Your weekly break-down of a popular movie or television episode to see what a screenwriter—or any writer, for that matter—can take away from what’s on screen: what worked, what didn’t, and how you can use what’s popular to craft better stories.

In a bit of change of pace, we’re studying an entire platform today, opposed to a film or television series.

Quibi, short for “quick bites” of video, is a new app for your phone and tablet, where top tier actors, filmmakers and celebrities tell stories in bite-size chapters of ten minutes or less. Think Netflix for the ADHD crowd. Its chairman is studio mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg of Disney and DreamWorks fame, and Quibi has been invested in by every studio in Hollywood. It seems like the industry is doubling down on the idea that less is more.

The platform has a 90-day free trial happening right now, and even after that, it’s not that costly. But the real question is, are the shows worth it?  If we’re going by the first round of episodes that dropped on Monday, the future of storytelling could become very, very small.

*WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!*

1. Survive.
   One of Quibi’s “movies in chapters,” this heartfelt drama stars Sophie Turner as a suicidal plane crash survivor. It’s Alive meets Girl, Interrupted in a wilderness drama that’s realistically erratic and wonderfully portrayed. The threat of tragedy here is strong, and it binds us to our main character. Survive is the most mysterious of the dramas offered on Quibi—because we know so little. The episode centers around a young woman who believes it’s her destiny to kill herself while she lies to everyone around her. The episode uses narration, cutaways, onscreen labels, flashbacks, flashforwards, dream sequences, and alternate realities to compress and progress its story. The modern style and layout of Quibi fits this sort of stylized narrative well. Given that our main character suffers from a mental illness, our narrative POV is enhanced by this chaotic storytelling style. What’s real? What’s not? Who’s lying? Who’s telling the truth?  It all comes down to one answer: tune into Quibi tomorrow and find out. Survive is an old school cliffhanger (think Flash Gordon and Crash Corrigan) in a brand-new package.

2. Flipped.
   Will Forte and Kaitlin Olsen play an entirely unlikable couple who decide to become home remodeling stars. The only problem? They are self-absorbed, untalented and clueless.  As the series goes on, the budding Chip and Joanna Gaines end up forced to remodel a drug lord’s house.

   While almost every screenwriting book will tell you to create protagonists that the audience roots for and cares about, this movie goes the opposite direction— with a vengeance.  The leads in Flipped are terrible people you can’t help watching as their idiocy and insensitivity sees them foiled by their own clueless plans again and again. In comedy, this is a really effective tool (see Michael Scott from The Office, Dale and Brennan from Step Brothers, and every episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). The takeaway? There’s nothing like a train wreck of a character to keep us watching.

3. The Most Dangerous Game.
   Another movie in pieces, this action thriller once again remakes the classic tale of people hunting people. Our hero thinks he’s the hunter, and—surprise—he’s actually the hunted. A popular trope, it was recently remade for mainstream as the social justice spin The Hunt, which we just deconstructed in this space. Based on a short story by Richard Connell first published in 1924, The Most Dangerous Game is a pulpy story of a rich man who hunts people on his private island.

   I was ready to dismiss it, but this is actually a great little episode that handles every bit of story it needs while having two characters simply sitting at a desk and standing on a balcony. That may sound bland, but I was completely invested. The takeaway is that it’s shocking how little setup, backstory and foundation a story actually needs when the stakes are high. I was invested in poor Liam Hemsworth (the series’ star) and his cancer diagnosis, learning of his struggling family and growing desperation after only a few lines of dialogue. It’s impressive how quickly your viewer will abandon needing a truckload of information if you set the stakes high enough right out of the gate. The only downside to this sort of high-concept stuff is that I know the main character will agree to the proposition he’s presented with. From the title alone we know where this is going! It’s kind of like a Godzilla movie; we know what we paid for, so don’t wait too long to give us the good stuff.

4. When the Streetlights Go On.
   A murder mystery with a short story/memoir quality, this Quibi debut is set in the 1990s and deals with murders, small towns, and creepy adult sex romps with a seventeen-year-old. It’s a teen coming-of-age potboiler with a bit of Riverdale meets Stranger Things-vibe. The series features Queen Latifah and an epic alt-rock soundtrack.

   There’s a familiarity to this series – and that’s thanks to the narrator.  By giving us a guide who lived through the events, he can casually give us backstory, hints and ominous warnings that allow the movie to condense its setup into only a minute or two. After we follow our narrator on a bike ride around town (another nod to all the locations) he quietly disappears, and we’re left with an icky, Lolita-like story that you can’t help but be glued to. Even though I figured out the murderer, I’m still excited to follow this Dateline-inspired suburban noir. Every time I think the narrator is an overused device, a new program comes along and reminds us that—when done well—a good narrator is quite effective.

5. Run This City.
   A tiny documentary in pieces about young men, crime and politics in small town Massachusetts. Doesn’t sound like much, but the format really works for this MTV-styled docu-series. The story isn’t fiction, but I believe this series is important enough to bring up because more and more writers are taking jobs on podcasts, true crime series, or making their own documentaries. And, while you may not have to create a plot and characters from scratch in a docu-series, you still need to lay out the narrative in a compelling way. You have to introduce characters people may know, and you can’t reveal too many clues up front.  In Run This City, we’re teased with strippers, lies, embezzlement and a hard-working small town. We meet a cast of Massachusetts locals who can’t wait to give their opinions on our odd but charming main character, 23-year-old Jasiel Correia, the youngest mayor in Massachusetts history. The series will follow Jasiel as he deals with wire fraud and extortion criminal charges while preparing for re-election in his hometown. So, the real takeaway for this series is about the way you give out your information; not too fast, not too slow. Hints, clues, setup, character, reveals, twists and callbacks are all the same—whether your story is true or not, you are still ultimately telling a story.

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Final Takeaway: With way more reality, news and competition shows than actual narrative storytelling, Quibi is still a blast of fresh air in a curated, buffet-style menu. The true takeaway from Quibi’s platform and programming isn’t what writers need to put INTO their stories, it’s all the things we can actually leave OUT.