We’ve all had the experience. A book or movie that had so much going for it—great premise, interesting characters, awesome world—that doesn’t quite live up to its potential. Maybe the ending is disappointing, a plot point didn’t feel logical or a character contradicted all the development that had been done. But the agonizing part is that it was so close to being good, and it just didn’t get there.
By a disappointing ending, I don’t mean an ending that is controversial or leaves fans upset, like a favorite character being offed. In the last book of the Divergent series, a character takes an action that is completely within her character as it has developed and experiences the consequences that were made clear within the novel. Even if fans didn’t like it, that was good writing. I mean an ending that doesn’t feel right, and when you go back and reread or re-watch it makes less sense. Either a rosy deux ex machina or paradoxically an overly complex trap that had a much simpler escape than what the characters came up with. I also don’t mean when a character makes an action (or inaction) that is upsetting. Characters are allowed to change, but the change has to be shown and make sense—the forbidden act or betrayal becomes inevitable on repeat readings. There is a difference between a character doing something they wouldn’t normally do in a specific situation and a character doing what the plot needs even when it contradicts their nature.
I don’t mean a work that is just plain bad. Even terrible works can often have one bright spot, like a cliché werewolf movie with a beautiful shape shifting sequence, one character that stood out as being perfect among a bunch of cardboard, or just a good world with a completely undeveloped conflict. If there is only one part that made the work enjoyable, it is still bad, not matter how good the one redeeming thread was. Although I will say there is a huge difference between likable and good.
Anyone who studies the creative arts is given the advice to study the masters. This is good advice—you need to understand good art to improve your own. But this doesn’t mean you can’t learn from the less than great. A good story has many things going for it, and what is intuitive to a master may be hard to explain to the student. When so much is doing well, it can be hard to tease apart the threads to figure out what the elements are to make great art. Which can make trying to learn from it more difficult. Studying everything at once can be overwhelming, and when there is a specific part someone is trying to work on harder to find that one thread.
Most writers have some parts of craft they are naturally good at. Or simply have been able to learn well from the books they enjoyed as a reader. Sometimes to improve you need to focus on one specific skill. When analyzing a piece that didn’t quite make the leap into good art, its easy to pull out the thread that didn’t work. Once you pull that aside, you can go back in and say “Ok, I know that doesn’t work. So what was working?” It is also useful to analyze why that thread wasn’t working, and can teach a valuable lesson in what not to do.
A writer is always learning. Craft will never be perfect. But even pieces that didn’t quite land can still teach valuable lessons. Even the lesson of what not to do is still valuable.