I saw an interesting article in www.psypost.org by Eric Dolan on September 24, 2024, entitled "This Simple Narrative Element Can Predict A Story's Popularity, Study Finds." Basically, a research study was done on a multitude of TV shows, movies, and novels to find what ultimately drives the popularity of the produced or published project.
In my fifth novel (not as yet ready for distribution), I mention Aristotle's Poetics. In fact, that little red book is key to the resolution of this troubling story line. A long, long time ago, this philosopher addressed the elements of a true (stage) tragedy, including the concepts of "harmatia", "peripeteia" and "anagnorisis". The harmatia is the instance in which the protagonist makes a (potentially fatal) decision that leads to his or her (potentially absolute) downfall, or peripeteia. As soon as the character realizes his or her mistake, he or she pays a (potentially tragic) price. I say "potentially" because the ending is typically happy in a romance novel, unlike a Greek tragedy.
Back in the time of Oedipus Rex, Aristotle's harmatia-peripeteia-anagnorisis was a fairly simplistic situation. After all, Greek stage plays involved a lot of physical elements like a musical chorus and a narrator. So, the tragedy had to revolve around a singular event in the protagonist's life. This wouldn't work in today's world.
TV shows, movies, and novels we are familiar with nowadays can't be rendered in the same manner. Sure, there's a main plot of an overarching problem which needs to be resolved by the end of the book or the film or the episode, but there also needs to be a variety of subplot problems along the way, hindering the ultimate resolution until the end. In other words, there are sub-hamartias, sub-peripeteias, and sub-anagnorises.
In "The Last Solo Roller", you'd think Boone could seduce Christine with the same ease he enjoys in other barroom encounters. Oh, hell, no! Despite the fact that he's jaw-dropping eye candy and exudes the self-confidence of the epitomal lothario, she ain't having none of it. This rejection is the midnight cowboy's main peripeteia, or major tragedy. The rest of the story evolves over a cycle of minor triumphs and tragedies.
Back to the research study. Had the story culminated in that rejection, a reader might not be interested in perusing it. Or, recommending it to friends. What makes a story resonate with readers, according to Dolan, is "narrative reversals" and "dramatic shifts in emotional tone". That is, the protagonist's initial peripeteia grows hopeful before it worsens over and over again in the course of the tale, resolving finally in the happy ending expected of a romance novel.
Success of stories as we know them depends on "the frequency and magnitude of these [narrative reversals] and [dramatic shifts in emotional tone]..." I conjecture that my stories ought to enjoy success due to this phenomenon. In the original novel, where we meet Boone and Christine, he finds himself back under her reluctant and grudging attention through an event over which he has no control despite the fact they'd gone their own ways after the initial failed encounter. A seemingly innocuous, albeit fortuitous, decision on his part leads to this bittersweet reunion--an example of things looking up for him once more. Then they get complicated.
In the article, Dolan shares a comment by the researcher Samsun Knight of the University of Toronto: "'Stories with more back-and-forth movement between good and bad fortune tend to be more engaging.'" Boone and Christine fall down a prairie rabbit hole, twisting and turning through a variety of ups and downs, before they come to the same conclusion at the end of the novel. It's inevitable. But the fun in the reading is wondering from page to page how the hell the protagonist is going to win. Up to the last chapter, it don't look like it's gonna happen.
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