DO NOT LEARN—The Moral of Modern Storytelling
DAY 128 - 26/8/5 - Modern stories teach , but audiences are not meant to learn . If they do learn, it would ruin the story's moral. To understand what modern stories have become, let's consider what classic stories used to be. The most famous kind of story is the Hero's Journey. This well-known plot structure shows up in all kinds of media—anywhere that a young kid needs to vanquish evil by gaining power and making friends. These stories are about characters such as Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Peter Parker, Frodo Baggins, and King Arthur. The reason the Hero's Journey is so prevalent in stories about young people is because the Hero's Journey is essentially about learning . The characters in these stories must learn new skills, technologies, or spiritual enlightenments to achieve their goals. Science fiction and fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson describes the Hero's Journey as always being "about learning and obtaining things that characters need, bu...