"Ever had a song grab you by the ears and refuse to let go?

Welcome back to Christian Story Lab! While last week's article (Why readers aren’t connecting with your characters.) sparked incredible discussions, today, I'm stepping into unfamiliar territory - music analysis.

Full disclosure: my musical credentials peaked as a candlestick in Beauty and the Beast. (Yes, Lumiere. No, I won't be singing "Be Our Guest" today.)

But sometimes, a piece of art demands our attention even when it's outside our comfort zone. NF's "SONG" landed in my playlist like a meteor - nothing else in my rotation comes close to its style, intensity, or impact.

While I could spend hours unpacking its layers, today we're focusing purely on its masterclass in storytelling structure.

Fair warning before you listen: though the language is clean, both the video and lyrics contain intense imagery involving blood and violence. But if you're ready to see how a master storyteller builds tension through sound...

Intense.

So what is NF doing in this song, and what can we learn from it to enhance our stories?

Here is the overall story structure of the song:

1. Introduction: Mundane life, relatable frustrations.

2. Rising Action: Small annoyances build tension.

3. Climax: Robbery, the inciting incident.

4. Internal Conflict: Fear, panic, survival.

5. Twist: Personal betrayal.

6. Climax: Bold action, confrontation.

7. Resolution: Survival, uncertainty, emotional fallout.

1. Introduction and Setup

The song opens with a mundane, relatable situation—waking up to a bad day.

This immediately pulls the listener into the protagonist's headspace, creating empathy.

They are just like us: they stare at their phone first thing in the morning, have to fight a headache, and deal with a lousy roommate.

Boom, we are with them.

This is a common storytelling technique in which you establish a character's “normal world” before things escalate.

• Harry Potter starts off living with the Dursleys, where he is mistreated and feels like an outsider.

• In Finding Nemo, Marlin, an overbearing father, lives a cautious life in the ocean, worrying about his son, Nemo.

2. Rising Action

As the protagonist leaves the house, tension begins to build with small annoyances—running out of gas, feeling drained, buying cigarettes.

These little frustrations subtly build toward something bigger.

This is the most underrated technique in storytelling: rather than launching straight into a major crisis, use a sequence of small problems to build tension.

It works because it mirrors real life. We get frustrated, we have low-level anxiety, we have bad days that get worse.

All this is building to something bigger.

• The Hoover family's road trip to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant is filled with a series of small disasters—running out of gas, a breakdown, family arguments, and personal revelations.

• In The Martian, Mark Watney faces a series of escalating problems after being stranded on Mars. His initial frustrations—running low on supplies, malfunctioning equipment, and communication failures—build tension as he strives to survive.

3. Climax: The Robbery

The moment the protagonist hears someone yelling in the store, the story transitions to a sudden crisis.

This is big because the scene shifts the story from internal frustration to external danger, demanding immediate action from our protaganist.

The robbery is the inciting incident, a turning point that pulls the protagonist out of their mundane world and into the story’s central conflict. This is a common structure in storytelling where the protagonist’s ordinary world is disrupted by an unexpected event.

👉 This will now drive the plot forward.

• In Titanic, the moment the ship strikes the iceberg, the story shifts dramatically from the romantic development between Jack and Rose to a life-or-death struggle for survival.

• In The Great Gatsby, the moment the confrontation in the hotel room occurs, where Gatsby and Tom Buchanan argue about Daisy, the story shifts from the romantic tensions to an explosive conflict.

4. Internal Conflict: Fear and Desperation

As the robbery unfolds, we see the protagonist’s internal fear and desperation. He (she in the video) prays to survive and contemplates his own death while trying to find a way out.

His internal monologue reflects his fear of losing control and grappling with survival.

The song does an excellent job of showing the protagonist’s emotional state through his actions—crawling on the floor, listening to every sound, panicking when he drops the soup can.

The tension is amplified through these actions rather than through heavy narration or explanation.

This is the classic lesson, "Show, Don't Tell.” Use external actions to mirror internal conflict.

• As Clarice Starling sits in Lecter's cell in The Silence of the Lambs, you can see her hands shaking, her eyes darting around, and her mind trying to wrap around the uncertainty that she is in control in that moment.

5. The Twist: Betrayal

The story takes a sharp turn when the protagonist, now bloody and facing his own death, recognizes the robber as his roommate’s boyfriend.

This twist adds a layer of personal betrayal and emotional complexity to the story.

Somehow, the stakes are elevated even more as this becomes more than just a survival of a robbery. It's intertwined with our protagonist's personal life.

Adding a twist to the story gives the story depth and complexity.

Twists should reveal new information that shifts the way the audience perceives the conflict, making it more personal or urgent for the character.

• Throughout The Sixth Sense, Dr. Malcolm Crowe helps a troubled boy, Cole, who claims to see dead people. In the climax, Crowe realizes that he himself is dead, having been killed earlier in the film.

• In Fight Club, the narrator realizes that Tyler Durden, the charismatic leader of Fight Club, is actually an alter ego of his own personality.

6. Climax: Confrontation and Action

The protagonist makes a bold decision to intervene, physically confronting the robber.

Many things drive boldness: the action is chaotic, dangerous, uncertain, or unpopular.

The storytelling here highlights the protagonist’s active role in the climax, where they decide to act rather than remain passive.

In strong storytelling, the protagonist takes action in the climax. It’s a pivotal moment where they stop reacting to events and start actively shaping the outcome.

Even if their actions are flawed or desperate, the decision to act is what defines their character.

• In The Fault in Our Stars, Hazel Grace Lancaster takes action during a pivotal moment when she confronts the author of her favorite book, Peter Van Houten.

• In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne's climactic moment comes when he confronts the corrupt warden and prison guards after years of meticulous planning and digging his escape tunnel.

7. Resolution: Uncertain Aftermath

The song ends with the protagonist surviving the robbery but unsure of the robbers' fate.

The resolution is ambiguous, leaving the audience to wonder what comes next.

• Will the store clerk survive?

• What will their roommate think?

• How will this traumatic experience shape the protagonist?

Rather than neatly wrapping up the story, the ending leaves room for uncertainty. This invites the audience to think about what happens next.

Not all stories need a neatly tied conclusion.

Open-ended resolutions can be powerful, leaving the audience with questions or thoughts that linger after the story ends.

• Inception concludes with Cobb spinning a top to determine whether he is in a dream or reality.

• Life of Pi concludes with Pi telling two versions of his story to officials investigating his shipwreck.

And BOOM, just like that, we have all the ingredients for a delicious and moving story. Let's get a bird-eye view of that structure again.

1. Introduction: Mundane life, relatable frustrations.

2. Rising Action: Small annoyances build tension.

3. Climax: Robbery, the inciting incident.

4. Internal Conflict: Fear, panic, survival.

5. Twist: Personal betrayal (recognizing the robber).

6. Climax: Bold action, confrontation.

7. Resolution: Survival, uncertainty, emotional fallout.

This Week’s Christian Creator Highlight!

Levi Nunnink is a member of The Lab and is blowing me away with his Open Your Eyes project. Here are Levi's words explaining this project:

“This story has been percolating for a while. I loved the idea of a cursed city where the root problem is that a girl asleep and she needs to wake up, not for the sake of herself, but for the sake of everyone else. The more I thought about it, just the name "Sleeping Beauty" became so evocative for me in the modern world where beauty is so scarce. So I started to think more about what it would mean to wake beauty: What sort of person could do it? What would they need to learn to accomplish the task? What would they lose? Would beauty welcome them in?”

Get ready for your mind to be blown. Check out Open Your Eyes.

We built the Christian Story Lab because we believe Christians have the greatest story ever told but have gotten lazy in how we tell it.

With creative storytelling on the rise, CSL is on a mission to cultivate craft, character, and community in Christian writers, pastors, illustrators, and all other Christian creators.

As always, feel free to submit your stories, illustrations, or videos by replying to this email or tagging me on X (@thepaytonminz). Let me know if you’d prefer to remain anonymous.

Write on 🤙

Payton