So many video essays about how to get the 3 act structure right, the Hero's journey, analyzing films through this lens, etc. Dan Harmon is always yapping on about his "story circle"... it's like damn is writing really that bland?

I feel like adherence to these guidelines and the quest to find the perfect structure cheapens things and generally gets in the way of things. But I don't know anything about writing so maybe that's nonsense. What do you guys think?

      • inshallah2 [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I googled for a particular Youtube vid that showed how Nickelback copied one of their own songs. I had no idea that copying their own songs is their entire shtick.

        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I have no use about Nickelback but dbeat is a punk subgenre focused on imitating one particular band who also had a very specific formula for their songs

      • inshallah2 [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Heh.

        I started playing guitar August last year. I wrote two songs that I ended up discarding. That was okay. I had no idea what I was doing. Then I used that very video as inspiration to try again.

        The chord progression is used in U2's With or Without You. I was going to try to make a very loose cover of that song but doing that was (and is) way beyond me. Over weeks I played those four chords over and over and over and over until I got more and more musical ideas. Eventually I wrote a song I call Joy.

        I finished the current version around March. It uses Edge-like echo with some syncopation. When I play the entire song all the way through - it's still choppy. It remains a bit too hard for me to play it smoothly. But maybe in ~6 months I'll be able to play it well enough that I can share it in c/music.

        all pop songs are the same

        My song is an instrumental.