{"id":2179,"date":"2019-12-17T09:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-12-17T14:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/?p=2179"},"modified":"2019-11-29T22:53:35","modified_gmt":"2019-11-30T03:53:35","slug":"we-need-to-talk-about-the-darkest-minds-and-the-importance-of-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/we-need-to-talk-about-the-darkest-minds-and-the-importance-of-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"We Need to Talk About The Darkest Minds and The Importance of Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[This blog was originally published in Night Owl Reviews]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You may have blinked and missed it, but The Darkest Minds<\/em> movie<\/a> released in August 2018 is one of the most recent Young Adult (YA) dystopia joints adapted from a popular novel to crash and burn at the box office<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cue the proclamations from on-high\nthat the YA dystopia genre is dead. DEEEEAAAAD!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s unfair to blame an entire\ngenre for the failure of an individual movie. While the Han Solo<\/a> movie also\nperformed below expectations nobody declared science fiction dead, or that\nthrillers were dead when The Snowman<\/em><\/a> garnered scathing reviews. The\nDarkest Minds<\/em> didn\u2019t fail because audiences don\u2019t want YA dystopias, but\nbecause it was a bad movie<\/em> that\nflunked the basics of Storytelling 101.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So where did The Darkest Minds<\/em> go wrong? \u2026And, of course, how can you avoid\nthose same mistakes in your own story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, it\u2019s important to note that\nrarely does a story succeed or fail based on only one thing. Since The Darkest Minds <\/em>movie followed the\nbook nearly beat-for-beat, it also ported in all the book\u2019s strengths and\nweaknesses. However, a book\u2019s longer length usually means it has a richer\nnarrative that can distract from its flaws in ways a relatively short movie\ncan\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I\u2019m saying is this: The Darkest Minds<\/em>, both the book and the\nmovie, suffer from a critical flaw readers of the book forgave but viewers of\nthe movie did not\u2014and that flaw is a\nlack of meaningful choice<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we say a main character should \u201chave agency,\u201d what we\nliterally mean is they should make meaningful choices that determine the\nnarrative arc of the story.<\/strong> Looking back\nat all the critical ingredients that make up a story<\/a>, every story beat (with possibly the exception of the Inciting\nIncident) is also a decision point where the protagonist(s) makes a choice that\naffects the rest of the story going forward. When there\u2019s no choice, the\ncharacters float through the story, reacting to the plot rather than driving\nit. And though you may end up with a coherent story, it\u2019ll be flat and\nunengaging because the reader\/audience won\u2019t understand or empathize with the\ncharacters\u2014after all, it\u2019s the choices you make under pressure that define who\nyou are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s compare The Darkest Minds <\/em>(\u201cMinds<\/em>\u201d) with a successful YA dystopian adaption, say The Hunger Games<\/em> (\u201cGames<\/em>\u201d). On the surface, the stories are very similar. Both star\nteen girls at the bottom of the social hierarchy after society\u2019s collapse into\nan amoral mess. Through random chance, both heroines are thrust into life or\ndeath situations where they must rely on their special skill sets to survive.\nBoth also heavily rely on a group of secondary characters for support, some of\nwhom are secretly or overtly their opponents. And both have strong romantic\nsubplots, as well as a trilogy structure where the heroines eventually become\npivotal in overthrowing the corrupt government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where these two stories diverge is\nin the execution. Simply put, Katniss\u2014heroine of Games<\/em>\u2014makes meaningful choices that affect the course of the story;\nRuby\u2014heroine of Minds<\/em>\u2014does not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To illustrate this, here are the\nmajor beats of each story (spoiler warning, obvs):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Inciting Incident:<\/p>\n\n\n\n