creativity

Creative Lessons From He-Man (2021)

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

The original He-Man of the 80’s was meant to sell toys, with occasional social messages shoved in to mollify parents. The latest reboot in 2021, the CGI He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, has its own lesson – how to do a reboot and create a good show.

Episode one opens with underclass magic-user Teela stealing a sword for failed coup-potters, the witch Evelyn and the engineer Kronis. When the sword talks to her, Teela flees to a village of refugees allied with a race of talking tigers. When her employers decide to murder everyone to take the sword, Teela and Kronis’ apprentice Duncan turn on them. Fortunately, the sword turns an amnesiac young man named Adam into a powerful hero. With this new “He-Man” and Adam’s headbutt-inclined friend Krass, they take on the attackers.

That’s episode one. Within twenty-two packed minutes, it establishes two forms of magic, previous and current political problems, economic strife, and more. The rest of the series follows suit – while still having time for anime-style transformations and hijinks.

The show’s first lesson is one of precision. There’s not a wasted scene nor a wasted opportunity to tell a story or have a bit of characterization. The show isn’t mechanical but is more akin to a musical composition that uses each instrument or beat to its fullest.

This precise composition allows for density. When the show moves at a good clip and dialogue is well chosen, a lot happens. Revelations and worldbuilding details come thick and fast. Characters have ups and downs, grand quests mix with tiny moments. The world feels alive.

Finally, this precision and density give room. There’s time for glorious attack sequences and silly jokes. There’s space for creating moods with the graphics. These additions bring the characters and world to life.

The show is a masterful example of how to do good storytelling.

However, a show is nothing without a world and characters. How do you work with an old property that was largely a marketing effort? How do you acknowledge the real emotional attachment developed that took He-Man farther? Also how do you make it something new and alive?

Simple. Treat the original as raw material.

The show’s world is a complete rethinking of the original property, taking past creations and reorganizing, re-using, and re-creating. Characters may be re-envisioned, two concepts merged to form a third, and so on. The result is a deep world, but also one an old fan will recognize as sure as a rebuilt house reflects the old dwelling.

For example, let’s talk Prince Adam, aka “He-Man” (though he’s not thrilled with the given nickname). Gone is the Clark Kent take of a supposedly wimpy prince who becomes a hero. This Adam is an amnesiac in a tribe of refugees who has destiny dropped into his hands. He has to learn to use power, discover who he is, and find out why he becomes He-Man. The result is an exciting character journey that goes to not always pleasant places, but is also about good person trying to do good.

This is one character. Plenty of familiar characters appear (sometimes merged into one character) with their own stories and takes. Unbound by trying to keep it “the same,” the show can create something rich and alive.

Here lies the next lesson of the show: don’t be bound by the past, use it. Freed of trying to “do the 80’s thing but not” the show soars on its own, unbounded by expectations. All its inspirations are obvious, but they’re wings, not weights.

Finally, the show has the right voice talent – it’s clear everyone is into their role. The ever-reliable Yuri Lowenthall is a great He-Man/Adam. Grey Griffin’s Evelyn/Evil-Lynn is a joyfully villainous schemer. Last but in no way least, Benjamin Diskin’s Keldor – later Skeletor – has a wonderful arc, descending from coup-plotting brother to complete maniac and madman.  

The final lesson is get the right people to bring about your vision.

There’s a lot to learn from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (the 2011 show). It’s actually worth the time for authors and writers to pay attention to.

And that’s before you get into the fact the show has lots of good things to say on friendship, power, and more . . . 

Steven Savage

Only You Goes Both Ways

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

“Only you can write your story,” is something I and others often tell troubled authors. No matter how unoriginal you feel your work is, your take is unique because you are unique. The world is filled with similar stories, we remiind our fellow creators, but those are at best a framework animated by a unique author’s spirit.

However it seems we get suddenly judgmental when we decide how to spend our time. Is this book truly worth reading? Should we see this movie? We’re ready to encourage others to create, but suddenly far less interested in taking in various creations. This is not saying you have to read and watch everything, but that maybe you can be a little more open to experiences because your reading and viewing is also unique.

You are the only one that can write your story, and in turn you are the only one that reads a book or sees a movie your way.

(Besides, as Serdar notes in a column that semi-inspired this one, you can just stop if something is truly awful.)

Your reading or viewing experience is just as unique as anything you create. You will have insights no one else has, and find inspiration unique to your own creativity. You will find flaws no one else saw, and take away lessons no one else will learn. However you consume an artistic experience, that experience is yours and what you take from it is yours.

As an example, let me tell you about when I read a compendium of Lupin stories, tales of the titular gentleman thief by Maurice Leblanc. I wanted to see what the fuss was about, and I had two takeaways. The first was that I didn’t get the popularity, and figured it was a cultural difference. The second was that the concise writing, even in translation, provided a good example of doing a lot with few words – Leblanc could do in a paragraph what might take another author a page. I didn’t fall in love with Lupin, but the style helped me reduce my own gratuitous wordiness.

That was my experience. Yours might be different, and perhaps if we talked we’d learn twice as much.

Guard your time, definitely. But don’t guard it so much you find you’re in a self-made prison.

Steven Savage

The Treasures of Models and Metaphors

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

As Serdar and I often discuss in our blogs, people find inspiration in areas unrelated to their projects and goals. He finds ideas from the aesthetics of music that inform his writing. I took self-help book ideas and created a worldbuilding series. Whatever your interests, sometimes the best inspiration comes from somewhere else.

I think one of the advantages of these diverse inspirations is giving you new models and metaphors.

Recently, I noted a videogame named Slipways gave me a model for stable social circles. The game involves creating a series of linked colonies that support each other. It helped me see that it was a great pattern for building social ties in these troubled times.

This insight helped me see other times I’d had inspiration from one source help me in seemingly unrelated areas of creativity as models or metaphors. My worldbuilding books take the self-help model and apply it to fictional settings. I used fractals as a metaphor for certain patterns in fiction writing. As everyone is aware, I use Agile methods for ideas and models throughout my work and feed my findings back to Agile.

Models and metaphors are ways we can move insights around from one inspiration to another. A model gives us a framework to re-envision the relationships of ideas, even if we may have to hammer a round idea through a square concept. A metaphor inspires us with a new way to see and connect information. Having a variety to use gives us more and better ways to create.

Realizing just how “unrelated inspiration” can become very related, I’m curious how I might see the world differently now. I know I’ve done this seeking of models and metaphors semi-consciously. I’m quite interested as to how I’ll see the world being more conscious of it . . .

Steven Savage