This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here.
If the world were suddenly captured by aliens, and I had one hour in which to communicate the dynamics of human behavior or else risk extinction, I know exactly what I would present: Survivor Season 20, Episode 10, “Going Down in Flames.” In this season, contestants are divided into two tribes based on their past performances: heroes and villains. This episode merges the tribes into one, and though he doesn’t know it yet, hero J.T. has made a critical error—protecting one of the villains, Russell Hantz, by offering him a hidden immunity idol. From there, all hell breaks loose story-wise. Russell fabricates a lie with the rest of the villains, and the heroes believe it, despite a warning from one traitorous tribemate.
In the end, J.T. is blindsided by the man he most trusted in the game. It’s a riveting 43 minutes of storytelling, or, as host Jeff Probst, whom New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum once described as “Freud in a safari hat,” would put it, “it’s the greatest social experiment of all time.”
Now in its 49th season, Survivor is one of the most enduringly popular reality shows in American history. I haven’t seen all 49 seasons—yet—but recently, watching 46 and crying while Kenzie Petty made her final pitch to the jury about how winning a million dollars would allow her to pursue her dream of having a family, I began to reflect on what was so powerful about Survivor. I came to one conclusion: Survivor displays the same kind of literary brilliance as my favorite novels. The contestants are compelling protagonists with powerful backstories. They have clear goals—the same goal—and obstacles blocking them from it. Characters change meaningfully over time—their allegiances grow stronger or weaker, and they gain new understandings of themselves as they’re pushed to their limits, physically and intellectually. I wondered—could studying Survivor actually improve my writing craft?
Like any work of literature, the structure of Survivor is paramount to its success. And other than strategic additions that have been added over the years to complicate gameplay, the structure has stayed largely the same for 49 seasons—16-20 strangers, assembled into warring tribes, are marooned on an island, competing for a million-dollar prize. Good storytelling is all about maximizing stakes, and there’s nothing quite like seeing the three major conflicts of literature play out simultaneously: man vs. man, man vs. nature and man vs. himself. What results is a hotbed of conflict and character, a Joseph Campbell-esque journey of growth, rebirth, and death—in this case, being voted out by your tribemates.
You would think the premise would have run its course after more than a quarter-century, but in each season, new dynamics emerge, and strategies must be defined and re-defined. It reminds me of the theory Vivian Gornick lays out in The Situation and the Story: “Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.” As Survivor demonstrates, it’s the situation that creates the container for action, but it’s the characters who define the story.
In my own writing, I tend to shy away from moments of overwhelming emotion for fear of becoming sentimental, but as Survivor reminds me, it’s these moments where characters also feel the most real.
In a genre of television not exactly heralded for its depth of character, I think Survivor stands out, even in seasons designed to box players into archetypes: Heroes vs. Villains, David vs. Goliath, Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty, etc. In these seasons, the archetypes provide a narrative lens not only for audiences but for the players to see themselves in the game—what’s the social cost of betraying their family? Can they overcome their villainous origins and gain trust? Because the winners are crowned by tribemates they’ve had a hand in voting out, they’re always coming up against the “likability” factor, but as in literature, players seem to be tolerant of moral flexibility. They even prefer it. Like witnessing Macbeth’s murderous descent, or Ebenezer Scrooge’s redemption arc, watching Survivor characters evolve is moving. And like these legendary characters of literature, the most dynamic Survivor players pave the way for new archetypes—Parvati, Sandra, Rupert, Tony.
Successful Survivor players seem to understand the necessity of turning oneself into a character. Maybe they do so by emphasizing their humble origins, or their commitment to their family. They may also choose to allow their character to emerge more organically through their sense of humor, or their work ethic— think, how many palm fronds they chop to help build the shelter. “To establish credibility, you would do well to resist coming across as absolutely average,” Philip Lopate writes in his book on the craft of literary nonfiction, To Show and to Tell. And it’s true that sometimes the most “average” players on Survivor arouse the most suspicion—what are they hiding? Both audience and readers distrust characters whom they don’t feel like they know.
Arguably one of the most famous “characters” in Survivor history is Rob Mariano, otherwise known as Boston Rob, who first appeared on season four and last on season 40. Part of his appeal is that Boston Rob is good at everything Survivor—the puzzles, the physical challenges, the social dynamics. He swiftly created an expectation of winning at all costs. But what I’ve found most fascinating in watching his character are these moments that Lopate characterizes as “contradictions and ambivalences.” For example: falling in love with his now-wife on Survivor: All-Stars: Amber Brkich, whom he helped shepherd to the end of the game only to lose to her in the final vote.
Ultimately, as a writer, you cannot and should not shield your characters from being seen in all their messy glory. In my own writing, I tend to shy away from moments of overwhelming emotion for fear of becoming sentimental, but as Survivor reminds me, it’s these moments where characters also feel the most real. As Steve Almond puts it in his craft book, Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow, “We need to stop protecting our characters (and ourselves) from the very thing our reader has arrived most eager to experience: uncontainable emotion.”
It’s not surprising that crowd favorite Survivor seasons are those with unexpected twists not from Jeff Probst, but from the players themselves—plans hatched in secret and sold to unsuspecting parties, underdogs catching a lucky break or finding new strength, unexpected competitors working together. They’re familiar stories of friendship and loss, victory and defeat, trust and betrayal. And yet, like Andy Rueda, an AI researcher, explained during a confessional on season 47, unlike an algorithm, there’s no possible way to predict the outcome of the show because human behavior has too many variables. It’s what keeps us coming to the screen and the page season after season, book after book.
