I came across a Rowan J Coleman youtube video titled, "What Good Writing Actually Means." It provides a refreshingly nuanced perspective that I found quite enlightening. The video is less than twelve minutes long. If anyone's interested, here's the link:
Screenwriting : Good writing vs bad writing by Sabrina Miller
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Thanks for sharing the video, Sabrina Miller. Rowan said, "On the creative side, when a person comes to write a story, they may become so obsessed with following a formula -- following the rules -- they risk compromising what made their idea for a story special in the first place." I use the three-act structure, but if I came up with a unique idea that didn't fit in that structure, I'd let the story decide the structure.
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It's an interesting video. Should be watched. Not just about the writing process, but also how we judge the stories we consume.
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Good post! I follow Coleman on YouTube, he's got plenty of quality stuff. I particularly like his point about how alternative structures and approaches can be great if they're done well (just like everything else!). When I was in high school, we were taught to view the Shakespearean tragedies as 5 acts with the climax in the middle, breaking the story into equal parts rising action and falling action, a totally different kind of structure from the modern standard. I'd raise a pretty skeptical eyebrow at anyone who insisted that made Shakespeare a bad writer.
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Meh. Good writing gets you jobs. Bad writing gets you blogs & how-to articles