Jessie Stephens

Well, I find this thing about so it used to be the drama had to happen about 15 minutes in, right?

Or we know that in novels the rule is they call it sort of the end of the beginning, the end of the first third.

They go make the drama happen has been the conventional thinking.

Yeah.

But our attention spans are so short and there are so many other books you can pick up, so many TV shows you could watch.

There's a TikTok that will give you some entertainment in 12 seconds that now a lot of the advice is and a lot of the notes that people get

is it needs to be immediate.

That first scene needs to get you.

So you think about like.

Yeah, what that costs you.

So the example, I remember doing a course about it and The Exorcist, great, great movie.

There's a device called various similitude, which is where you establish who the characters are and the ordinariness of their lives.

And it makes everyone feel like that could be me.

That could be, oh, yes, we're just going to school.

We're just hanging out with mum, having some dinner.

And then boom, you put the drama in and suddenly she's possessed by the devil and you're way more invested.

But how many times do we all sit down now and go, I'm going to give this five minutes and if I'm not in, then I'm going to go and watch something else on my list.

And interestingly, when they say second screen –

The second screen isn't your phone.

Your phone is the first screen.