My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Traditional storytelling structures are becoming obsolete for modern audiences
Timeframe: Already happening, will accelerate over next 5 years
What's Changing
The Hollywood formula of save-the-cat screenplay structure (page 30 turning point, 120 page movies) is losing effectiveness as audiences lose patience and attention spans shrink.
Driving Forces
Social media has trained audiences to expect immediate payoffs
Short-form content dominance changes attention patterns
Global audiences with different cultural storytelling norms
Interactive and non-linear content becoming more common
Winners
- Creators who experiment with new narrative structures
- Platforms that enable non-linear storytelling
- Writers who combine short-form pacing with long-form depth
- International content creators who don't follow Hollywood formulas
Losers
- Traditional Hollywood studio system
- Writers who only know the save-the-cat formula
- Linear television programming
- Media that assumes audiences will wait 30 minutes for the story to begin
How to Position Yourself
Learn storytelling principles from other disciplines like music composition
Study successful content that breaks traditional formulas
Experiment with narrative structures that deliver value immediately
Combine elements from different media formats
Early Signals to Watch
Example Implementation
“A documentary that changes its entire premise halfway through (like Parasite did for films), keeping audiences engaged by subverting their expectations rather than following predictable structure.”