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Do Spoilers Ruin a Good Story? No, Say Researchers
Hugh Pickens writes "According to a recent study at the University of California San Diego, knowing how a book ends does not ruin its story and can actually enhance enjoyment. It suggests people may enjoy a good story as much as a good twist at the end, and even if they know the outcome, will enjoy the journey as much as the destination. 'It could be that once you know how it turns out, you're more comfortable processing the information and can focus on a deeper understanding of the story,' says co-author Jonathan Leavitt. Researchers gave 12 short stories to 30 participants where two versions were spoiled and a third was not. In all but one story, readers said they preferred versions which had spoiling paragraphs written into it. Even when the stories contained a plot twist or mystery, subjects preferred the spoiled versions. 'Plots are just excuses for great writing,' says social psychologist Nicholas Christenfeld. 'As a film director, your job isn't really to come to the conclusion that the butler did it. A single line would do that.'"
I read the article but the summary spoiled it for me.
The only stories ruined by spoilers are the ones which rely on silly twists for effect. I know in any Bond movie that he's going to get the girl and save the day, but I've still watched most of them (OK, maybe that's not true of the most recent one because it was so awful that I couldn't handle more than fifteen minutes of it before I turned off the DVD so I've no idea how it ends).
It's not the destination that's important, it's the journey.
and also.. Voyager does make it home to earth
The difference is, most books/movies do not have a good story. Instead most are pretty typical and only have a single twist at the end to give it any life. Heck, most every story is a rip off of Shakespeare which in turn was a rip-off of folk tales.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
IMO, the longer the story, the more significant twists can be (because the reader can be more heavily invested in their pre-twist assumptions), so on the continuum from short-stories/standalone TV, through feature films, to fully serial TV/novels, one might expect to see a reversal of this effect.
Of course, even for long works, spoilers aren't that big a deal for your enjoyment reading it once -- most people would agree that any work that's not enjoyable on a reread/rewatch (when it's completely spoiled) was crap to begin with. Still, there's one first time through, where twists can be genuinely surprising, and as many rereads as time permits; two different experiences, and spoilers make you miss out on the one that can't be reproduced.
This anecdote says yes.
When they say spoilers, they are referring to the Colombo mystery where they first show you who done it, and are asking participants to compare that with a Murder She Wrote where you aren't told. So this is a study of whether twists at the end unconditionally enhance our enjoyment...
Well, duh. Of course it depends on the whole story.
They make it sound like people would enjoy Murder She Wrote the same even after a friend gave away the ending. The misdirection in the title is the only reason why people are reading this article. Why put a hook in a research paper title?
Please don't.
1) Verbal Kint is Keyser Soze
2) It was the sledge all along
3) Patrick Bateman never killed anyone - it's all fantasy in his head
4) Gatsby dies in the end
5) In the Wages of Fear, none of them survive
6) Zion is itself a simulation within perhaps a greater simulation
7) The Cylons don't have a plan at all
8) The real monster is MAN
9) Fight club: Calvin kills Hobbes
10) It was Earth all along
[nt]
I can think of numerous times where not knowing what would happen in a book gave me an actual rush as I read it. Whether it's not knowing if a character will live or die (such as the mom in "Room"), or the gut-churning shock of a surprise heartbreak (such as in the short story "The Girlfriend"), surprises add greatly to the emotion conveyed by a good story.
Stories can be good without such surprises... I know from the start that Sam Vimes will always come out okay in Discworld, and I can still enjoy the journey. And some people might not like surprises, and may prefer to stick to stories in which the good guys always win. But anyone making the claim that spoilers never hurt a story either needs to spend more time reading, or, more likely, is just looking for an inflammatory headline to draw eyeballs.
Pretty sure it was the ancient greeks, anyway. They would have a chorus sing the outline of the story before the actual telling. IRRC, that's how Homer's poems start (in an academic/'good' translation).
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
It sounds like the spoilers were written into the stories that had them. Having the story spoiled as part of the story itself isn't quite the same as having someone walk up to you on the street and give away the ending. I still wouldn't want that practice to become mainstream because I happen to like not knowing what will happen. Once you've read through a story once, you can't really go back and have that same experience again.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU05GtBUitw
At least a little. For instance, I read "Fellowship of the Ring" before seeing the movie, and I found I couldn't enjoy it as much because of the deviations in the story, so I decided to forgo the books until after seeing the other two, and I found I enjoyed both the movies & the books more that way.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
But the real question is, are we spoiled by the conclusions of this research? Or will future researchers get more enjoyment for the same amount of money while they rediscover the same conclusions?
Snape kills Dumbledore!
I think it depends how the book is written. For, say, an Agatha Christie it might be vital, but for Terry Pratchett the story itself is the entertainment.
If knowing the ending ruined all enjoyment, we wouldn't re-read books or watch movies again.
Still, there can be extra fun in enjoying a story for the first time and not knowing what will happen. You can only experience a story for the first time once; and if someone spoils the ending for you, you can't even do it once.
I really enjoy a good mystery story where the author plays fair with you, and you actually have a chance at figuring out who did it.
One of my favorites: the novel Too Many Magicians by Randall Garrett, available as part of an omnibus volume called Lord Darcy. I was blown away by the reveal, the first time I read it, but Garrett totally played fair with the reader. If you are clever you can figure out what happened.
Ironically, one of the pleasures of re-reading Too Many Magicians is seeing how deftly Garrett inserted the clues that would let the reader figure it out. Everything is there but nothing is obvious.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I was all psyched to go see that Titanic movie till someone told me that the boat sinks at the end, that just ruined it for me. I never would have guessed otherwise!
I read True Grit, and on the first page of the book there was the "praise" for the book. I hadn't seen the movie and didn't know anything about the story. The first comment explained what happens when Mattie meets Tom at the camp at the end of the story. The part with a pit. When that part came around, I knew what was going to happen for the next twenty pages or so. While it didn't give away the end of the book, it did give away the build up to the end, which ruined it for me.
Some asshole ruined Brokeback Mountain for me. I had no idea the cowyboy gets it in the end.
Turns out the researchers got picked on incessantly in school and, after some major embarrassment at their senior prom (involving diapers, shaving cream, and Velveeta), made a pact to be pricks towards the entire human race for the rest of their lives.
#DeleteChrome
I bet it sure as heck would have ruined that movie for many who were surprised at the end Bruce Willis was dead.
Sorry for those that have never seen it, I hope that did not spoil it for you.
Hermione decides she's a lesbian.
#DeleteChrome
A sample size of 30? Stop the presses, boys! We have a goddamned epiphany of modern science to write about here! Thoroughly researched and everything!
Maybe this is one of those things that varies by individual? I loathe spoilers, but know many who actively seek them out. All this means is that the majority of the public are the latter, not that spoilers are good.
"and then were asked to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10."
I'm tired of researchers thinking that how someone reports their preference has anything to do with their actual preference. I'm sure that these researchers are correct, that participants say they prefer the spoiled versions. I'm also certain that if you actually checked what they really prefer, you'd get very different numbers.
How? I haven't the foggiest. But I'd be closer to "would they pay for it" or "purchase it for a friend" or do they enjoy the rest of their day, or are they depressed the next day, or do they get a headache a few hours later. Actual life stuff.
To say that a person reports a preference usually leads to very bland, very mediocre, very simple in-this-case-stories.
It always reminds me of the listening tests between cheap and expensive sound systems. Inevitably, people report prefering the cheaper ones, but no one ever measures the headaches hours later. People forget that quality sound reproduction is more than just what you can hear. Try listening to music for ten hours, then tell me if you're in pain, or not -- that's a lot closer to the determining the quality of anything.
So, force participants to read only spoiled stories, or to read only non-spoiled stories. After fifty, I'd be crazy annoyed about yet another spoiled story. I'd never say "damn, how come none of these stories are spoiled?!"
See the difference. Forget "which do you prefer?" and go with "which can you tolerate long-term?" or "which can you live without?".
If you are told before reading a story what's going to happen, that's a spoiler. Many (but not all) people find that this detracts from their experience. If the story tells you in advance what's going to happen, that's not a spoiler. It's foreshadowing, a flash forward, a frame story, or some other common device. These devices may or may not improve the story. The study tested reactions to the latter, and the researchers called it the former, and then drew totally ungrounded aesthetic conclusions about the quality of the stories.
Not everyone reads books or enjoys movies the same way. I actually have a preference for material where I don't even know the genre up front, let alone the plot! Some of the most enjoyable books for me have been random selections. One of the reasons I stopped watching TV was the obnoxious trailers, ads, previews, and interviews would conspire to ruin every single blockbuster movie, without exception.
There's been a trend recently for movie trailers to show every character, all of the funniest jokes, the plot twist, and it's resolution. That's just obnoxious.
Solvent Green is people!
I think it has something to do with the story being easier to follow.
If it's about revealing an killer, you will likely acknowledge him/her as an major character in the movie/book instead of an forgettable minor character, thus you can follow all the occurances early on.
I also like spoilers in the sense that I can actually start observing on how/why it/things will end up like that later on. I might spot some other minor plot stuff that I would otherwise ignore. This is true to reality shows, when I know the winner I can just actually concentrate on the winner's (or could even be some other competitors) techniques and play-style instead of just trying to know all the competitors for the first few episodes.
It kinda gives an different angle on how to approach stuff, hard to explain.
Mind you, that wouldn't be the first time the summary spoiled something...
Of course, thanks to this article we now know that /. was actually doing us all a favour all those years ago. Thanks! That makes it feel so much better and stuff!
I knew how Star Wars Episode III was going to end going into the movie (Darth Vader murders Anakin Skywalker), but it was still really exciting to watch for the first time.
That just ruined all the joy I got all those years ago when I wore proudly the "Dumbledore dies" T-shirt
In the stuff I read, the starting cast isn't necessarily the finishing cast: a major character might not survive past the half of the book. Knowing that so-an-so survives immediately removes any tension in any scene where their life is at risk. So while 'the journey may be better than the destination', in some cases, a spoiler destroys the journey.
Blanket statements from a small selection is idiotic.
Some of the very best movies and books are based around a mystery.
If you know the mystery, the whole point is ruined.
If you already knew what the matrix was, what would be the point of the matrix first half?
If you already knew who Kaiser Söze was, why would you listen to Lester for two hours?
If you knew the plan and the villain and especially how it ends, would the watchmen have even a close to as deep an impact?
Not saying that this is always the case, but movies which are supposed to keep you guessing get really, really dull if you know the secret.
That is also why so many mystery movies fail, you get the mystery before the characters and then it just gets boring since you got it in less then an hour and the supposidely smart protagonist don't get it for several days.
Foreshadowing is something different though.
If, for example, you tell people that you will know who Kaiser Söze is and you will be amazed at how vicious the man is, it won't detract from the story at all.
If you say that the matrix envelops all and that it will freak everyone out when they know what it is, it just sets the mood.
Watchmen is so full of foreshadowing that it's almost silly to point it out.
It's good to hint to people that there is a deeper meaning and an interesting twist, this helps them focus more greatly on the story, not really because they know the twist, but because you tell them that it's a story worth focusing on and people are very trusting.
This study tries to figure out in what way the average person enjoys a story. Aside from the fact that asking people to rate things from 1 to 10 is a great way to determine their favorite numbers and very little else, even if the study were completely accurate I wouldn't care. Why? Because the average person is the guy who makes Michael Bay, Twilight, The Jersey Shore, and Justin Bieber popular. They are the people who books like "The Secret" outsell actual literature. It's already well-established that the average person is worse than useless, dragging us into the gutter and away from the stars. If this research could start to teach us to fix what's wrong with the average person then maybe it'd be worthwhile, but it's clear from the researchers' comments that they actually think that there's something *okay* about the fact that people have gotten so stupid that they can't even follow a simple plot without having the Cliff's Notes embedded into the first paragraph.
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
s/who books like "The Secret" outsell/who cause books like "The Secret" to outsell/
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
Scott Shelby, the Private Detective is the "Origami Killer" in Heavy Rain. If I get screamed at we know this study is bullshit.
It's the author that makes this choice. If they want to start with just before the climax then cut back to "7 days earlier...", that is their choice. The trouble with modern spoilers is that film and book marketing just want you to go see/read it - they don't care about the integrity of the story that the author devised. So often these days, film previews contain all the best scenes and lines, and ignore integrity completely.
Maybe "The Secret" actually *IS* worthy of praise (can't say I can judge, I don't even know what it is). Insofar as the others go, I can't say I'm a fan of any of them, but I'm also not so arrogant as to assume my definition "good writing" has any more value then anyone's. Maybe if we where talking about morality here, but we are not, we are talking about literature.
But moving on:
I assume you are using a definition of "literature" along the lines of the following (shamelessly "researched" from the OED website):
"written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit"
I think an important point with this definition is "especially." I consider this point important because it does not say "exclusively." So, since there is no DEFINED "actual literature," I think maybe it you need to clarify what you mean there. There are a lot of works some people like to call "literature" JD Stallinger springs to my mind, he oft is listed under the category, but for the love of all that is holy, give me the unabridged works of Frost and Shakespeare (both of whom, I quite enjoy), hell, I think I'll even give "Twilight" and whatever garbage Dan Brown has most recently written a go before reading "Catcher in the Rye" again. (I suppose, in fairness, I should disclosed that I was years removed from "angsty-teen" before reading this work, I read it mostly because of the amount of literary allusion in modern works, and therefor was likely not in it's target demographic. While understanding the book, I got little from it other then the knowledge to better understand when it is referenced in other works.)
Before the end of 3rd season you already know how it will end. But it still great watchings
Go back and tell my 9 year old self when he was in line to see empire strikes back and some asshole coming out of another theater shouted darth vader was lukes dad, that ruined the whole movie for me.
I hate hate hate knowing things about movies before I see them. Part of the great thing about a new movie is you never know whats going to happen. Even knowing one detail like say "woman x dies" the whole damn movie your sitting there knowing she will die and it ruins any suspense. Or finding out even something small like "Man x fights the giant robot" in like a clip from the trailer on tv, from then on the entire movie you know for a fact he wont die or anything bad happen to him until you see that same scene because you saw it in the trailer, so up until that point you know he will be perfectly fine.
bastards.
- Hecubus, have you seen the movie "Presumed Innocent"?
- Yes I have, Master, and his wife kills her.
- But I haven't seen the movie yet... EVIL! EVIL!
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
I think the following video basically says it as much: The World Is Saved
But i still don't want some one to tell me in advance. I prefere to read the book or watch the move again some time later.
When it gets to the point where knowing the ending does not effect the first reading of a story (can it be said that its the first reading after a spoiler), when before each episode of a series a reminder of the previous episode is given and at the end a spoiler is given countering the cliff hanger intended to leave the viewer with some sense of anticipation, if it is true that this does not lessen the enjoyment of the populous as a whole then they seem to have the attention span only equalled by the audience in the geriatric ward television room. You can fall asleep and miss nothing, no involvement is required.
Obviously, these researchers never read Eddings' books that are recursively written spoilers of themselves.
You don't only have to worry about the number of participants tested in this type of experiment. If are making statements about stories in general; perhaps most/all of the 12 stories used where not particularly susceptible to enjoyment-spoilage.
'It could be that once you know how it turns out, you're more comfortable processing the information and can focus on a deeper understanding of the story,' says co-author Jonathan Leavitt.
This kind of sounds like the people who have to read/watch a story more than once to understand it are the types that would enjoy being spoiled. Let's face it, most spoilers are not in-depth analyses, but just declaration of events. If you are having trouble processing events on the fly, then you must be maxing your intellectual capacity.
Honestly, your method seems less tied to reality than theirs. How often do you listen to music for 10 hours straight or read fifty stories in one sitting? The result from a study like that might be more interesting for you, but I don't think it would be any more meaningful (I'd suspect less, actually).
Seriously, most good literature includes an element of telling the story before it's told. That is called foreshadowing. Foreshadowing gives and element of believability because it implies that a certain sequence of events creates a foregone conclusion. Which, in turn, aides to suspension of disbelief.
All of these things are valuable tools to writers, and (oddly enough) includes spoilers. So I don't think that this is is incredibly insightful result.
i'm pretty sure anyone who is actually likes good cinema or books can think of several examples where a good story was enhanced hugely by a good twist. that being said probably 95% of movies etc can't really be spoiled effectively.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Morality is exactly the same as "good writing", it's completely subjective.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
2-4 seem pretty silly. I might love a book but not want to buy it for a friend (unless the friend was a stand-in for me, in which case you just have 1). For instance I wouldn't buy any of my friends the first Wheel of Time book, since it's such an incredibly long series. I could live without either spoiled endings or unspoiled endings; that would seem to give little useful information. I can tolerate even highly flawed things long-term, so that is also problematic.
Still, asking "would you pay for it" in addition to a 1-10 rating might be a good plan.
Watch "Triangle" for a nice movie that spoilers itself.
So I read a story, not knowing how it is going to end. And I enjoy it.
So now I know how it ends. And I can enjoy it once more.
How could only the latter be better than both?
Not what. Everyone knows what's going to happen after reading the first chapter. Stories always run along the same plotlines. First, characters are introduced. Then some conflict is presented. If it's more intricate, the hero will first prevail until something gets him in a deeper struggle, then he resurfaces from it, overcomes obstacles and in the end he will save the day and the villain's plot gets foiled. That's how it ALWAYS runs. Ok, maybe not in a Gibson book, but essentially, that's the thread every single standard plot follows.
In a bad book, it will be interesting what's happening. Because it's not predictable and often not even consistent. In such a book, what is happening will actually surprise and maybe even entertain (though I personally find it highly irritating). In a good book, you know what's going to happen, you will know, either because it is actually told (like, say, in a Colombo movie, where you get shown right at the beginning who kills whom, how, and for what motivation), or because it's obvious (the Titanic WILL sink in the end. There's no way around it).
What's interesting in such plots is the how. How is it going to happen? How is the detective going to prove the culprit's guilt? How are they going to escape the sinking ship?
That's by far more entertaining than just getting a story told that you cannot predict or even follow. This is one of the reasons why I hate Agatha Christie books. There is simply no way for you to come to the same conclusion as the detective since you simply do not have the same resources. Invariably, either something will turn up in a library or the detective will have some special knowledge or hidden information that was never revealed to the reader which makes it very obvious (and would have made it very obvious from the start) who did it. That's not interesting. That's creating fake suspense by holding back crucial facts.
Of course such books lose appeal immediately because you instantly notice how fake the whole story becomes. Try reading an Agatha Christie book again, knowing all facts, and you'll notice that there is absolutely no clue that you could have picked up, no way you could have followed the lead and came to the same conclusions. And hence, knowing who did it will not "spoil" the book for you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Director M. Night Shyamalan stopped by a McDonalds and offered 30 patrons an advance screening of his next film but the popular response seemed to be "Just tell me what happens."
What the ancient Greeks also did was telling a well known story many times. A performance would be a well known story, but the essence was not that the story line was new, it was about how to tell the story in a different manner. So enjoying a performance/play didn't rely on not knowing how the story went, it was all about the actual performance, how they told the story, but of course such a way of telling the samy story could mean adding side plots so there are possibilities of having new unexpected things.
OK, I'll start: Dark Vader is Luke's father.
You know how its going to turn out, and the suspense of seeing that is what drove the enjoyment of the movie. Spoilers matter. A lot.
Seriously, this study is old news. I can remember in history class that those who went to the theater in ancient Greece almost always knew the whole story beforehand. The whole idea was not being surprised by the end, but being entertained by excellent storytelling and acting. Of having the story _told_.
We all knew (except for a few actively ignorant people) that Anakin Skywalker would become Darth Vader, likewise it was a foregone conclusion that Saruman would team up with Sauron, that Boromir would die an epic death and that Denethor was not all right in the head.
Heck, when I started reading tropes on tvtropes I was a bit scared that I would risk spoiling a story and thus ruining it for me - because that was what I had been taught by society would happen - instead it became a great source for finding epic things to read or watch. The very knowing that some major character would pull off a thanatos gambit to secure world peace, after being a rather large douchebag for two whole seasons, made me that much more excited to actually watch it unfold.
The 1996 movie "A time to Kill" (which I haven't personally seen btw) is about a trial. The French translation is titled "Non coupable" ("Not guilty", for those who don't know French). I wonder what the verdict will be...
He gives away the endings to all of his movies at the very start. I think he's a pretentious twit for making movies that way and I don't really enjoy them, but I seem to be in the minority as his movies are perennial favorites.
You know, I could list a long list of spoilers (the plant giving immortality is stolen from Gilgamesh by a serpent and Enkidu's ghost returns from the Netherworld) ... or you could read these (it's just movies):
http://www.moviepooper.com/
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
Just so you know, the boat sinks.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I've recently tried to watch 2 different sporting events that I DVR'ed, and had someone come in the room and accidentally spoil the ending.
That really, really damages the enjoyment of watching.
I wonder what that says about books/movies vs sports.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
Best. Spoiler. Ever!
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
Spoilers may not ruin the story, but having a surprise every now and then is nice. Besides, for genres like detective stories, part of the fun for some people is in figuring out who is the criminal before it's revealed.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
They had undergrads read short stories. And somehow grade how much they enjoyed it.
You don't see problems with that?
As an undergrad taking psych 1000, I had a choice of a writing assignment or participate as a research subject, this is assume where they normally get research subjects.
Show up read these short stories grade how much you like them, here is your course credit.
Do you really think that is generally applicable? What real investment are these subjects making in having an enjoyable entertainment experience in this clinical, read these stories and rate them for credit? It is nonsense.
When I read any book or watch any movie with unfolding story elements, I am totally engrossed. This does NOT happen on subsequent viewings/reading as there is no more mystery. This doesn't just Apply to big twists like in Enders Game, or The Sixth Sense, but most interesting story with unfolding elements being revealed that keeps you turning pages late into the night. That simply doesn't exist if you know everything.
Undergrads reading a few assigned short stories for course credit is certainly NOT the same thing.
I hate these meaningless bits of research. So they quizzed 30 people about 12 stories they read and as a result they're making a sweeping conclusion about how all people enjoy stories. This isn't serious research. How do things like this get published? Publishing things like this dilutes the value of serious research that follows a logical methodology. Reports like these are why no one takes statistics and research seriously.
Did the morons who decided to put this study together ever consider the fact that some people don't mind spoilers and some do? That some plots depend on plot twists whereas some do not? Could it be that the stories with the 'spoiler' paragraphs contained nothing more than heavy foreshadowing, which isn't really a 'spoiler?'
There's nothing complete enough about this 'research' that one could draw real conclusions from. BUT:
"You get this significant reverse-spoiler effect," study author and professor of social psychology Nicholas Christenfeld said.
The moron in charge of the research does so anyway. Social psychology? No wonder. The quacks of science strike again!
Anecdotes don't account for much, but since neither does this research, so here we go: I don't watch movie trailers because they spoil the movie for me. I can usually guess the end of a movie and its major plot points from a trailer. The 'Snape kills Dumbledoor' bullshit really pissed me off and ruined that one for me. Here's an alternate theory: some people hate spoilers and some people don't. It all depends on what we enjoy about stories.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
If somebody had spoiled the ending of My Girlfriend's Boyfriend it wouldn't have had near as much impact. ...Why is everybody looking at me funny? It's a good movie!
Just about every (major) motion picture these days is either a remake (of a film or TV series) or an adaptaion of a book, or and adaptation of a comic (thats comic book in amaerican).
Then of course there are reenactments of historical events, or semi historical legends (like The Bible and ancient greeks)
I hear they are making a movie about Seal Team Six. I quess the main difference will be that Osama Bin Laden shoots first.
Might as well show all their goods to begin with. No point in the tease.
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Renaissance plays often began with a dumbshow, a mimed version of the story you're about to see. You can see one in Hamlet: the play-within-a-play is preceded by a dumbshow of itself.
In both the Greek and Renaissance times, the audience was nearly always familiar with the story. They ripped each other off all the time, and audiences liked it that way. Almost none of Shakespeare's stories are original The show wasn't in what it was about, but how it was about it, to borrow Roger Ebert's phrase.
We all knew what would happen to the ring in LotR. However there it was all about the story, not so much about the plot (good vs. evil).
With fight club, the twist in the plot was part of the experience. I know of one person who was extremely disappointed that he knew the plot, because somebody told him.
If you watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNLiOojDgLE you basically have seen the whole movie.
So it all depends if a twist is intended to be part of the experience or not. Unfortunately with the majority of movies, it is predetermined how they will end. Especially if Will Smith stars in it. He rather rapes a good story then be original. I am Legend was just a standard predictable piece of crab. Reading the original, then the last few pages are a twist which I would not have liked to have known when reading it.
That plot twist was an eye opener and made me think. It made me re-read it almost immediately to read it with a different mindset.
If I would have known the plot, an experience would have been take away and I would not have known that. How do you value something you never had and did not know you were missing?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
People should respect others wishes?
Seriously, I'm happy to tell some fiends and family the end of a movie before they watch. Because otherwise they'll sit through the whole film asking what's going to happen rather than watching. I on the other hand -hate- having stories spoiled for me. If I really want to know I will ask. But if I don't ask, then don't tell me!.
If I'm in pain after 10 hours of music, then even after 1 hour, the sound is worse than the alternative. Just because I don't consciously perceive something in a way that I can report in a multiple-choice survey, doesn't mean that it doesn't affect me.
Also, people report things socially. As in they are more likely to report something that they believe others think, than that they believe others don't think. So if you don't make it a truly personal objective, then they are influenced by what they think others believe.
The next time you have a headache, think of everything you ate, watched, and thought about for the previous 48 hours. Think about the weather, your sleep patterns, and your stress. It's very difficult to blame the 20 minutes of music over the weather. But it's just as likely to be the music.
I'm cool your friend thing. So how about "which one would you purchase for a friend to help them recommend books to you?"
I've definitely read studies in the past which show connections between self-reported preference and actual preference. Quite a few of them.
Did you check whether this study cited such a thing? or whether it's an accepted base part of this area's research field by now?
The things you're talking about -- long-term acceptability -- I agree they're important but wouldn't call them "actual preference".
Listening to music doesn't give me a headache. On any sound system. Of any quality or cost.
What's the matter with you?
no, I'd also call "actual preference" what they did. I'd also call "actual preference" totally useless, because I don't believe that it predicts anything except future "actual preference".
But hey, which do you prefer, the taste of mcdonald's burger or the taste of gordon ramsey's burger? Now which is better?
If listening to very loud music -- which is required for proper sound fidelity -- doesn't give you a headache, then you aren't listening properly. The question is how long it takes to get the headache. Listen to a good album, at THX minimum volumes for example, and see how long it takes. On earbuds, versus bad speakers, versus good speakers, versus a good room.
If somehow you're simply immune to headaches, which is cool by the way, then listen to lectures. It's a good bet that you'll retain more of what you learned from lectures with good quality sound than poor.
"which one would you purchase for a friend to help them recommend books to you?"
I'm suppose to figure out which story I would buy for a friend so that they would be able to figure out my taste in books and recommend things I might like in the future? If I understood that correctly, that's pretty roundabout, and it still suffers from my example. It would be more than an imposition to expect a friend to read the Wheel of Time (or even the first book) just so they could know my taste in books. [For reference, the first book of that series is just over 300,000 words, the series itself is around 4,000,000 words, and the Bible is (from a random site I googled) around 800,000 words.]
Good point. That's why many of these successful writers are generally devoid of any real creative talent and simply write to a formula. So much current writing seems to have very little individual writing style so that much of the current successful 'literature' could really be written by any other of the writer's contemporaries. Writing is not just about the plot and how it is unfolded.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
on what exactly you give away.
what happens is far less important than how it happens.
derp.
When I was a child, I like to hear the same story over and over again. But I'm a grown-up now, so I prefer to find out in real time what's going to happen.
Spoilers are things you know in advance about the story which the author intended to reveal at his or her own pace.
The clue's in the name. By definition, they spoil the story.
I was thinking something more of the form "hey friend, I like books like this", which hopefully is something you do on occasion. I know I do. It's also the response to "what sort of books do you like", which is a common first-date-style question. Whether or not teh person actually reads the book, doesn't mean that they can't scan a few pages, and the summaries, and understand the sort of grade-level of writing, the subject matter, or ask a book store what else would be similar.
But still, I think the best one is my #4. "which style could you live without". If you could only ever read books that were spoiled, or only ever read books that weren't spoiled, which would you choose. The reason being that it makes the scenario personal to the respondent. It presents a scenario where they'd lose something. Whereas the simple preference is something where they know tehy can change their mind. So tehy answer the question in the present: "today, I feel I like it as a 9. tomorrow I may feel different", which isn't much of a commitment. Ask them to commit to an answer for the long term, and they'll rank differently.
If you read extensively, try reading some Jasper Fforde. The broader your reading background, the more you will get out of his books.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I knew the end a couple of decades before it came out, I still enjoyed the movie all the way through. I'm suprised no-one gave that example.
I was 'amused' by the 6th Sense more the 2nd Time I saw it. Although, mostly I was looking at all the ways he burned me and I didn't see it.