#rip boromir

Most of the credit has to go to Cardinal West on YouTube, specifically his video essay on Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (TLW). I've literally paused the video to write this.

Towards the end of the video, he begins talking about how TLW follows almost textbook story structure, but the predictability takes nothing away from the experience. He used LOTR as an example, specifically when he introduced his parents to the movies.

His father, after watching part 1 of Fellowship, said he felt like the ring is going to end up in the volcano. Well... yeah. It does. And most of us, even if we went in totally blind like Cardinal's dad, probably figured that out pretty early.

But knowing that didn't ruin it for us. Yeah, we know the ring will be destroyed, but we kept watching because we couldn't stop from wondering what else would be destroyed.

So if you are going to follow any one rule when writing stories, I think it should be this; your audience can know where, but they can't know how.