I have devised a new technique for rating my stories’ narrative effect.  I call it the TRON Scale.

My wife recently purchased TRON: Legacy on BluRay and we’ve watched it like six times (our four-year-old daughter loves it).  That movie is so well done.  Foreshadowing for sequels, allusions abound to the first (“That is one big door”), the characters are interesting, and the plot is always clear (if not necessarily transparently driven).  There are little things that irk me, specifically Kevin Flynn’s eighties expressions (“radical man”) sprinkled indelicately throughout, but we’re talking nitpicks in execution; the story is quite solid.  I give it a 9 out of 10 on the yet-unexplained TRON Scale.

Then there was the original TRON film.  We borrowed it from my wife’s coworker and watched it tonight.  This receives a 1 on the TRON Scale.  The original TRON is all concept with minimally executed plot.  It was hard to stay awake through the whole thing.  The stakes were never truly clear.  The characters were literally pushed from one scenario to the next.  Characters’ decision processes were sudden and never explored.  Solutions seemed to present themselves out of nowhere.  Cool visuals (for the eighties), cool concept, cool characters, but not much as a story.  And I about fell asleep because of it.  Cool is great, but plot keeps the reader/viewer involved.

I think my stories fall short on the TRON Scale quite often, particularly when it comes to understanding character’s choices.  They do things that drive the plot because they drive the plot rather than the character’s identity compelling that action.

I intend to use the TRON scale to consider a few of my current stories and decide whether modification is warranted or if those stories should be sent to games (random TRON reference…I should be ashamed).  For the record, TRON’s cool factor increased when tied to a more cohesive plot.  surely that will help some of my cool story ideas, too.