EWS012: Story Structure and the Changing Face of Television
Today’s guest is a writer, content marketer, passionate wordsmith, and a Canadian who now calls Australia home. Julia Carter is currently undertaking her doctorate studies in creative writing with a focus on screenwriting for serial television.
Do you ever get nostalgic about the way TV used to be? I grew up with the sitcoms and soap operas from the 80’s and 90’s where we'd settle down at a specific time, on a specific day, on a specific channel to watch our favourite TV show with the rest of the family around us. However, thanks to the changing face of media consumption, the internet and the advent of streaming TV services times certainly have changed… and as we all have noticed, so too has the TV programming. The stories being told and the way they need to be told has also needed to change and as we’ll uncover in today’s episode there are some screen writers doing this better than others, and we’ve still a long way to go.
In this episode
- How Julia's passion for story came about as a child and her intrigue about the structure of story in sitcoms
- Sitcom structures are changing to extend the storylines now people binge-watch episodes on streaming services
- Netflix changed the industry by gathering data over the years and now create content based on these findings
- Advertising is also changing due to change face of television
- There's a shift in the stories being told through TV and no clear delineation of genres anymore
- Over 70,000 micro-genres that have evolved from Netflix research
- 3 things we can learn to tell better stories in business
