"Since I was a child, I’ve always loved a good story. I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves to fix what was broken in us, and to help us become the people we dreamed of being. Lies that told a deeper truth."
- Dr. Robert Ford in Westworld TV Series
There are stories that are told very simply and in a straight forward manner and then there are stories that are told in a manner that seem highly complex and not easy to understand. Many such movies and TV series too. Why are the complex ones told the way they are done?
Behind every story the writer wants to convey a message. He could choose to do it in a simple but effective manner or he may opt to do it in a more creative but complex way. The premise of the story may be elaborate or plain, but both a simple and complex story can be told either in a simple or a complex way.
Stories like The Hare and The Tortoise, a simple premise, told in a simple straight forward way. You can easily understand the story in one read and is told in such simple way that you know what the story teller wanted to tell his reader.
Stories like Alice in Wonderland, a complex premise, but told in a simple straight forward way. The story has multiple layers and but is fairly easy to follow and is fun. Once you are through it, you know what the author wanted to say.
Then there are stories that have simple premise like Memento, told in a manner that seems not easy to follow. Once you probably understand it, retrospectively, the premise seems very simple. Protagonist, a short term memory loss patient being betrayed and used by his friend but the protagonist finally finds out and handles it. Another example is a movie 'About Time'. The protagonist can time travel and relive his life over and over again till he gets exactly what he wants. In both of these cases, it is not easy to understand that Memento is not about revenge, but about the philosophical quest of remembering who we are and what constitutes us other than our own memory; that About Time is not about a perfect girlfriend and time travel but about a perfect father and how reliving the life doesn't matter. Stories like Dune, H2G2, Annihilation, and movies like Arrival, Inception, Prestige, Westworld TV Series, etc. have told stories in a very different way which a regular viewer of TV series like Saath Nibhaana Saathiya, Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai and the like would never probably move out of the latter to even taste the other dishes.
Still, however complex a plot is, however hard it is made to understand with multiple untold timelines, surprise twists, etc., a complex story still reaches to a wide range of readers and viewers. The only plausible reason is, no reader/viewer is as dumb as some story tellers assume them to be. Some story tellers start telling the story as if they have a very complex plot and huge range of characters and they repeat scenarios and plot locus of their story to 'ensure' the reader gets it.
No. Stop doing that as a writer. Now.
Respect the intellect of your readers. Assume that 99% of the readers can guess what your twist, climax and moral of the story is, within a few pages into it. Then, make it challenging to understand. Let them not immediately find out if they are in a dream layer or reality; let them not immediately understand why Kattappa killed the protagonist; let them question why Sita accused Lakshman of thinking illicit of her; challenge them to reason why Krishna married thousands of girls except Radha. At the same time have multiple equally plausible answers to each of these open ended questions.
Don't repeat yourself (like I'm doing right now) and let there be no cliché in your story. Challenge the intellect of a reader. Accept that they are not dumb. Make your intent and message of the story complex to understand but keep the premise simple. Keep open a few questions for readers to ponder over the rationale. You've got a winner story.