What Makes a Movie Story Interesting? The Answer from Cognitive Psychology.

What makes a person find a story (or a story in a movie) interesting? This is Cognitive Psychology's answer. Below is the abstract of a study (with key phrases highlighted) published in the British Journal of Psychology; Kim, Sung-il (1999), Causal bridging inference: A cause of story interestingness.' British Journal of.Psychology, 90/1: 57-72. "While the vast majority of previous studies on text processing have focused on the structural importance of the text, the affective variables, such as interest, have been ignored for several decades. However, in recent years the concept of interest has received increasing attention not only in the area of text processing, but also of learning and memory in general (Hidi & Baird, 1986; Renninger, Hidi & Krapp, 1992; Shirey & Reynolds, 1988). Nevertheless, there is no theoretical model of interest due to the lack of empirical study on the cause of interest. The general purpose of this study is to investigate the role of inference in story interestingness and to propose a hypothetical model of interest." Interest as an affective (emotional/feeling) variable comes about if the story requires you to think (make inferences). Participants in the study were given two version of the same story. An example of a story follows. See which version you find more interesting. Version 1: A newly wed bride had made clam chowder soup for dinner and was waiting for her husband to come home. Although she was not an experienced cook she had put everything into making the soup. Finally, her husband came home, sat down to dinner, and tried some of the soup. The poor woman swore she would never cook for her husband again. Version 2: A newly wed bride had made clam chowder soup for dinner and was waiting for her husband to come home. Although she was not an experienced cook she had put everything into making the soup. Finally, her husband came home, sat down to dinner, and tried some of the soup. He was totally unappreciative of her efforts and even lost his temper about how bad it tasted. The poor woman swore she would never cook for her husband again. Participants found Version 1 of the story to be more interesting. The difference between the two versions is the additional sentence in Version 2, "He was totally unappreciative of her efforts and even lost his temper about how bad it tasted". >From this study, we can further see how a story become too involved. To make an inference requires having the necessary contextual or background knowledge. If the audience lacks the contextual or background knowledge to make the inference, than that portion of the story is too involved. (Sometimes, the contextual/background knowledge is culturally based. Hence, a remake cannot always be a clone of the original.) Even if the audience have the necessary knowledge to make the inference, overdoing certain story telling techniques may render the relationships between the 'facts' in a story too obscure. This makes the story too terse. For example, with the contrast technique, if the situations or events to be contrasted are somehow too far apart in the rendition, that a relationship exists between two or more story situations/events may not be consciously perceived. Sometimes, this terseness is delibrately done (as with teaching tales) so that the inference lays dormant in the subconscious until the time is ripe. Then, when the relationship/inference suddenly comes to awareness, the "eureka" or "ah so" factor adds its impact. (Feels like a revelation or the epiphany phenomena.) Movies with a story that has meaningful premise and layered with supporting subtexts, which is not too terse or involved in the rendition tend to be well received by a broad spectrum of people. (Off course, porn and violence based movies have their audience.) So if anything, (moderately) challenge the audience and the most of the audience will respond. That's how the brains are wired. For most people at least. The 10 of Club's Movie Blog - Educing premises and subtexts in stories from movies.