What happened to Western media? It used to be inspiring, fun, and most importantly… good.
They’ve stopped telling a good story. Instead, they now prefer to lecture me about what is real, what is not real, what is politically correct, and how I’m filled with outdated beliefs.
They do it blatantly. Through bad writing and awful storytelling.
Some Americans, disgusted by this new version of Hollywood, now create content criticising the current state of American media. They’ve garnered a huge following and a new source of income.
Witnessing the death of my favourite Western franchises and listening to in-depth critiques, taught me deeply what a good story is, especially, what it needs. Good writing.
Good structure
This helps writers build their stories. One such structure is called The Hero’s Journey. This structure is as old as time and builds a story in 12 steps. Depending on who you ask, it can be 7 too.
I won’t break it down here, don’t worry. You can Google it if you want. But here’s why it’s important.
When a story follows this structure, it taps into the psychological and emotional state of the person watching. It does this by acknowledging human struggles and triumphs.
Stories you enjoy have themes of self-discovery, transformation, and growth.
If you notice, every popular anime has this. I remember how electrifying it felt watching Luffy transform after the time skip—especially the reveal of Gear 5th.
Popular anime has a huge cult following across the globe. It achieves this because of its masterful application of The Hero’s Journey.
Star Wars was a success because they did this too. Until the dark times came.
The masterful art of brevity
Great writing don’t tell. It shows.
There’s only so much you can say in a dialogue. So much you can spell out in a scene. It’s always good to have a limit.
Amateur writers tend to make the fatal mistake of info dumping.
Good writing is restrictive. It says enough to achieve the point of the dialogue or scene. Every other nuance is left to the visual, choice of words, or music.
Brevity in writing is acknowledging this simple truth: to tap into someone’s emotions, say only enough to let their imagination take them there.
Humans react not by describing how they feel. They show it.
Coherence
I’d like to think there are levels to this. Basic and Advanced.
Basic coherence is to ensure sentences relate to one another. A paragraph’s idea is related to the next. One scene flows logically to the next. Simple enough.
Advanced coherence ensures the story allows an audience to progress logically and emotionally in a linear fashion.
A piece of dialogue, sentence, character, emotional expression, visual or audio experience should relate. Not only to progress the story, but to also progress the emotional and logical state of an audience.
For example, big battles happen at the climactic end. Because at the start and middle of the story, establishes why this matters. As we reach the big battle, the audience’s logical and emotional state has progressed to want the big battle.
Nobody wants anything to happen at the beginning of the story. We just want to understand what’s going on and why it matters to us.
Recommendation and conclusion
Every famous story executes these 3 key elements masterfully.
On Netflix, there’s this anime called “Cautious Hero”. It’s 12 episodes long. This anime is a good example of executing these 3 key elements masterfully. Go experience it.
One Response
Today, I watched Jason Bourne trilogy again. I completely lost count. You are right, I realise now that even they may have similar structure. Thanks for exposing this Chief.