Anna Staniszewski

The new season of “Project Runway” started recently and thus far it’s been enjoyable and interesting to watch. The show that follows it, “Models of the Runway,” has been less successful, however. I tried again to watch it last night but wound up spending most of my time online instead. I realized that what’s missing from the show is something that is often a problem in writing: actual high stakes.

“Models of the Runway,” for those who don’t know, is a spinoff of “Project Runway.” MotR takes the PR models and tells us their side of the story; they also compete to win $25,000. The problem is, we don’t actually see them competing. We hear them talking about how important it is for them to win and how invested they are in moving forward in the competition, but they have no control over whether or not they advance; it’s primarily based on which designer they’re paired up with, and the designers tend to choose models pretty randomly.

So how does this relate to writing and high stakes? The show is trying to create drama by making it seem like the models are competing against each other and vying to win a prize. But all we see are the models bickering over silly things and kissing up to the designers. We’re told the stakes are high and that the competition is fierce, but we see something completely different. The writing equivalent of this would be a story in which the main character can’t actually do anything to influence how things turn out.

Not only must your character be fighting for something that’s important to her, she needs to have the means of at least trying to make her desired outcome become a reality. She may not succeed and it might turn out that her struggle was for nothing, but there needs to be an actual struggle. If she’s sitting around arguing with her roommates while her dreams slip out the window, I wouldn’t say that’s a compelling read (and definitely not compelling television).