HOW STORIES FAIL, HOW STORIES SUCCEED: THE STRANGE CASE OF THE SUBSTANCE
It’s often hard to find texts that exemplify some of the arguments I’ve been making about narrative in clear concise ways. And then a movie like The Substance comes along and bingo — straight on the syllabus it goes.
Please understand: I’m interested in the movie’s narrative assemblies and how they can help us write better. What I’m not here to do is argue about the relative merits of The Substance as a film — others have done this much better than I ever could.1
Whether one loves Fargeat’s film or hates it, considers it a feminist masterpiece or the essence of mid itself, is not really our point here. One can admire The Substance unreservedly and still recognize that the film is plagued by a host of classic structural problems — structural problems that a handsome well-made film starring Demi Moore could easily glamour away, but that would tear your average piece of prose fiction to pieces.
For me The Substance is a textbook case of what not to do in our stories, and is well worth studying from a technical point of view for precisely that reason.
So, let’s take a look at a few of the film’s narrative “fails” and see what solutions might be applied in the name of improving our own writing game…