🎁 #227 - It's A Gift
aka Your 2024 Storytelling Unwrapped
We do Gift Guides a little different here at Inneresting. Instead of listing dozens of options for you to purchase for your friends and family, we’re looking at what happens when characters give or receive gifts in a story.
Some these gifts may not make sense at first, but in each case the gift was destined for the character.
Gear and Apparel
In a flashback at the beginning of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, we see the origin of Indy’s iconic hat. It’s a gift from a grave robber that he chased down as a child, coming from a moment that forged his athletic pursuit of adventure as well as his determination to keep artifacts away from thieves and bad actors.
In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi gifts Luke Skywalker his father’s lightsaber. And while he won’t use it all that much until the sequels, it’s an unexpected present that suggests a new direction for his life. Gone are the days of moisture vaporators and power converters. Here is a connection to both his past (the father he has yet to meet) and his future (Jedi training and reunion with his absent father).
The Gift (or Curse) of Expectation
This kind of connection also plays out with the magical gifts bestowed on the Madrigal family in Encanto. Each child and grandchild comes of age to receive a talent that they will learn to use in the future for the benefit of their family and their town. In this case, the gift is also a burden, making them feel a demand to forever perfect themselves and their talents for the good of others.
We don’t always get what we want, and it’s the same way with characters. Sometimes a gift highlights a misunderstanding.
Even if you haven’t seen A Christmas Story, it’s likely you still know that all Ralphie wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder carbine-action, 200 shot, range model air rifle. We have an expectation, as an audience, that anything less will be a disappointment. So to push this for full comedic effect, the other gifts need to find a deep mismatch between who Ralphie is, and how those giving the gifts see him:
Or in The Nightmare Before Christmas, when Jack Skellington’s attempt to spread Christmas cheer hits a big snag because his fellow residents of Halloween Town don’t fully understand the assignment. We don’t need to know specifically what these children ask for to understand why they’re confused and disappointed by what “Santa” brought them, because the gifts are all excessively creepy.
The Gift of Revelation
In Love, Actually, a lot of time is spent setting up a necklace that Harry purchased as a gift. His wife Karen peeked early and discovered it, and when she chooses a present to open on Christmas Eve, she picks a familiar box… Only to discover that it holds a Joni Mitchell CD.
The necklace was for someone else. All the suggestions that Harry might be having an affair come together for her as a certainty, and she is gutted.
Or there’s the moment in Speed, where the discovery that one of the timers on the bomb is a cheap gold watch, like the kind that retired police officers get, helps Harry narrow down who the bomber could be:
The Gift That Isn’t
Playing off of familiar fairy tale tropes, Enchanted features multiple moments where Giselle is presented a free gift in the form of an apple. But these are poisoned apples, sent to kill her. Twice she inadvertently avoids eating them, but she’s presented with the temptation of an unexpected treat.
In Wicked, Galinda offers Elphaba an iconic black hat, encouraging her to wear it out that night. Elphaba takes it at face value, not aware that the hat was being mercilessly mocked by Galinda and her posse moments before. Her acceptance of the hat sets up a future scene being mocked for her appearance (and Galinda having a change of heart).
In real life, it’s a great feeling to see that you’ve given another person a gift they appreciate immediately. But in crafting fiction, there’s plenty of delight in using a gift to create a dramatic or comedic moment, whether or not the character loves what they’ve unwrapped.
Gifts that keep on giving
Whether it’s the newly re-released AlphaBirds, or the Writer Emergency Pack, the special word-inclined person in your life will get plenty of use out of these cards. And right now, to further the giving mood, we’re giving you 25% off!
If you’re looking for a gift for the writer in your life, or looking to find something new and quick to learn to bring to holiday gatherings, we’ve got you covered!
Available through the John August Store or Amazon (WEP | AlphaBirds).
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Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link Derek Sivers considered how some people are conditioned to misread questions as an indirect form of conflict.
What else is inneresting?
Matt Webb on We Didn’t Start the Fire, It’s the End of the World as we Know it, and other list songs.
Blake Butler with some ways to get more enjoyment out of reading.
Mike Monteiro believes that to make a better internet, we need to make a better society.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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