Creating Fulfillment (article) by Bill Johnson on AuthorsDen

A comparion of the films The Sixth Sense and Stir of Echoes to explore how one film created a more dramatically fulfilling story. One aspect of a well-told story is the dramatic fulfillment it offers. By fulfillment I mean an audience is guided to fully share and experience the victories, defeats, hopes and dreams of a story’s characters. To explore how a story creates a potent effect of fulfillment, I’ll compare The Sixth Sense and Stir of Echoes. The Sixth Sense begins with a psychologist, Malcolm (BruceWillis), celebrating with his wife an award he’s won for treating disturbed young people. His work has given others a second chance at life. This ‘names’ an issue this story explores. As Malcolm’s wife accepts that in their relationship she’s taken second place to his work, a disturbed young man that Malcolm misdiagnosed as a young boy appears. He demands to know why Malcolm couldn’t help him; why Malcolm never understood his fear. As Malcolm struggles with an answer, the young man shoots Malcolm. Malcolm survives and meets Cole, a young boy with similar symptoms to the suicidal young man. Malcolm’s being offered a second chance. Stir of Echoes opens with Tom, (Kevin Bacon), a blue collar worker, having a downbeat reaction to the news his wife is pregnant. This forcefully raises the question, what’s happening in this relationship? Tom explains that he fears that when he courted his wife he told her he would be somebody someday, not just an ordinary guy. It’s clear Tom is unhappy about his life. Each story opens with scenes that clearly communicate the issues of its characters, Malcolm’s need to understand how he misdiagnosed the young man and help Cole; Cole’s need to heal the growing rift with his mother; Tom’s need to deal with his feelings about his ordinary life; the pain his wife experiences knowing Tom feels something is missing from their shared life. By introducing characters who are caught up in acting out issues rooted in the human condition, each story’s audience is naturally led to feel enmeshed in each story’s outcome. This is different than being led to feel curious about the outcome to plot questions. It’s about being given a reason to feel emotionally or thoughtfully invested in the outcome of a story’s questions. As Stir continues, the ordinary Tom is hypnotized and experiences visions of a murder that increasingly disturb and disrupt his life. This is where the two stories part paths. In Stir, the focus shifts toward plot questions. Who is the murdered girl? Why does she contact Tom? What does she want him to do? Can Tom close his connection to the dead girl? These are valid questions, but they don’t clearly build on the central concern of Tom’s character and, by extension, the central issue that pulls on the feelings of the story’s audience: does my life have a desirable meaning and purpose? In Sixth Sense, we always feel Malcolm’s increasingly desperate need to find a way to connect with his wife, and his increasing despair about whether he’ll be able to help Cole. In Stir, Tom’s increasing desperation to find out the truth about the dead girl’s murder leads his wife to threaten to leave him. He tells her he can’t stop looking for the dead girl; that to do so would be to become ordinary again. This issue of human need finally fully takes the stage again. But for most of the story, this issue has taken a place behind more pressing plot questions, around whether Tom will be able to understand what is happening to him. As the story continues, the issue of Tom being ordinary again becomes secondary to the final confrontation between Tom and the girl’s killers. These plot questions don’t have the same impact as questions rooted more deeply in how many people wrestle with whether their lives have a deeper meaning. In Sixth Sense, through working with Cole, Malcolm realizes that the young boy who killed himself was, like Cole, afraid of the dead who spoke to him. Finally understanding the truth about that young man’s fear, Malcolm is able to help Cole find a way to free himself of his fear. In turn, Cole tells Malcolm he can talk to his wife while she sleeps and she’ll hear him. When Malcolm goes to his wife, his wedding ring drops from his finger, and Malcolm finally realizes the truth: he died in the opening scenes. That’s why his wife no longer hears him. Knowing the truth, he’s able to tell his wife how much he loves her. He tells her that she was never second in his life, always first, and she hears him. Just as he’s given a second chance with Cole, he’s given a second chance to tell his wife about his love for her. In these scenes, the audience experiences that great love defies even death, that life will give us a second chance. This story’s potent fulfillment of these issues add to the wonderful effect of the story’s plot. For all its strengths, Stir of Echoes shifts from being a story about how we deal with the ordinary and extraordinary in our lives, to a plot about who murdered a girl by a man who’s been opened up psychically. Because the deeper story issues and plot questions aren’t fully intermeshed, the story’s fulfillment doesn’t have the same depth as The Sixth Sense. Because it so often is taught that what a story offers is resolution, some writers don’t clearly see this deeper issue of how a story offers fulfillment of an issue of human need. When stories blend strong plots, interesting characters, and lively ideas around dramatically acting out an issue of human need, they have a strong life pulse. When the heart of such a story beats first in the chests of its characters, then its audience, that audience can be moved to experience states of profound fulfillment. The issue isn’t about being obvious, or obscure, but pushing story ideas and characters through to being dramatically suggestive. Just as a beating heart isn’t observed directly, but can be felt, a story’s audience feels when a story has a strong heart and pulse. The Sixth Sense has such a heart.
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