Episode: 2643
Title: HPR2643: The Payoff In Storytelling
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2643/hpr2643.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:57:29

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This in HBR episode 2643 entitled, The Pay Off in Storytelling, and in part on the series,
Random Elements on Storytelling, it is hosted by Lost in Drunks and in about 11 minutes
long, and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is a brief look at the emotional structure on story endings.
Today's show is licensed under a CC hero license.
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Hello, this is Lost in Drunks and you'll have to forgive the sound quality I'm in the car
right now.
Today, I'd like to talk about ending stories, or shall we say the climax of a story, the
den law, or sometimes it's known as just the payoff, essentially the big thing that you
end your story on.
Now, there are a lot of different conventions about how to do a plot climax or a story
ending, depending upon the medium that we're talking about.
Modern filmmaking, they use terms like a three act story routinely, but it's actually
a very, very vague description, and no matter what anyone says, not all films are made
that way, even today, and that sort of structure does talk about or imply some sort of ending
or a story payoff, film, and other types of stories will very often have more than one
of these peppered throughout the tale, and it's common in audio drama as well.
You'll have different conflicts that have to be met, not necessarily overcome, but there
has to be some sort of convergence of plot or character or story, those are interchangeable
terms really, somewhere along the line, once maybe twice if we're talking about a cohesive
tale, not a series, and we'll have this happen early on, but then ultimately we'll have
something happen at the end.
Now the den law can take very different forms depending upon what kind of tale you're
telling.
You don't have to resolve a story, you can leave a story open ended and still have a very
adequate ending to that tale, you can have a good payoff, even though we never really
know what happens at the end, in fact that can be part and parcel of your story, the fact
that we don't know what happens, and because we don't know that's what makes it good.
And that's a difficult payoff, that is, that's a difficult payoff at the end, the denomont
that is open ended is a difficult one to pull off, a lot of people try it and it comes
across as flat.
I would suggest that if you are new to storytelling, don't try that sort of story ending because
it's not an easy one to provide for your reader or listener or viewer or whatever, for
your audience.
And the reason it's not easy to pull off is because you not only have to set that up
throughout the tale, it also has to be emotionally satisfying, right?
We have to be in a place emotionally regarding the characters where not knowing what happens
to them is satisfying, not just good enough, it has to be satisfying, not knowing what happens
to these people.
So generally speaking, we can't care that much about these people because if we really
care about them, we really want to know what happens and that means we either have to
tell us explicitly what happens to them or you can imply it, but the implication has
to be a good one so that we understand what's going on.
Ending a story on a high note is always good, you can end it on a low note, you can end
it in tragedy, you can end it in sadness or on we, you can end it almost any way you want,
the resolution of the story has to be satisfying, even if it doesn't resolve things for the
characters or for the plot.
As I say, things can be left up in the air, but most stories don't try to do that.
Most stories do try to have some sort of concrete ending that we can hold on to and take
away with us when we leave this story.
I believe that most action tales need a very powerful ending.
They don't necessarily have to end right immediately afterwards, but that is a style that
a lot of storytellers prefer, especially with action adventure stories.
As soon as the story is over, it is done.
If you want to see a really good example of that, go watch the old film Shaft with Richard
Roundtree as Shaft.
In that film, there's a lot of highs and lows in that film, and yes, it is technically
a black exploitation film, but it's of an era and to an extent, at any rate, it is a
modern classic.
In that story, there's a lot of action, a lot of fighting, a lot of stuff going on.
There's quiet moments, there's moments of interplay between characters that's talking
or chatting or telling jokes and a lot of one-upmanship.
At the end of the story, we get our pay off, our climax, our day in the mall with this
big action sequence at the end where Shaft is essentially invading the bad guy's lair
in the middle of the city, and Shaft is, you know, a one-man army effectively.
He goes in and he just tears the place apart.
And when it's done, he does all this stuff, he walks out of the building, he makes a phone
call to the cops that effectively says, I've handled the situation, he hangs up the phone
credits.
From the last bullet to the credits, it's like a minute and a half, two minutes, maybe
less.
When the action was done, the story was done because the action tied up the entire plot.
And it's a satisfying emotional experience because that's what we need to know at that
point.
It solved the story, it finished the plot, we're done.
But other tales, we're not just telling the action of the tale, we're also telling the
tale of the characters.
And those very often are not directly tied to the action of the story, and therefore,
we do need a little bit of payoff at the end.
When I'm creating stories very often, they do focus on character more than plot.
And as a result, the endings can be a little convoluted because we have to tie up everything
that happened to this character and leave the character in a place where we find it satisfying.
In a film like Shaft, Shaft himself effectively doesn't change throughout the film.
He is the same guy at the end that he is at the beginning, and the film, the action of
the film occurs because he is this guy.
So you need this guy to tell that story, but we don't need to see what happens to him
at the end.
Once the action is done, the story is done because he hasn't changed.
Here it tells when the story is done, we still need to know what happens to the characters.
Because the characters have changed, or they're going to change.
They're going to be in a position where what comes after this story is going to change
these characters.
Now if we have an ongoing series, we don't have to wonder what's going to happen to
these characters because we're going to see what happens to them.
The series keeps going and we find out more and more about the events that occurred and
what that means for the future.
However, in a self-contained tale, we have to specifically tell the audience what happens
to these characters, or we have to imply that the events of the story are going to lead
the character down this particular path, or these events are going to occur because
of this story, and the character is going to have to either endure them or enjoy them
depending on whether it's a positive or negative ending.
These types of endings all can be emotionally satisfying to the viewer if we give them the
tools to take away this particular ending with them.
If you just throw a shaft-like ending at your audience when there is no satisfying character
stuff because the characters need it, then it's going to be a very flat ending.
People aren't going to enjoy it.
If your story is character-driven and the character changes throughout the course of the story,
we have to see the effects of that change.
But if we don't care about that, that is to say, if this story doesn't matter what happens
to the character because the character is the same character, or maybe the character
dies, that's a satisfying ending or it can be.
The character dies at the end.
We know what's going to happen to this character.
We know what's happening going forward, this character is dead forever.
Okay, so that's a satisfying ending or it could be.
If we were emotionally tied to this character and it was implied somewhere along the line
that we should either anticipate or at least hope that this character gets through this
thing alive, then killing off that character is not emotionally satisfying.
It can be upsetting.
Brian Song, a very famous TV movie that was made many years ago, that had a death in it
at the very end and it's very traumatizing for a lot of viewers.
Many many people found that very traumatizing, but it is baked into the story.
First off, it was a true story, so it's historical.
We know what happens at the end.
But secondly, we find out along the line that this guy is sick.
This isn't going to have a happy ending.
We know where this is going and watching it happen bit by bit, as these characters become
emotionally tied to each other, that is your story and so the ending is very sad.
It's extremely sad, but it is also satisfying because we know where this story was going.
If on the other hand, it was a happy, buddy tale, you know, these two guys that are professional
football players, American football players, they're going along, they're become best friends,
they break down racial barriers of the time.
It was all of this stuff and then at the very very end, we find out, oh yeah, he's sick
and he dies.
That is not emotionally satisfying.
That is a cheat against the audience.
We should have known about this early on.
If it's going to happen that way, it needs to be set up in advance.
So anyway, this is a very short episode and an exceedingly breezy look at a pretty complex
topic and it's one that is always a challenge for storyteller in any medium, trying to find
a satisfying ending, trying to put the ending in context for the audience because in the
end, that is what is emotionally satisfying, putting everything in context so that when
the ending comes, it all makes sense.
It makes sense intellectually.
It makes sense emotionally.
So anyway, if you have any opinions about this particular topic, please feel free to leave
them in the comments for this episode or better yet make your own episode on hacker public
radio on this topic or any topic.
If you have opinions, you have interests and we want to hear about them.
This has been Lost in Bronx, thank you for listening, take care.
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