The Law of Scooby-Doo

What could go wrong?
image courtesy of http://scoobydoo.wikia.com/wiki/Recipe_For_My_Love

The first thing I ever noticed as a usable rule in the art of storytelling is something I call the Law of Scooby-Doo.  I’ve heard it referred to elsewhere by different names, but since it happens in almost every episode of Scooby-Doo I've even seen, over time I’ve just stuck with my own nomenclature.

It’s getting to be late in the episode, and the Mystery Machine gang are getting tired of running from the monster, past endlessly repeating backgrounds and in and out of different doorways down the same long hall.  They put their heads together, and come up with a tricky little plan to draw out and catch the fiend, almost always resulting in the unmasking of –gasp!—that old man from chapter one.

Over the course of seeing many, many episodes (ever notice how many subtly different theme songs that show had? you have not lived), I started to notice that this scenario, which occurred almost every time, always took one of two forms, categorized by one very simple question: do we, the audience, get to hear about the plan before it's put into action?

About half the time, the “we need a plan” conversation would end with someone saying “Wait, I know!” and an abrupt cut away.  At once the action starts: someone calls aloud for attention and runs scared, the monster comes out, hijinks ensue, and someone (sometimes Shaggy, usually the monster) winds up upside-down in a trough of water, or trapped under harmlessly falling objects, or caught in the branches of a leafless tree.  Hey, the plan worked!  And the mask finally comes off.

But about half the time, someone (usually Fred) would give a brief explanation of the plan, and then they’d set it in motion.  And it would always go wrong.  Always.  And the characters would have to figure out how to fix the plan on the fly.

Why?

Simple.  When everything goes according to plan, the result is boring for the audience.  If we know what’s going to happen, and then it happens, there’s no tension, which ultimately means there fails to be a reason emotionally to pay attention to the story at all.

In general this happens a lot in fiction, especially in TV and sometimes in movies.  The final showdown is on the way, and preparation is needed in order to ensure things go right.  So the heroes put their heads together and try and come up with a scheme to finally obtain the treasure, get the girl, and/or bring the bad boss down.

Just like Scooby-Doo, they need a plan, and just like on Scooby-Doo, the rules of whether the audience knows the plan in advance are followed down the line.  There will either be a brief explanation of what to do before the action commences, which will inevitably get bungled and changed once the action gets going, or one character will simply turn to another and deliver the classic catch-all, “I’ve got an idea.”  And we're off to the races without further pause.

Note that this rule goes doubly for villains; we almost never know what they’re up to when they’re doing something tricky step-by-step, and if we do get a strong hint, it will almost always change, rapidly.

Also note that it doesn't apply at all at the start of a story.  When we don't know who the characters are or what they want, trying to figure out what they're up to, and how they do it, and why, can be a great way to convey character and to draw an audience's curiosity into the story.

Is it possible to work around this rule, and make stories interesting that don’t have to fit into either category?

Some noticeable existing exceptions to the rule are some of the better heist movies, which are essentially just long plan-action set ups and cash-ins, and need to play with this rule on both sides of the line to stay exciting.  I note Ocean’s Eleven, David Mamet’s Heist, and Inception as worthy contenders in terms of both prepping the audience and crisis improvisation in order to keep tension at its peak.

Speaking more generally, many stories start with something going wrong in a plan (I was walking in the park when X happened, I was going to work and then Y happened, I was going to get married but then Z happened), and the action  consists of the character or characters trying to make things right again.  Often in these cases the meaning of the story circles back to questioning whether the plan was a good one in the first place, and if the characters can now do without it.

It’s good to keep in mind that characters have to be living people, as far as the audience is concerned, and what they say and do should develop from their personalities as organically as possible.  To that end, I would say at least that the kind of story where the plan is known and then goes awry is generally more engaging than one where the tension comes from simply not knowing what’s happening next, even though the characters do.

A little theatricality is good if it helps drive home the punch of a clever twist, but the best surprises are ones that catch the characters and the audience off guard, where we can empathize with the characters and get that much more drawn into the story.

This is all a little far-fetched for Scooby-Doo, but from Catch-22 to the Lord of the Rings the literary world is scattered with plots wherein the broad strokes of a plan are known to the characters and audience alike, almost from page one, but the details of how the plan will work out are left as much of a mystery to the characters as to the audience until they get there together.

Keep this rule in mind when you watch movies, and especially TV, see how often it comes up.

It's a pleasant surprise for me whenever a writer manages to overcome this divide between the world of the audience and the world of the story.