The Story of How I, Who Write Whatever I Want Every Day, Took a 30-Minute Popular Writing Course

Hello there. I'm Rito, the child of selfishness.
Kishōtenketsu (Introduction, Development, Twist, Conclusion). Is everyone familiar with this?
If you write, I'm sure you've all heard this term, but honestly, I barely understood what it meant.

I just thought, it's like, there's a beginning, something happens, there's a major turning point, and then there's an ending, right? (The height of stupidity)

Since I'm a person who basically lives by instinct, I'm not good at writing while thinking about difficult things. I've made it this far without learning a single thing about "such-and-such writing techniques" or "how to create eye-catching titles."

In my mind, I write in almost the same way I write lyrics. Since that has something close to Kishōtenketsu, I am aware of it, but I've never thought about it deeply.

Momentum and vibe! Always momentum and vibe!

Honestly, I've always felt a bit pathetic for being so uneducated, and since I've started writing, I've always thought I should learn it properly at some point.

I thought about it, but you know, I didn't know.
"What?" you ask? Well, who I should learn from, of course.

Let me introduce these two people here.

Yasu-san and Arkun-san.
I often read their articles. I always check the "famous quotes" that Arkun-san updates every morning to use as a guide for my day, and I read Yasu-san's stories about writing with great interest, saying "hmm, hmm" every time.
That's why I knew they were part of a salon called the After-School Writing Club, and I also knew that Yasu-san was the amazing person who runs that salon.

And then, Yasu-san announced that he would be holding a writing course on Stand.fm.

To celebrate Arkun-san being selected as a finalist for the Sendenkaigi Award, a gateway for copywriters (congratulations!!!), Yasu-san was going to hold a free course.

I mean, you're going to listen, right? You're definitely going to listen.

Because it's interesting. It's definitely going to be interesting.
I don't know the first thing about writing, but I definitely know that Yasu-san and Arkun-san are interesting.

Actually, it was a godsend.
I want to study writing, but when I search for writing techniques online, it's all stuff I've seen somewhere before. On the other hand, it feels weird to learn from someone I don't know or someone whose writing I don't find interesting.

In the first place, those kinds of courses are all paid, and paying money for someone you don't even know is like gambling.
I was really struggling with this when the news of their course popped up.

The date and time was the 26th at 9:00 PM.
Yes, that was yesterday.
It was a Sunday, and a Sunday after a live event, so I had a mountain of work piled up from leaving early the day before, but I finished it. With all my might. Even though I didn't make it on time!

So, I listened to it.
I had imagined that a course would use more technical terms and be stiff like a study session or training, but that wasn't the case at all.

It was interesting.The talk was naturally interesting and easy to understand.

This time, I heard about "Kishōtenketsu," and specifically, the "New Kishōtenketsu" that Yasu-san advocates.

According to Yasu-san—or rather, I apologize for this being my own summary—
Ki (Introduction): The hook. "Waking up" the reader. An introduction that makes them go, "Oh! What's this?"
Shō (Development): Episode. Story. The place to draw them in.
Ten (Twist): Turning point. Your own thoughts and feelings. The part to talk about. You could even end it here.
Ketsu (Conclusion): The wrap-up. The pitch. The punchline. What you want to convey to the reader. What you want them to see.
Something like that. (What kind of thing?)

Everything was explained so carefully that it was incredibly easy to understand. In particular, the idea of 'expressing your own feelings and thoughts' during the 'turn' (ten) of the narrative structure (kishōtenketsu) was a blind spot for me. My image of kishōtenketsu was that the 'turn' had to involve a surprising plot twist or some kind of gimmick, so this was a great learning experience.

I couldn't make it in time for the beginning of the stream, but the part I caught where Yasu-san talked about reading various books to gain a 'regular person's perspective,' and the part at the end about how rakugo and writing have common ground, left me truly impressed. At the same time, I felt from the bottom of my heart that it really is important to read many books, listen to people's stories, and experience different cultures to gain diverse perspectives.

I'm really sorry for my lack of vocabulary, but it was just plain interesting.

Courses with names like 'So-and-So Course' have a bit of a suspicious ring to them, don't they?
Like, 'Is this actually useful?' or 'Are they just talking about common sense?'

Especially when many of them are paid, someone like me—a hopeless person who hasn't really learned anything and doesn't even know what they don't know—ends up getting cold feet about participating in such things.

That's why this free stream was truly useful as a 'starting point,' and because it was Yasu-san and Arkun-san, whose personalities and speaking styles I'm somewhat familiar with, I felt like,
'Alright, I'll give it a listen.'

Even stiff, formal courses make me sleepy, and honestly, if the delivery isn't interesting, it's just boring.

The reason I love everyone's streams and occasionally drop by the comment section is, above all, because they are interesting to listen to.

Don't worry, Yasu-san's course was incredibly interesting and not suspicious at all!
(Note: I am not a shill)

Learning is interesting, isn't it?
It's fun to learn about things you didn't know or didn't understand before.

A salon for learning writing—I was scared that if a piece of trash like me went, I'd get torn to shreds—but it was a night that made me think maybe it's okay to challenge myself with things like that to broaden my possibilities.

Yasu-san, Arkun-san, thank you for your hard work!