Creating The Need
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The two things I retained from my time studying to teach English as foreign language are the now-debunked ‘learner styles’ and something called ‘creating the need,’ a strategy recommended for the first part of a lesson plan.
If I recall correctly, to create the need in the language classroom you have to give the learners an exercise in which use of the new form, whether vocabulary or grammatical tense/mood, was required, but before having introduced the new form. The simplest, most perfunctory way of doing this was to ask questions the learner might not be able to answer properly; much better was to put them in a scenario drawn from real life and ask them to communicate. The hope is that the learner will reach for the required language and in so doing discover their need for it.
Narrative writing benefits from a similar strategy, I think.
The writer must excite the reader’s curiosity, prompting questions to which the reader seeks answers. This may seem elementary, but it doesn’t always happen. Many writers take the reader’s interest for granted and busy themselves instead with presenting the most realistic, articulate, or stylish depiction of their subject. But that ain’t enough to sustain a story. Just as a language learner reaches for the required language, the reader or viewer, or listener, must reach for answers; they must want those answers, or ideally, they must need them.
You’ve got to create that need.
I was reminded of this operation by the contrast of two recent cinematic love stories: Clio Bernard’s ‘Ali & Ava’ and Harry Wootliff’s ‘Only You’. In ‘Ali & Ava’ we gain a tangible sense of the loneliness of the two people who will become lovers. This created an irresistible need for that to happen. In Harry Wootliff’s film, the lovers find each other almost immediately and it is only a mutual decision to have a baby together that puts the relationship under strain. The match is made and the story assumes we will care about whether they remain together by virtue of that fact. Despite the psychologically astute script, charismatic performances, and superb handheld photography, the film neglects to make us reach for answers—it already seems to know them.