Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction
What if our stories explore questions not because those questions are interesting, but because those questions are easier to respond to than the alternatives?
Trope: The Chosen One
What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of this trope?
What if you were special and unique and the universe clearly told you what you should do with your life?
How might storytellers add nuance and depth to this question?
What if you don’t want to bear the responsibility for the fate of the entire world/universe? What if powerful people try to use you as a pawn?
What question does this trope avoid, even in the more nuanced version?
What if the universe didn’t tell you what to do, and you had to make that choice for yourself?
Trope: True Love
What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of this trope?
What if you knew, with total certainty, who you wanted to share your life with, and your feelings were reciprocated?
How might storytellers add nuance and depth to this question?
What if circumstances make it difficult for you to be together?
What question does it avoid, even in the more nuanced version?
How do you move forward if you don’t have that certainty?
Trope: Unknown but incredibly talented person is discovered by someone who believes in them and promotes them
What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of this trope?
What if you were effortlessly talented and someone found you and did the work to give you opportunities to showcase your talent?
How might storytellers add nuance and depth to this question?
What if the immensely talented person had personal issues that made it difficult for them to be fully happy or realize their full potential?
What questions does it avoid, even in the more nuanced version?
What if you didn’t receive a constant stream of external validation, so you had to build confidence on your own? What if it wasn’t clear whether all the work required to develop your talents would pay off? What if you had to decide whether you wanted success enough to risk failure and rejection for a chance to get it?
Trope: The Dark Lord
What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of this trope?
What if there were an embodiment of our problems who we could defeat and live happily ever after?
How might storytellers add nuance and depth to this question?
What if it was really hard to defeat the Dark Lord? What drives people to do terrible things? How do people respond to fear, intimidation, and hatred?
What question does it avoid, even in the more nuanced version?
How do you know what you should focus on if it’s not clear what the most pressing issues are? What if the world is big and made of complex interweaving systems and you’re not sure what the right thing to do is?
Trope: Superheroes
What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of this trope?
What could you do with your life if you had incredible magic powers?
How might storytellers add nuance and depth to this question?
What are the social and personal consequences of power? How would people with superpowers interact with others with superpowers? What about people without superpowers?
What question does it avoid, even in the more nuanced version?
What can you do with your life without magic powers?
This list isn’t intended as a dismissal of stories that use these tropes—plenty of excellent stories make heavy use of them—but to lay the groundwork for a series of posts about the questions that storytellers choose to explore in their works. I can’t shake the feeling that by engaging with relevant, interesting questions, our stories could be more compelling in the moment and more worthwhile in retrospect, and I hope that these reflections offer us an opportunity to engage with storytelling in a richer way.