Music, pattern matching, and good storytelling.

Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you like music?

The Hidden Magic of Good Music

It’s a silly question because everyone likes some form of music and sometimes when someone asks you, “What’s your favorite kind of music?” sometimes that’s really hard to answer. I recently went down yet another rabbit hole which I want to share with you. I wanted to know why certain songs and certain sounds made you feel genuine feelings. When I was writing the sword and the sunflower, I stumbled on a number of different pieces of music and one of them became the theme song for the heroine. So it came down to this question.

What makes a song likable?

What makes a good song a good song? What makes a song stick in your head?

And as it turns out, it’s predictability.

No, it can’t be that. That’s boring. No, not boring. Predictable.

Why Predictability Drives Great Storytelling

Let’s switch gears to storytelling. What makes a good story a good story? Is it the subject matter? And I’m going to talk specifically about fiction here. Is it the subject matter? Is it the way it’s told? Is it uh-oh?

It’s predictability.

And again, you’re going to say, “No, I don’t want to read a predictable fiction story. Do I?” And there’s a part of your brain that’s going, “Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on.

Let’s switch back to the music.

If something is too predictable, then it’s boring. We get the pattern and we’re done. We are pattern matching creatures. We sense patterns and things and we typically act on them. Sometimes we have other programs running in our brain that cause us to ignore a pattern and sometimes we get burned for ignoring that pattern. If you’re jumping rope or running, riding a skateboard, boxing, and countless other physical activities, there’s all a pattern that’s occurring. a pattern you are recognizing. And the more you can recognize this pattern, the more you can act on it and feel comfortable with it.

The Balance Between Pattern and Chaos

But obviously running for 10 or 20 minutes left, right, left, right, left, right, can’t possibly be the same as listening to music, right? But it is. When you listen to a song and you can predict what’s about to happen next, it gives you a certain level of comfort of security. you say, “Yeah, that’s how the beat is going in this song.”

But then when it does something slightly different that still makes sense, that gives us excitement. If it just did the same beat over and over again, droning on and on for 5 minutes, yes, it would be very boring. But when it takes some liberties, when it gets a little creative, and still maintains the pattern, that’s when it’s fun.

Too much predictability and it’s boring. Too much chaos and it’s simply chaos. You think it’s not worth your time. Well, this is just a bunch of random stuff. I don’t want to listen to this. This story goes all over the map. The characters do not respond the way that characters should respond. The author was crazy. The story is way too predictable. I knew exactly what’s go what was going to happen from the very beginning. It was I was just plotting through and just going through the motions. Those are the extremes that keep us from enjoying those forms of media.

Breaking the Pattern: Muscle and Diet Confusion

And even exercise is that way. You get fatigued with it. In fact,