In the television and film industry, there's this phrase that people who work in development

use, curse of knowledge.

It describes the dynamic when a storyteller is first trying to communicate to an audience

a story that he or she is crafting.

The storyteller has the curse of knowledge.

He knows the characters, the backstory, the plot, all the ins and outs of the world, and

the audience he's pitching it to, and ultimately writing it for, studio executives, conversely

does not.

Sometimes even when that writer is pitching his take on a book or property that the studio

owns.

I'm not kidding.

The audience, the room, has absolutely no idea who these characters are, what they've

been through or where they're going, let alone any extraneous details of the world in

which they inhabit.

So the curse comes when the writer storyteller is so entrenched in the story that they leave

out big chunks of information that the room needs in order to follow or track what the hell

the writer is talking about.

When the world around the character is layered and complex, the curse is inevitable.

To overcome it, one has to boil the story down to the basics and spend time explaining

that.

Who are these people, where did they come from, what happened to them and why, what kinds

of obstacles will come into their path because of who they are, where they came from, what

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