However, the area of story structures was an awesome journey, exploring concepts you can't even find on the Internet! Here, I'll teach you all a fundamental storytelling skill through the example of an awesome cartoon from Japan.
Because, hey, it's what I do.
Chobits is a Sci-Fi Romantic Comedy manga-turned-Anime about a farm boy named Hideki Motosuwa who moves to the big bad city to go to college. The world is run mainly by computers resembling humans called Persocoms. These Persocoms can do anything a human can do, and usually more due to their computer capabilities. Our young hero is a poor high school graduate trying to make it all on his own. It's not working, to say the least.
He then discovers a Persocom wrapped in bandages sitting beside a pile of trash, likely ready to be thrown away. He takes it home, turns it on, and cue the suggestively-hilarious hijinx of a college boy living alone with a robot girl. It's incredibly obvious the show focuses on issues like the growing overtake of machine in society, as well as the question of how close machines can come to passing as human.
Oh, and the robot and Motosuwa fall in love at the end. That's not even spoilers because it's so obvious.
Look, I'm really sorry that I keep destroying your brain
with annoying but catchy J-Pop.
The story follows a formula - that is, a progression of story elements that are repeated from episode to episode. My instructor told me from the first week of classes that he was going to destroy the way I intake media.
He certainly did.
Chobits follows one of five major types of storytelling: the X-mas Tree. The story structure is a rather lengthy format that takes some pre-planning, but for making a formulaic fictional story, it provides limitless but organized creativity. It's the exact same format used in almost any syndicated production; it keeps the production of episodes very fast from a writing standpoint - more or less, you're watching the exact same thing over and over, but the circumstances are changed and pacing gets shifted around just enough so that each new episode feels fresh.
It's not lazy writing, despite what many people believe. providing you choose it for the right reasons and make the content interesting, X-mas Tree stories are what make people call "style" when they discuss entire franchises. It's very important to any creative industry.
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| It's no coincidence: Charlie Brown also demonstrates this story structure... |
Now let's explain how the structure works before we start applying it to real material. X-mas Tree is an illustration used to liken the idea of how a story should be told, from beginning to end. I've colour-coated the structure in holiday tints (Timely, I know) in order to highlight how these stories are laid out:
The GREEN part of the tree is called the "Trunk". This is a central anecdote that should be told from beginning to end. Don't try to be a ground-breaking movie director or something and mess with the chronology of events. Just tell it in order, no punches thrown. The story should also begin and end with this central story you want told; it's the focus of the entire piece. (i.e. Little Red Riding Hood is delivering a basket of goodies to her grandmother...)
The RED part of the tree are the "Branches". These sections of the story are for when you want to move away from the central anecdote and explore what else is happening in the chronology! The key to using a branch well is to make sure what's happening after the transition to the branch is consistent in time with when you moved away from the anecdote. You don't want to confuse your audience by throwing them all over the place through a span of time. (i.e. Meanwhile, the Big Bad Wolf sneaked into Red Riding Hood's grandmother's house...)
With these two simple pieces of the structure in place, it's completely possible to built a compelling story - I'm tellin' ya, it's what all the most successful TV shows have used.
Bringing this all back to robotic women in Tokyo, we'll describe the process step-by-step in Chobit's best episode, by far: "Chi Goes on Errands". I'll even include pictures, how exciting!
So we start the fourth episode of the series off with young Hideki standing outside of a store. Judging by the women and products being sold, it's safe to assume this is likely a lingerie store. This is the opening of the story, so the first two minutes of this episode is actually the standard news-writing format, entitled LSSQ.
The letters stand for "Lead," "Support", "Setup", and "Quote". If you read any news story, this is how its structured. This format originated during World War 1, when messengers would be sent into the midst of war in the less trenched areas to scout out the conditions when advancing. They could step on a mine or be shot at any second, so the messenger had to get the most important information out as fast as possible. That's the purpose of LSSQ - it's used as a scene-setter in media. I'll show you the transition used to cleanly separate the LSSQ from the X-mas Tree, also:
Rule of thumb: every almost every Anime has some kind of scene-setter in the beginning, so the title card is almost always the transition into the X-mas tree structure of writing.
There are three elements to any story you must keep in mind when developing a pace:
you need dialogue and description for an anecdote, and chronology for a branch. This scene introduces a three characters to the plot: Hideki's persocom, Chii, is in the red dress, Hideki's friend Shinbo is in the blue sweater, and Shinbo's Persocom, Sumomo, is the pink thing on his shoulder.
The introduction of these characters into the story, let alone into the same frame, probably means they're going to start talking to one another. There's a little bit of exposition here where we find out why Hideki was being a creep standing outside of a lingerie store: it's because he needs to buy underwear for Chii on his own because she's not yet mentally capable to understand the concept of "underwear" and "shopping".
This is dialogue and description, meaning that, anytime we hear of Hideki's concerns with Chii's public undercarriage, we'll consider this the anecdote of the story: Hideki wants Chii to not be commando - simple enough of a story that would probably be funny to tell from beginning to end, I would imagine!
The fade from black was a transition. This may seem elementary, but I cannot stress enough how important the chronology of a X-mas tree is to a story; this simple fade tells the viewer "It's later."
We actually get a rather subtle transition in the story with Hideki allowing Chii to go and get some underpants for herself. With Sumomo at her side to act as a GPS for getting to the lingerie store, Chii takes off for the store while Hideki goes to classes, effectively splitting and organizing what scenes will be branches (Chii scenes), and which will be the trunk (Hideki scenes).
Here's an example of the branches in this episode, for reference.
and the branches always come back to the trunk. This is obviously nothing more than Hideki thinking about Chii and being worried about sending her out onto the town alone. You could only do this scene so many times before it got tired, so let's watch them try to switch it up a bit:
In the next branch, Chii ignores Sumomo's directions at the crosswalk because she sees a delivery truck with underwear ads on the side of it.
And in a brilliant transition, we cut to Hideki snapping. And I'm not just referring to his pencil lead.
This is an interesting scene too. On top of the prep school teacher bringing Hideki back down to earth from when he's freaking out and worrying about Chii, this scene cuts back to what she's doing. Interestingly though, this is also a running gag for each time Hideki makes a fearful outburst in class.
Is it funny? Not really. Is it a brilliant way to create a mental cue for a transition from trunk to branch by way of repetition? Hell yeah it is.
So after some other wacky hijinx, the story's branch and trunk intertwine again once Hideki gets out of school for the day and follows Chii in secrecy. Why he doesn't just come out of hiding go to the store with her is beyond me, but whatever. I guess the fate of the world rests in the balance that they do not interact at this time.
And she finally arrives at the lingerie store. A great sense of chronology in the story sets in at this point: it took Chii an entire school day to go from an apartment to a store in the same city. Wow.
And to put a hilarious ending on the anecdote, Hideki tries to save Chii from the rush of a 50% off sale in the store by quickly grabbing some underwear himself. The receptionists scold him for being a perverted man and the cops arrest him.
Personally, I feel the pacing gets thrown off at the end because the writing team added more to this story after the initial anecdote, but this still works, I guess. This scene of the night sky signifies another transition. This is the "Later that night..." shot.
...Good job, Chii. Good choice of underwear.
And for the most part, the story ends there. Chobits works in a structure that is easy to replicate but can be applied to nearly infinite scenarios, making it effective for a TV show. There's a further scene where Hideki goes and buys real underwear for Chii, then starts to cry and freak out because he could've bought them for cheaper somewhere else, but it's all done in the last 40 seconds of the episode and I find it's a bad example of anecdotal transitions. Up to this point though, this feels like a complete thought, and I'm guessing the animation crew simply had some time at the end to fill last-minute.
Each episode clearly shows this storytelling structure in play, but this episode shows it off extremely well. When you've had the concepts hammered into your head with assignment after assignment like I have over the last three months, this episode is basically slapping you in the face with how obvious it all is.
I'll outline the details of this entire episode to condense it into a news story:
- An opening Lead begins with "A Japanese man was seen standing feverishly outside a lingerie store in Tokyo Square today." The most important questions to answer are the what, who and when's.
- Some support is brought up with Shinbo and the others about why Hideki was standing outside. Support lends more detail and explanation on the lead's premise. News-writers must assume anyone who reads has no attention span and will drop the paper at any moment, so you have to get that important info out fast.
- A setup is done by Shinbo, proposing that Sumomo and Chii go and shop for underwear together.
- A quote comes from Hideki to kickstart the branches: "Yeah, alright."
- The rest of the story until the X-mas tree branches kick in the next day is repition of the SQ - setup and quote; people talk up until the thing happens.
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| Good job, Reader. You were a great student today - A+! |
The X-mas tree is the same as every other piece you'd see in the industry: perspectives shift between Hideki's central story of concern and Chii's misadventures in town, shopping for panties. Then at the end of the X-mas tree (I would say it ends when Hideki is arrested), it reverts back to LSSQ for the conclusion of the episode.
Are you seeing a highly-formulaic, organized writing structure here? When you get down to it, professional writing is less about expression and definitely more of a procedure where you fit pieces of a puzzle together.
This is just an idea, of course - hell, if you can't find these teachings online, who's to say any of what I just said is credible, right? For all I know, my instructors are feeding me crap. But I like the idea, and I feel it holds water when it correlates with a popular, award-winning manga.
What do you all think? Do writing formulas exist in TV shows? What did you learn today, loyal student? In an attempt to sabotage my Journalism department at school, please share this around if you know any aspiring writers, as I plan on bringing up more concepts I learned in classes and relating them to media in future articles. I want to help people learn these things while also sparking ideas to challenge what I bring up.
What story structure was this, you ask?
Frig, I dunno...the Will structure.