What if I write a story like Cast Away, and there’s really only one or two characters? Would you just downsize you ‘Big World’ to fit those one or two characters? or would you just skip that type of conflict?
That’s such a good question. Castaway has achieved a sense of the Big World in some creative ways, but also, Castaway is an anomaly in its storytelling. It breaks many of the rules we’ve been discussing.
I think Castaway has some assets that compensate for what it lacks in story structure. Really, it was an absolutely masterful performance by Tom Hanks (who was extremely popular when the movie was released) that sold the movie. It’s also a very unique and well-executed movie in every other respect. Sometimes if we can get enough spectacle in other areas of our production, we can get away with weak storytelling.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. However, as I recall, one of the big ways that the storytellers maintain a sense of the bigger world is with the one package that Tom Hanks’s character refuses to open and keeps with him. That ties him to the bigger world and a bigger team, he is FedEx and FedEx delivers their packages, no matter what. We’re also aware of secondary characters through Tom Hanks’s performance, even though they don’t necessarily appear on screen.
And of course, Wilson (they volleyball) is a brilliant move–to invent a secondary character that can perform some (although a limited version) of the functions we’ve discussed. From the protagonist’s perspective, Wilson is an intelligent, interactive character, even though it’s obvious to us that Wilson is the product of the protagonist’s imagination.
To pull off a story like Castaway as a book, and to find an audience for that, would require absolutely masterful, beautiful prose and require that you’re executing on as many story elements as possible. What you do have present in the story needs to be functioning at 110%.
I don’t recommend starting with a story like this. That’s something that you’re going to want to build up to. Master the art of story with a more basic structure first, THEN challenge yourself to break the mold and do the thing that 99.99% of writers cannot pull off.
I hope that helps!
