Aesthetics

I used to think boring your audience was the greatest sin a storyteller could commit. Maybe I still do. But here's another one that may be just as bad: confusing your audience.

Look. Sometimes we like to get fancy, to play around with the structure a little, to dabble in the second-person, to try a new voice, to play with the order of scenes. Sometimes this works (21 Grams, Memento, Michael Clayton). Sometimes it's infuriating (Donnie Darko). All I'm saying is that when you make a decision to tell a story through any other method besides third-person beginning-middle-end, you're making your own job more difficult. Which is OK. Difficult can be good. It just means you have to work twice as…