So, I was reading a fanfic where one of the characters presents a fake scenario to someone he wants to confess a secret to and the listener is like, "Yeah, you should totally tell her!...Anything else you want to talk about?" The character's response? An "Uh, no, K THX bye!" In short, he chickens out.
I might not have thought much of it except for the fact that another fanfic I follow just had a similar situation pop up. In this case, however, when the character is literally about to make the confession, external events start happening, preventing her from saying anything.
Neither of these fanfics are complete as I write this, but I've been around long enough to realize that those confessions are only going to happen when it's the ~*~Most Dramatic Moment Possible~*~. It's the sort of thing that storytellers are trained to do.
But let's look at what message that this is sending the audience.
With the first example, it's "Are you too chicken to tell someone something? It's fine, just keep chickening out. The universe will conspire that s/he'll find it out eventually without you having to build up the courage to go through with it yourself. Yeah, it might be worse when it does get out, but that good ol' universe will make sure that you get a happy ending soon enough."
With the second example, it's "So you've decided to take active control of your life and have a brave moment where you show your own weakness? Too bad, you don't get to have that experience. We'll never know if you would have chickened out or what it looks like when you two have healthy communication. Only thing you might get is brownie points for saying 'I was going to tell you' (which someone who chickened out will also be able to truthfully say, so it doesn't really change anything, does it?)"
If giving an honest try and postponing the attempt both give the same results, then why shouldn't you just take the "easy way" and wait for things to happen on their own? Well, in the real world, waiting for the universe to do what it does is almost always worse than getting it over with. An real-world active person is going to have fewer worries, more opportunities, and overall have a more fulfilling life. A real-world procrastinator may never get around to accomplishing anything because nothing ever pushes him/her into it and his/her dreams will just fizzle out. I don't know of any storyteller who would dare let this kind of reality anywhere near his/her narrative.
But why does it matter that only the decision to not speak up is shown to its conclusion? Well, if media only shows one option, the audience begins to think that procrastinating is the only real option. They have no idea what it looks like to just get it over with and going into that uncharted territory is just as scary as the notion of taking action in the first place. The task just gets that much harder and the option to wait a little longer just gets that more alluring.
So, what should writers be doing instead? I don't have any concrete answers for this one, but I do have some possibilities. They could be willing to break the status quo earlier and to let the protagonist have more agency in his/her life. They could find other ways of keeping up the tension besides "will s/he find out?" They could be willing to experiment outside of standard plots and finding out what other possibilities for storytelling exist--and they shouldn't just throw out the first attempt or two just because it feels like it doesn't work. A lot of this is retraining the brain to not see story and to incorporate reality instead.
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