This was a crazy week in the media with Star Wars, I wasn’t going to write about any of this stuff. But I looked into everything and watch a few reports on the whole Star Wars fiasco that’s going on right now. I saw how this was important to anyone that writes stories, books, makes music or videos. Let me explain, this week started out with Star Wars completely bombing worldwide in theaters. Personally, I’m a Star Trek fan, so I didn’t really care too much at first, but after all the reports I started seeing it as an example of what not to do when writing a series. So first off, I didn’t see the movie, so this won’t have anything to do with the movie itself. Instead, this is going to be looking at the movie and what went wrong from a storytelling point of view. So here is what happened, Star Wars is a story that has been told over many years, in the movies that came out before, and then there was this movie. It looked as if everyone lost their minds for no reason, and was just hating Star Wars, from a non-fan perspective. However, coming from someone like me who sees everything as a story to be told, I see how they went really wrong
So, Star Wars has a storyline that all its die-hard fans know inside out, then comes this new movie. In it, they go against all of the Star Wars norms and instead push personal ideals and views onto the fans. And that was where they went wrong, instead of keeping to the story they just changed it and put ideas, plots and messages that don’t match the original storyline. And that is exactly how you kill any series, in the middle of it you just change the message plot and storyline all to match a different idea. Which now makes it a perfect example for anyone or creates any kind of content to pay close attention to and learn from.
The key to a good series is constancy, the ideals, message, and plots should remain the same throughout the series. IE If your main character is a hero in the first three parts of the series, then in the fourth all of a sudden they are a mass murderer, just because you feel that way now you’re going to lose fans. Another big mistake that anyone creating a series should really learn from this whole thing, is to always pay attention to your fans. To always remember that your fans are fans of your series not fans of you as a person. Seems as though these new directors for Star Wars completely forgot that, their mindset going in was everyone is a fan of me and the Star Wars series is just something I’m doing so they’ll love it no matter what I do because it’s me their fans of. Which, as a creator when you forget who your fans are and what they want you no longer make what they want, and you will lose those fans. And if you are thinking, well that’s not true just look at this movie, the directors didn’t care what the fans are saying about the new approach of the movie. Instead, they went ahead and did whatever they wanted, and now the diehard fans of Star Wars are boycotting Disney has a whole instead of just Star Wars. Which is completely expected seeing that they went against everything the fans are saying.
So, my tip to every writer or content creator is simple, your fans are fans of your work, so be like your fans and a fan of your old work. That way, if you ever feel as though you don’t like something that you’re going to put out as a fan of your work, then don’t put it out and avoid the mistakes of Star Wars. Because your fans are fans of your work they only like you because you created that work. So, when you decide that your work isn’t important, but it’s you the creator. Then you’re heading down a slippery slope that can lead to ending something you created and your fans love. Now, this doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to have your ideals in your work, it just means you shouldn’t change your work suddenly and completely because your ideals change. Because your fans ideals aren’t going to change to match your ideals just because you wrote something different, more likely they are just not going to be yours anymore. So just create a new series, your fans that don’t like this new series won’t stop being fans of your old series, and you will get fans for the new series on its own, making new and old fans happy for the most part.
That’s it, for now, I’ll have a new lesson in Write Like Your Life Depends On It series sometime during the week. I just thought this is important.
