Love and Monsters – Story Structure

Why story structure matters but isn’t everything.

In this essay, I’ll be looking at story structure and how it can work for or against a given story depending on how the author uses this tool. I’ll be using the Netflix movie Love and Monster as an example. I found it a fairly entertaining movie, but also one that was way, way too predictable. Pondering what made the movie so predictable led me to thinking about story structures and, eventually, this essay.

First of all, though, a disclaimer.

Obviously, I’m going to criticize Love and Monsters, specifically the writing and use of plot beats. But I want to be clear that this was not a terrible movie. I was well entertained all the way through, and I’m certain the script was written by some very skilled authors. Certainly, far more skilled than me, which is why they’re making scripts for major streaming services while I’m writing for my blog. So, yeah, this essay is not meant to tear apart the movie or the script writers, but to dissect the one aspect where the writing seemed to fail.

Also, the issues I’m going to pick at could be problems arising mostly from bad directing/cutting or a heavy-handed attempt to keep the runtime of the movie down (I really appreciated, by the way, that for once, a newer movie wasn’t stretched over three hours which it was unable to fill). However, directing and cutting seemed to be otherwise well done in the movie, and the basic plot structure of a story really shouldn’t be changed all that much after filming. Besides, most movies with a decent budget seem, to me at least, to fail mostly at the script level.

Secondly, there will be spoilers below. For Love and Monsters, obviously, but since it’s nice to have something well known to compare to, for Harry Potter as well and some minor spoilers for the original Star Wars Trilogy.

Right. So. Let’s get down to business. Why was I so bothered by Love and Monsters being predictable, and what made it so?

That first question is an easy one. It bothered me because it severely weakened an otherwise solid movie . The dialogue was good. The premise was interesting. The acting was good. And everything about the setting and CGI was done well enough that it didn’t pull me out of the story once. But the plot, oh man.

In every scene, I was able to figure out what was going to happen, what the role of certain characters would be, and what was being foreshadowed.

In other words, the mechanics of the story were showing. And that is never a good sign.

Having your reader (or in this case viewers) notice the tools you as an author are using, means your audience isn’t focusing on the story you’re telling, the message you’re trying to get across, and the magic you’re trying to pull off either on screen or the page. This is why I feel confident saying the movie failed when it came to its plot and story structure.

And sure, I’m an author myself, and I study story structure and pick movies and novels apart. I spend my time trying to figure out which tools an author is using and how well they pull it off. But usually, I have to work hard at it. If the author has done their job well, I can’t focus on just enjoying a story and still dissect the plot structure and character arcs until I re-read/watch that story.

Not so with Love and Monsters.

Besides, it wasn’t just me. My wife (an avid reader, sure, but so are a lot of people) figured everything out at the same time I did.

So when the wise mentor(s) take the hero through his training montage, neither my wife or I doubted that they would disappear from the story later on and leave him to fight for himself. When these same mentors mention in the middle of the montage that some fern works as an antidote, clearly, the hero will need to use that antidote later. And when the hero’s only friend (a dog named Boy) screws up once (after having otherwise saved the hero), everyone could see it would turn into the moment where the band (even if the band is only a duo) have a fight and split up only to be reunited at the climax when the hero needs his friend(s).

Yeah, sure, when I put it like this, the plot beats will stand out to nearly everyone. But it wasn’t much different when actually watching the movie. This was issue number one with the plot structure of Love and Monsters. There was nothing to hide to hide the common plot beats.

If done well, a scene serves multiple purposes. It could be that it progresses both the main plot and a sub-plot. Or maybe it’s fleshing out one of the main characters besides progressing the plot. In Love and Monsters, though, every scene served one thing one, so that one thing became painstakingly clear. And that’s a problem, when especially when that one thing is a plot beat every reader/viewer has seen a milion times before.

Compare, for example, the removal of the mentor character to the same plot beat in Harry Potter, where it’s done exceptionally well. In Love and Monsters, the mentor characters show up out of the blue, help the hero for no apparent reason, and then disappears as their path diverges. Their disappearance from the plot serves no other purpose than to let the hero fight his own battle and actually, you know, be the hero.

Dumbledore’s death in Harry Potter, though (yeah, spoilers) doesn’t just remove the mentor figure who could’ve solved most of Harry’s problems. That same scene is also used to expand on Snape’s role as an agent/double agent, and it adds a lot to Draco Malfoy’s character as well, making him anything but a simple villain as he struggles with committing murder. The result is an emotionally and plot-wise very impactful scene, the culmination for several character- and plot threads.

This leads us to the second problem with plot structure in Love and Monsters. If the structure is the bones of a story, everything in between is connective tissue, and the movie had none of that. There was nothing to tie the plot beats together.

This problem showed almost right away. The authors did a great job of getting exposition out of the way and then a really great job at showing why the hero is miserable in the bunker he lives in (he’s the only single person there) and his desire to leave (he wants to meet up with his girlfriend from before the apocalypse). Right, so everything was set up for the plot beat commonly referred to as “the call to action”, where the hero decides to leave for his quest. Only one small but crucial detail was missing, the reason for the hero to leave at this very instant. That detail wasn’t included in the story.

The hero simply got up and decideds to leave one day. So, the plot beat of the hero leaving on his adventure was there, but the build-up that would make it fit naturally into the story wasn’t quite there.

This was far from a one-off issue, though, and the plot beats kept coming, but the build-up tying them together were missing.

The “the band splitting up” plot beat was another example of this. After the dog Boy brings himself and the hero into danger of being eaten by one of the many monsters inhabiting the world, the hero gets angry at the dog and chases it away. Solid execution of the beat, only the build-up is completely lacking.

Sure, it makes sense for the hero to lash out as he nearly died, but it would also make sense for him to try to seek comfort with the dog instead or try to comfort it, since, you know, it nearly died too and it was basically his only friend. But my problem was partly that I didn’t know the hero well enough to know what course of action would be natural to him, and partly that there was nothing in the story so far that indicated that he would get angry at the dog. If anything, I would’ve found it more in character for him to bond with the dog after the near-death experience. But of course, the band splitting up is one of the classic plot beats, so it had to be there even though it didn’t fit the story and it wasn’t necessary.

Again, Harry Potter shows how this same plot beat is to be done right (because Harry Potter does so many things well). When Ron and Harry fight and Ron splits from Harry and Hermione in the middle of their hunt to destroy the horcruxes, the build was there. Ron and Harry had been moving further and further apart because of Harry’s fame, and their seemingly futile quest only made things worse. And it fitted perfectly into the story as the horcrux Ron was wearing was messing with his mind.

So yeah, that plot point fitted perfectly into the plot. And even though it, in hindsight, was a very obvious plot beat, it wasn’t so when I first read the books (which, sadly, wasn’t more than a couple of years ago, long after I’d started analyzing stories).

And even though Harry Potter could’ve been told without that plot beat, it made the rest of the story far stronger. It brought Harry and Ron closer together again, acting as a climax in the sub plot that was the struggle of their friendship. More importantly, it thoroughly emphasized the theme of the story, that no one is a hero on their own, that friendship is important. So in that regard, I will consider it necessary for the story as well.

In Love and Monsters, though, the splitting of the band comes out of nowhere and, really, has no effect on the plot at all. Boy returns at the climactic scene as randomly as he disappeared to help the hero. But it would’ve made no difference if he’d just stayed with the hero helped him at the climax or if hero had to fight the final battle without Boy (whose final contribusion is miniscule).

It’s the same kind of frustration I felt when watching Star Wars episode one through three. In the original Star Wars trilogy Lucas picked the plot beats from the Hero’s Journey that fitted into his story (okay, so there’s the whole “journey to the underworld” beat where he faced of against some imagined version of Dart Vader, but I’ll allow one slip-up). In the prequels, though, he just stuffed everything in there, including the “virgin birth”, regardless of whether it made sense in the story world or not or whether it was relevant to story or not.

I really shouldn’t get started on the Star Wars prequels, though. Love and Monsters doesn’t deserve that comparison. As I mentioned in the beginning, it was a fine movie, but it did have some serious issues when it came to how the authors used plot structure.

Luckily for me, it meant analyzing the movie was a great learning experience. Hopefully, you’ve taken as much away from this essay as I have from writing it.

To sum things up, a plot structure can be an extremely useful tool to create a framework for your novel, play, movie, whatever. It’s a a skeleton that can help shape the body of your story and keep it from wobbling left and right. But it can’t be all you story is. At least, not if you want it to be a great story.

 In order to use any plot structure effectively, you have to make sure that:

1. There are things going on in the story masking the plot beats so that they’re not broken bones poking out through the skin. Ideally, you do this by having your scenes do multiple things for the story.
2. There are something tying the plot beats together. If your story is just beat-beat-beat, then most audiences will pick up on it, because every scene will feel very familiar. Plot beats are basically commonalities many different stories share, so they’re rarely very original. It’s the way they’re connected and the scenes in between which make your plot unique.
3. Every plot beat you include fits into your story and setting. Make sure the build-up is there. Don’t just have characters dropping by and randomly acting as mentors for your main character. Don’t let your protagonist chase away their best friend just because that’s a common plot beat. We need the context to understand why characters do what they do in order for their actions to feel justified and make sense.
4. The plot beats you chose to include actually changes the story. If the plot doesn’t really affect the rest of your story, then it is filler material, and your audience will notice. They might be confused as to why the scene is there, or they might complain that the story dragged around where that pointless scene was included, but one way or another they will notice.