Every story must create an emotional experience. Every story must have a major emotional experience. Think of Luke in “Star Wars” finally trusting the Force and blowing up the Death Star, John McClane in “Die Hard” dropping the villain to his death, or Elle in “Legally Blonde” winning her first court case by protecting an innocent woman who trusted her.
Yet beyond these major emotional moments, every story should also create numerous minor emotional experiences as well. In “Star Wars”, a minor emotional experience occurs when we see that Han Solo saves Luke and is no longer motivated entirely by money.
In “Die Hard”, a minor emotional experience occurs when Officer Powell draws his gun and shoots the last terrorist dead. This moment is especially crucial because Officer Powell had earlier said he’s been afraid to draw his gun ever since he accidentally shot a kid who had a toy gun.
In “Legally Blonde”, a minor emotional experience occurs when Elle’s ex-boyfriend tries to take her back and Elle rejects him.
Minor emotional experiences often appear early in a story and seem relatively trivial. In “Green Book”, the hero is about to drive a black musician through the Deep South and is saying goodbye to his wife. His wife urges him to write a letter whenever he can since it will be far cheaper than calling. Watch this early scene here where the idea of writing a letter is first introduced.
Later in the story, the hero tries writing a letter and does such a poor job that the black musician takes pity on him and helps him write a romantic letter. A quick jump to the hero’s wife shows her smiling and reading the letter, thoroughly enjoying it that it nearly brings her to tears from her happiness. Once again, this letter writing scene seems relatively trivial and irrelevant to the story. Watch this first payoff below.
The scene where the wife asks the hero to write her letters is the setup. The scene where the hero makes his first attempt at writing a letter is a relatively simple payoff. However, the real payoff comes at the end.
In the closing scene of “Green Book”, the hero’s wife happily greets the black musician and thanks him for helping the hero write all those romantic letters. This surprises the black musician that she knew all this time, but it creates a minor emotional moment between the two characters that finalizes the payoff. Watch the final, emotional payoff scene below.
If your story is missing a major emotional experience, it’s not really a story but a lot of meaningless action. However, if your story has a major emotional experience, you can always enhance your story by creating multiple minor emotional experiences through the hero and other characters. The more minor emotional experiences you can create, the more memorable and powerful your story will feel.
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