Hi, today to nonsense again about crime… the crime of writing a superb hero’s journey to get the audience wrapped around your finger by finding the clues and witness who might prove your product/service is the best out there. It applies to plot too.
THE EVIDENCE
Maybe you don’t know, since you probably studied something else and Literature doesn’t include marketing. It might include communication but not marketing. Anyone who has studied a little of marketing knows.
WE NEVER BUY STUFF AS A RESULT OF KNOWING THE RATIONAL FACTS RELATED TO THE PRODUCT. We buy because of our feelings… Eh. Fears.
But we can make the facts to look like emotional reasons why to buy by transforming them into a key to have an epiphany.
The webinarist explains that the trials and tribulations and meetings (the first encounters with the minions or the companions) that have solved the problem, act like a «proof» in the sense of «witnessing». Thus, the audience witness the way the product solves the problem. This sounds a lot like showing, not telling. Because we won’t tell the audience what the problem is. Like a Maruchan advertisement in which a person talks and talks and talks and in order to get them quiet, the antagonist gives them some Maruchan. Voilà, the problem of getting peace is solved. But nobody says so. It is there, but nobody will tell what the problem is.
OF THE PROOFS.
Proof is a rather complicated case in traditional storytelling. There can’t be minus than three trials; yet the webinarist reduces them to two. Since the evidence sum into the already orchestrated chain of unresolved trouble that has been tackled by the product, I guess that makes it three but I understand he reduces them because of screen time prices.
In the case of Link, the trials can’t be reduced to two nor three. The whole videogame is a series of challenges to be conquered, the way RPG are designed to be solved and fought. Nonetheless, we can talk of two really important tasks: Epona and the dark Link.
Without Epona, the second companion, we won’t be able to move around Hyrule. This trial is so the hero can tame not just the wild horse but Time as well.
The dark Link means to conquer fear. We all have to tame our dark side if we’re to live. Life is not just a series of pleasant happenings. It has disgrace and misery too. Such are the dark times and feelings we need to defeat before we go onto the big journey of the day. Remember, for the journey to be meaningful (the one of the hero), the problems have to escalate as much as possible in strength and size. The worst things go, the better the ending.
If an exam is what’s making our common heroine to shiver; we have her expulsed from the library together with the handsome ________ (boy, girl, alien; suit yourself) in a tight T-shirt. Eyes stray and the study book becomes boring. But here comes the super fun app to the rescue… I’m explaining how to use storytelling to sell. Something I’m unable to just because I’m lazy. A lot lazy.
Escalating a plot is similar to getting COVID-19 after the H1N1 (which is almost as bad). Yes, I know. COVID made things look as blue as the lack of oxygen but it is the most real thing of anything really bad happening for most of us. I bet that you’re reading this from some country without war, famine or sickness… We have just lived the last. Do you get it? It has to be really really bad for it to cause feelings. Nonetheless, the problem can’t be the same or have the same solution. If it is I can guarantee the novel flying away or lost in the subway/bus and people fast forwarding the advertisement. Why do you think people send Co…la advertisements to each other in IG? Because they’re well done and have a nice plot.
Next entry will deal with encounters. We can’t have a real hero journey or quest without meeting allies or minions!
