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 The 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.
That 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. The 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 they’re cool. They advance the story. They make you a promise. Most of all, they make
