Personally, I have never seen The Princess Bride, as someone who does not consume a lot of movies during my spare time. Despite my lack of experience, I still know of the movie itself, as well as the memes and jokes that come with it, as a byproduct of other people talking about it and seeing it in pop culture. This well-beloved and well-known story has retained its status as an extraordinary story since the time of its release—despite its moderate appraisal amongst the audience and critics. It’s gradual accomplishment of becoming a classic of older generations, as well as a new favorite amongst younger audiences, shows how its story stays relevant, and how its themes and storytelling captivates an audience of all ages.
William Goldman, the writer behind the story—both for the original novel, and for the movie adaptation—utilized the world of unconventional storytelling to deliver a classic story with its own twists and adaptations of fairy tale tropes. He keeps the classic fairy tale theme of “love conquers all”, as well as the importance of friendship, while deviating from tropes that are typically found in storybook side characters and plot points. The writing itself combines elements of satire and humor, and appeals to the audience that loves a romantic fantasy—a “romantacy”—story; this is a perfect combination of storytelling elements that allows the story to captivate a wider audience range.
Tying back to Dan Roam’s Draw to Win, visualizations can help garner a reader’s attention, and help further visualize a place or object, or even a concept, which, in turn, helps an audience retain information better. This also applies to information outside of a creative storytelling place—for example, in slide shows, we find that it can become hard to stay focused on a topic if all we are listening to is someone speaking with no actual visual aids to help us. When we are reading a book, or looking at a body of text (like this blog post), we can only do so much imagination on our own, as well as remember details of a person or place, without sometimes forgetting what it was or who they were. And while we can come up with a face to a name, or a descriptor for the character, sometimes it is difficult to keep track of everything.
The film adaptation of The Princess Bride brings in a fresh new perspective of the characters and the setting that they’re in. Having people act out scenes from a novel, keeping to the story while adding new elements that don’t take away from the original script (to my knowledge…as stated, I have never seen or read the story), helps make the story that much more memorable and cherish-able.
“The Princess Bride” by Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
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