Better Story Structure Through Musicals and Kung Fu Movies

Build emotion and conflict for your characters and readers by taking a note from the structure of two popular storytelling forms.

- ROB HART

Kung fu movies and musicals are essentially the same thing. Once you understand this, you’ll better understand how to properly structure your stories and connect your characters more deeply with your audience.

Trust me: The more we dig, the more sense it’s going to make.

Whether you’re watching Th e Sound of Music or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a group of people come together, and as they interact, their emotions grow—until they boil over.

At which point, there is singing or there is fighting. Th at emotional peak is like the crest of a wave. Your pulse rises. Your senses are engaged. Like all waves, it must recede, and the story dips down

into the trough. That cooling off period is like a pressure release valve. Th e characters need it, but so do you.

Because there’s another wave coming.

That’s what waves do—they rise and fall, much like a story should. And in a really good story, those crests and troughs are going to get bigger as you go along, building to a climax: a soul-stirring song or a fight to determine someone’s fate.

Good fights and good songs are cool, sure, but they’re not there because they’re cool. They advance the story. They make you a promise. Most of all, they make the characters more accessible and draw you closer to them. On a technical level, these genres are great for establishing their authority. But on an emotional level, putting characters in a place of emotional or physical vulnerability makes it easier to identify with them—and to root for them.

It’s in recognizing these things that you can become a better storyteller.

World-Building