually following the same characters in the same setting or overall situation. It's not just TV. Moviemakers love franchises -- how many Star Trek movies are there now? How many James Bond films? Novels too -- I could name several continuing book series.

With consistent, ongoing characters and settings, stories begin to follow certain patterns, develop certain rules. There are, for example, directions the stories just don't take because it would be too counter to what the audience (viewers or readers) expect. An action series may flirt with horror elements, but will likely lose audience if it becomes a totally horrific, just as a horror franchise would lose audience if it failed to terrify.

But I'm not just talking genre. Rules are implied by character, by setting, by story structure. . . I suppose the classic example is Gilligan's Island. No matter what crazy things the castaways try, they can never escape the Island. If they do, the show is over.

But sometimes rules should be broken. If a rule is implied strongly enough that the audience has come to accept it, the breaking of the rule is an obviously dramatic event. The rules represent the way things are. If the rules are broken, the implication is that things will never be the same again.

The catch, of course, is that you can't go home again. Efforts to restore the status quo, to return to the way things were, will be obvious to the audience and will undercut any value gained from breaking the rules. The first run of Star Trek movies suffered from this -- promoting Kirk above Captain and then demoting him, removing Spock and then returning him, destroying the ship and then replacing it.

Imagine the new and different stories -- the brave new worlds -- we could have had if all the changes had stuck.