Spoilers; What Makes A Feel Good Tragedy?
I know this sounds like an oxymoron, but these do exist. I have some examples here, and some of them include movies.
Feel Good Tragedies
- Empire Strikes Back
- The Prestige
- Order of the Phoenix.
- Dead Pool 2 Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLeGWcVeIZ4
Feel Bad Tragedies
- Romeo & Juliet
- The First Law
- The Departed
- The Titanic
Clearly tragedies can sell regardless of what type they are. Your heroes do not have to win. But, I'm interested in the ones where you're excited and leave on an up note inspite of the tragedy. I've not heard much about the craft of writing a successful feel-good tragedy and moreover what elements allow you to have a downer destination while leading the audience to a happy emotional state. Note, both types of stories can be successful and revered by audiences.
Definitions:
- Feel Good Tragedy - A story in which your protagonist(s) lose, but which does not lead to a negative response or emotional state in your story's audience.
- Feel Bad Tragedy - A story in which your protagonist(s) lose, and this is upsetting for your story's audience.
Question: What are the craft level things someone should be aware of when trying to write a feel good tragedy? Is there a formula? Is there something at work here in all feel good tragedies that can be replicated?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/27295. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
2 answers
There is a common difference between the two separate sections you have presented. Between Feel Good, and Feel Bad - those two groups have a clearly defining difference, and that is that in Feel Good stories the protagonists are better off in the end of the story than at the start.
Think of the success of a character as being a line on a graph.
At the start of the story, they are at the axis 0,0. This is where they were at the start of their story, in terms of wealth, relationships, fame, etc. Whatever the protagonists aim is.
By the inciting incident, and where the character is fully introduced, we already get an idea of the characters current development - but then gain a twist that provides obstacles and a second thought, where the character begins to lose faith and confidence. At the midpoint, the protagonist gains leverage and grows closer to meeting their goal, before a twist occurs and they reach the low point - the furthest away from their goal.
This is where the paths between the two begin to diverge. While the 'feel good' tragedies end with the protagonists failing to meet their initial goal, they do however end at a higher point in terms of success than where they started. In terms of the 'Feel Bad' tragedies, they end at a lower point than where they started - they end at a loss.
For example, in the Empire Strikes Back, the characters gain new knowledge - Luke learns his father is Darth Vader, and gains a new arm. The characters in total gain new allies and more experience.
In contrast to this, in Titanic - the protagonists end up dying, they lose everything and end up with less than they had at the start. The same with Romeo & Juliet.
Deadpool is a unique one, the audience gains something - comedy and a laugh, but what does deadpool get? A pillow and a can of ice cream that he didn't have at the start.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27340. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Stories are an attempt to endow life with meaning. Where ordinary life seems possessed of a terrible randomness, we look to stories to assure us that there is actually meaning and purpose in life. This may or may not be true, but the thought that it is true is of enormous comfort to us, even in the face of tragedy. This is one of the big reason we are so fond of stories. It is one of the big reason why, far from wanting stories that are unpredictable, we actually demand that they be predictable, and take pleasure and comfort from the predictable ending.
A tragedy that we feel we can understand, that fits a story arc, that seems to have moral purpose, affirms our sense of order in the world at precisely the time we need it. Thus a soldier dies in battle defending an orphanage is a tragedy, but it has moral meaning, it affirms our sense that heroism is a meaningful and worth attribute of human beings and we feel good about that.
A tragedy that we don't feel we can understand, however, has a very different effect. An orphanage is destroyed by an earthquake the day before the children were going to be adopted into good homes. This affirms the randomness and meaningless of life. There is no heroism in it, no moral affirmation. There is nothing we can do but shake our fists at God. There is nothing to feel good about.
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