How to Write in a Way That Invites the World to Change (+ Why Bluey is So Good)
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I have loved myths since I was a little boy.
In story book, in audiobook, around campfires, they captivated me.
Greek myths, african myths, norse myths and more.
The Celtic stories from Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
The Arthurian myths of England.
Robin Hood, Odysseus, and the others.
And then the modern myths: the storytellers who took the ingredients of those myths that have endured for centuries or millennia and made them into something new.
The myths written by JRR Tolkein, Philip Pullman, Susan Cooper, JK Rowling, David Gemmell, Robin Hobb and more.
These stories matter.
In them is a set of patterns that are a deep part of human nature. They teach us how to grow. They teach us why a better future is possible. They invite us to believe that we can change.
They invite us to believe that the world can change, and that we can change it.
In Jonah Sachs’ fascinating combination of Joseph Cambell’s work with ideas of marketing, storytelling and more, Sachs identifies three parts of a myth. Well, maybe five, depending on how you look at it:
1) Symbolic thinking - they aren’t true, but they aren’t false. As Kwame Scruggs said, they are false on the outside but true on the inside. They are stories that have never been but will always be. They aren’t just for putting children to sleep but for waking adults up. They teach us about more than we can imagine, truths that are symbolic, that would be harder to explain if we tried to explain directly.
2) Story, explanation and meaning - these are the central ingredients, the core things that set myths apart. Myths aren’t only stories (all myths are stories, but not all stories are myths). They also explain to us how to do something. And lastly, they tell us why it matters.
We need all three. Good stories don’t have to do all these things: they can be just entertaining. Good science might do the explanation, but not the meaning or storytelling and therefore lessen its impact. And sometimes if something is too preachy about meaning without containing story, we don’t learn.
3) Ritual - all myths invite ritual, the acting out of the meaning of the story in the real world.
When I first read these ingredients, I saw straight away how my favourite novellists brought these together.
And about a day later I had an answer to a question that I had been wondering about: what is it about Bluey that makes it SOOOOOOOOO good?
And of course I had the answer: because the creators of Bluey make efforts to make every episode a modern myth.
For those who don’t know about Bluey, you obviously don’t have young children. If you do and you don’t know about Bluey, get on Iplayer or Disney + and your life (and the lives of your children) is about to change for the better.
Bluey is a 6-year-old Australian dog, and the show tells the story of her, her mum and dad, and her 4-year-old sister, Bingo. Episodes are perfect, 7-minute myths.
Of course, some are better than others, but the perfection of them as stories is stark. Most parents will tell you conspiratorially (without much prompting other than ‘Bluey, eh?) which episode they have cried at most recently. (It was the feature-length episode The Sign for me, even on second viewing. When dad pulled out the sign, and in many other moments, it was pretty hard to hold it together.)
That is the power of these stories, and Bluey shows that there is nowhere you can’t try to do this, to tell stories that help people learn and make meaning out of the world.
If you’re as smart as the people who make Bluey, you can do it simultaneously for children and adults in just 7 minutes.
Now they definitely know about this - there’s even an episode where Mum explains The Hero’s Journey to Bingo - and they are doing it with incredible skill. And the archetypes they provide for us, as parents and children, are hard not to be invited into once you’ve been watching.
Once you’ve seen them do it, and understood the formula like Sachs has, it makes the shows where people take just one or two of those central incredients (explanation and story, usually, without the meaning) hard to watch.
And that’s true here, too, on the internet.
We all have choices about the stories we tell.
Let’s tell them powerfully, and let’s invite people towards their better nature.
That’s how the world changes.
And you can do it.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.