Is there anything more powerful at making sure that the building simply works?

I'm an optimist. The natural temptation of most people is to do a good job - but having skin in the game makes sure you do the best job possible.

Get it wrong, and you are dead.

But what are the consequences of not telling the best story you can? Where is your skin in the game?

If you look at the world of stories all around us, you can see that everything encourages people to have as little skin in the game as possible.

To mitigate risk and still succeed.

The attention economy is about gaining as much attention as possible without depending on the quality of the content.

Billions of YouTube, TikTok, Instagram videos, website headlines, and yes, even TV shows are designed to get you to interact with them and notice them because the attention is enough to make you some money and move on to the next.

The click is the end goal.

How and why should you obsess about the quality of the story? Is it possible, and can there even be rules to help with it?

Going back to our builders, if you are sleeping under an aqueduct, you could argue that there aren't really any rules about building things...

...but there are principles - and if you don't follow them, you will die.

Stretching the analogy a little further, when an architect designs a building - as Frank Gehry did the spectacular Museum of Culture in Seattle, the Disney Concert Hall in LA, or the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao - then there are two things going on.

The external, extraordinary shape, design, and colours of the exterior - alongside the depth of the foundations, tensile strength of the steel, and all the other things are the responsibility of the engineer.

The first is not possible without the second.

Get it wrong, and you are left with a pile of spectacular rubble.

Stories are artificial constructions. We might feel the instinct emotion and excitement when we are putting them together. And, yes, there is a huge amount of that involved, and it's often the reason why you begin a story in the first place.

But stories exist outside of those emotions. They are artificial.

They are of a certain length; they are made of images and sounds gathered via technology. They are a cumulative experience, meaning being built up from one moment to the next.

They have a structure.

For your audience, if you get it wrong, it's not quite like seeing a building collapse in front of their eyes, but the symptoms of a story that is held together with sticky tape and hope is clear...

... it's dull, repetitive, unclear, pointless.

These are all problems of structure, of the intention behind the story, and the stuff of the engineer.

To the programme maker, they present themselves as these kinds of problems:

• What the story is struggling to say, and how to focus the theme and meaning.
• Why does the story run out of steam?
• Why do we have to remake the opening over and over again?
• How can we produce a satisfying ending?
• Why does it seem like a list and not a story?
• How can we make this story work at feature length - and what exactly is missing?
• What does it mean when the chronology of events doesn't seem to match the story you are trying to tell?
• Why does this just feel wrong?

An understanding of storytelling allows you to look at any idea that you have, something that excites and moves you, and then create a narrative that delivers everything you want from it.

It stops you from repeating yourself.

It stops you from retreating to the superficial to save a story that isn't working. Making a story work is not about ramping up the drama, adding the idea that you are running out of time, fake tension and superficial suspense.

It's not about copying what someone else has done or making sure that you have pulled something out of the headlines or told a story about something that is in the aether.

All that matters and all that can make a difference is getting your idea cut through.

These are techniques for gaining attention and engagement.

But if that is what you are defined by and resort to, then your audience will feel the emptiness in your documentary. You can't start there, and you certainly can't have a story that is all engagement and means nothing.

Your audience will watch it as something that they know doesn't really matter. Because if that's all you have, then you have nothing at all.

So, yes, there is a process or approach to telling a story, and documentary stories have their own distinctive approach.

Fiction writers have a meaning they are trying to express and create a reality to deliver it.
Documentary makers take reality and refine and structure it to deliver something meaningful.
The same elements of a narrative structure - the opening, climax, layers of storytelling, themes and arguments, subtext and more.

But the process that gets you there is completely different.

It's about having a step-by-step process you can rely on. With the right tools and system, everything you want and need for your story will emerge.

Underneath it all, the quality of the story and how much it matters to the audience comes from the desire for authenticity.

That is your driving mission. To be honest, you can go a long way without having skin in the game.

But if you want your programmes to last, to be a monument to something, then build them correctly, and they will stand the test of time.

You can find out more and book a call with me, here​

All the best - Nigel

https://apply.thedocfix.com