The Deadly Storytelling Technique Modern TV Uses That You Should Avoid At All Costs!

Devlin Blake Author

Beware the storytelling trap: modern media's frustrating technique, examples, impact, avoidance, eye-opening discussion.

Transcript:

Have you noticed that most new TV shows and movies aren't that good? There’s a reason for that, and it’s not just bad writing, although yes, the writing is bad. It’s because it’s actually bad for a reason.

It shows a fundamental shift on how we actually tell stories in the modern age, and it’s not how stories work, so it can’t help but be awful.

Hi novelteers, I’m Devlin Blake, Novel Writing & self publishing Expert, Coach, published author, and former ghostwriter of over 200 books. If you’d like to work with me, check out my links in the description.

So stories have been around since the beginning of human history and the basics of them haven’t changed that much. However, fiction stories, as defined by being something purposely made up for the purposes of entertainment and profitability, has only been around for about 500 years, and in the grand scheme of human history, that’s not very long.

Commonplace fiction, where it’s in every aspect of our lives, the way it is now, has only been around since the 1800’s. So we’re actually still defining what fiction as an art form it actually IS.

And it being such a young art form, of course, leads to all kinds of experimentation, but what we’re experimenting doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work for a reason.

There are two main parts to any story. Concept and storytelling. This is something I go into more inside my membership site, the Novel Writer’s Club. Link below.

Before the modern age, storytelling came first, concept second; meaning if it didn’t fit the story, the concept changed.

In the modern age, it seems like concept comes first, meaning if the story doesn’t fit the concept, the story changes.

This is a problem, because that’s not how stories work.

When stories do this, what we get is either a shallow story with no depth, or a story that sounds preachy as it tries to push an agenda on us.

Don’t misunderstand. Stories can push agendas. They always have. And they always should. Like the way the X-Men, Harry Potter, and original Star Trek all push the ‘don’t be hateful and just accept people agenda.’ (we talk about Harry Potter, but not Rowling by the way.)

These stories were built with this at their core. Pretty much every part of the stories reflect this but they aren’t preachy about it.

These are stories that have a concept, but they also have a richness of characters and an actual story to be interested in. The concept itself is so subtle, I’ve met people who swear that isn’t what these stories are about.

Many modern shows want to spoon feed their audience the concept so much that it ruins the story. The audience isn’t given the chance to notice anything on their own, and that makes the story flat and boring.

This is what you need to keep in mind when writing your story. Story first, concept second. Your stories and characters aren’t just a way to push an agenda or show off a concept. They deserve a life and world of their own, where the concept is just part of it, and not the whole thing.

And your audience deserves that too. In fact, your audience will love you for it, because while there are more entertainment options than ever before in all of human history, most of them aren’t very interesting options.

Once you understand how to truly tell a story, your readers will love you.

If you need help telling this story, check out my Novel Writer’s Club membership at the link below.

Also remember to like and subscribe to see more videos on writing and publishing your novel.

Until Next time, this is Devlin Blake, saying Write on.

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Categories: : storycrafting, Writers Block, writers marketing