If characters have a Story Goal of bettering their futures, with each character having a specific goal (ex. get fame), is it still Failure if they didn’t achieve that specific goal, but managed to achieve a different better future (ex. winning someone’s love)?
If the original OS Goal is not reached, the Outcome is Failure (regardless of whether the results are preferable or not).
Thanks. That’s what I thought.
I tend to think of stories as having one goal – the OS Goal – which precludes each character having a specific goal. Those could be Concerns.
The reason I think of stories as having one goal is that it is tied to the ending – either the Goal is reached (Success) or becomes impossible to reach (Failure). And I don’t see how to do that with multiple goals.
I think @SharkCat was asking if they received a different Future then the one they originally set out with–is that considered a Success? In that case the answer is Yes. The Goal is concerned with the Future–in contrast to Innermost Desires. Whether or not they “got” the Future they were looking for… They did get a Future. The particular storytelling involved in that Future isn’t as important as the Future itself.
Hope that clears things up!
I’m not quite following. What would Failure look like in this scenario? Not getting a future? How would that be different from a “bad” or undesirable future?
I think what @jhull is saying is, if the characters end up in a worse place than where they started, with no bright future, the story outcome is failure. So if, for example, a character who wants to secure a steady job for him/herself as an actor ends up looking for food in a dumpster, s/he has failed to secure a future for him/herself. In other words, if the characters are in a more precarious situation at the end of the story than at the beginning, the goal of future is not achieved.
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It has to do with whether or not the character is capable of knowing what they want, specifically. In some situations, it’s clear: a country wants to defend itself against war, say. But in other situations it’s not so clear.
There was a movie I saw as a kid, can’t remember the name, and it involved some guy pursuing a girl. He fails to win her heart, but in the process, he gets a different girlfriend. It was a Success/Good ending – I remember the feeling.
In this case, what he said he wanted (the specific girl) was not actually true – he just didn’t know that. What he wanted was a girlfriend.
Sometimes, this is talked about in the terms of “want vs need”. But it’s also (I’m guessing) why most OS characters have a Concern and not a Goal.
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Failure in this scenario would be giving into fear or anger or sadness or any other Consequence of Innermost Desires. It could also be choosing love over a comfortable future.
Bad and good don’t play into it because it is an Objective Story Point.
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That all makes sense. Thanks everyone!