What’s your story with Avatar: The Last Airbender?

Most people nowadays have one, whether you watched it growing up, found it sometime later, or even saw your kids watching it on TV. Why are we talking about it? Because, 20 years after the show first aired, it’s still making an impact. 

Who doesn’t want to say that about a story they wrote?

As for me, I unfortunately missed out on Avatar as a kid. While I caught Teen Titans in 2003-2004, around 2005, I discovered YA fantasy for the first time, and I was done for. I abandoned TV for book after book after book. I do remember hearing Avatar in the background as my younger brother watched it, but I never so much as glanced at the screen. 

I know this because if I had seen one episode, probably even one scene, I would have been hooked. 

Later, when I was in college, it accidentally became tradition for me to binge-watch a TV show during finals week. Sophomore year, that show was Avatar: The Last Airbender. Several of my friends were marathoning it at the time, but for some reason I can’t recall, I either couldn’t or didn’t want to join in. However, their talk about the show got to me. Being the curious writer I am, I decided I finally had to know why everyone talked about Avatar like it was the story to end all stories. 

Episode 1 was enough to convince me they were right. 

Why It Matters

Okay, Avatar is a big deal. So what? 

I believe writers should take note of popular stories. I mean, haven’t you ever been impacted by a tale as old as time? 

While huge success in storytelling is often unexpected and certainly can be a product of good timing, marketing, etc., the foundational ingredient is a good story, and that doesn’t just happen by chance. 

Know what that means? Your story could be the next big thing, too. Or, more importantly, you could write a story that changes someone’s life. 

All it takes is knowing what makes a good story tick—and by looking at Avatar, we can do just that.

Plot

Clearly Defined Beginning and End

Most shows get the first part right and completely overlook the second half.

One of the most prevalent examples that comes to mind is the show Once Upon a Time. The writers started out with a great idea, but since they didn’t know how it ended, the show quickly got out of hand. The creators didn’t know where to stop. It worked out for a couple of seasons, but then quality took a sharp dive as they desperately floundered for shiny new ideas. 

Avatar, on the other hand, has a clearly defined story from beginning to end. No floundering, no searching for a correct ending, no trying to land somewhere. (Ironically enough, Avatar’s sequel series, The Legend of Korra, makes the Once Upon a Time mistake—and this is one of the main reasons I believe it was mostly unsuccessful.)

Light Exposition

Stories nowadays—especially fantasy and sci-fi—often try too hard to tell you what you should be experiencing as an audience. They spend time explaining the magic, world, and characters before you truly enter the story, taking away some of the mystery and the brainpower we as readers and watchers like to use to try and figure things out for ourselves. In short, these stories try to spoon-feed you details instead of letting you discover the story yourself. 

Avatar does it the better way. It actually believes in the intelligence of the audience and doesn’t tell you anything about how the world works at the beginning apart from a brief intro. Instead, it lets you experience the world firsthand. It might take you some time to figure out how things work, but it’s more meaningful when you get to experience it with the characters and make discoveries on your own. 

Frequent Cliffhangers

This is an age-old tactic to keep audiences (especially kids) engaged. Any story can benefit from having frequent uncertain, high-stakes stopping points. You don’t need to wait until the end of the story to build tension—in fact, having frequent cliffhangers helps facilitate constant rising action throughout the story. 

Classic Story

If you break it down to its barest bones, Avatar is a classic story between good and evil with a bad guy who’s impossible to defeat and a little good guy who has no chance of winning. Sound familiar? Lord of the Rings. Harry Potter. Star Wars. Many of the most popular stories of our day follow this same story. 

And I think that’s good.

There’s a big movement nowadays that says traditional things we’ve done are automatically bad just because they’re tradition, and this includes stories. Many say there’s no place for the classic good vs. evil story anymore because it’s already been done a thousand times. 

I disagree. While it’s true that we should bring our own unique ideas to our stories, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having the good vs. evil tale as the underlying foundation. In fact, as I already said, history tells us that these stories are the ones that resonate with people most. 

Why? Because the oldest and most important story in the world is this story: light overcoming the darkness, no matter how dark the night may seem. 

Silly and Serious

The best stories know how to balance comedy and tragedy. 

In Avatar, at one point, you have a character having exaggeratedly goofy hallucinations after drinking cactus juice. (It’s the quenchiest!) Then later on, you have a character deciding whether or not to take revenge when it’s right in their grasp. 

Avatar doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of life. People die, loved ones are taken, and characters are pushed to their lowest points. And yet, if you’re not laughing at least once each episode, there’s something wrong (with you). 

Again, we see this pattern repeated in the most beloved stories of our culture. Life is funny, yet tragic—so why shouldn’t our stories reflect this?

Make ‘em laugh, then make ‘em cry.

Characters Drive the Plot

In some stories, the plot defines the characters. The plot is “set in stone,” and the characters just go along with the flow of what’s already been decided by the writer. Things happen to them, but they have no agency on their journey.

I’ve talked about this extensively on the blog, but in a nutshell, I think it’s important to put characters first, as they are the audience’s window into the story. Without compelling characters, the audience has no connection to the plot, no matter how cool and unique it is.

In Avatar, the choices that the characters make directly affect the plot. Think of Sozin’s Comet—from the beginning of the show, the plot anticipates the ultimate climax happening before this event. But because of various choices multiple characters make throughout the series, the final confrontation between Aang and Ozai ends up happening during Sozin’s Comet, ramping up the tension. 

I could give a dozen more examples: the failed solar eclipse invasion, Aang choosing to prioritize looking for Appa, Zuko’s transformation, Aang refusing to learn firebending for most of the series. Because the show prioritizes characters, it makes the plot even more exciting, unpredictable, and emotional. 

And speaking of characters…

Characters

The Secret to Being Memorable

I’ve recently noticed that some creators use an interesting tactic to help their audience remember and connect with their characters better. The author of the City Between series I read last year used this device with great success, and I realized that Avatar uses it, too. 

Want to know the secret? Pay $300 for my extra special writing course and—

Just kidding!

Here’s the trick: every main character should have one memorable physical trait and one memorable personality trait. 

Seriously. That’s it. 

It sounds simple, but in both books and film, it’s a powerful device to connect your audience to your characters. There’s a 99 percent chance they won’t even notice you’re doing it, but they’ll subconsciously be drawn deeper into your story. 

Think about it: Aang’s arrow tattoo and goofiness. Sokka’s ponytail and terrible jokes. Katara’s hair loopies and emotional sensitivity. Toph’s headpiece and her straightforwardness. Zuko’s scar and his conflicted nature. Azula’s hairstyle (yes, really—I’ll explain) and her calculated venom. 

And then notice this: in the final season, nearly every one of these physical character traits changes to subliminally show the audience that the characters are changing on the inside, too.

I could go on and on about how this is used so masterfully in Avatar, but I promised I’d explain Azula’s hair. 

One of the things that makes Azula such a fantastic villain is her restraint. She knows exactly where and when to strike, and doesn’t overplay her hand even when she has all the aces. Her hairstyle reflects this: it’s sharp, precise, and neat. Even in the couple of scenes where we see her hair down, it’s still put together. 

Until the very end of the series. As Azula begins to unravel, she tries to cut her own hair with disastrous results, giving the audience a visual message that reflects her inner fracturing. 

Is every character defined by their one character trait? Absolutely not—that wouldn’t be doing justice to your characters at all. But having one standout trait per character certainly helps with your audience’s memory, especially when paired with this next element. 

Large Cast

Often, a large cast of characters handled well makes for a popular story. The more varied your main characters are, the more chances you have to attract a viewer who identifies with one of those characters. Some examples are Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Downton Abbey.

Instead of following a single character through their journey, you get several characters to follow, all with intertwining stories. You can tell multiple types of stories at once—a hero training to save the world. An exiled prince looking for redemption. A girl with controlling parents trying to figure out where she belongs. 

This also helps with the story’s pacing. Simply by switching character POV, you can fill in blank spaces in one character’s journey and continue ramping up tension.

Also notice how the character introductions in Avatar are staggered so we’re not overwhelmed by them. We get to know Sokka and Katara first, then Aang, and Zuko, Toph, and Azula. Each character entrance has a chance to shine, and the audience isn’t bogged down by too many characters at once.

Now, there is such a thing as too many characters. When you hit this point, some characters naturally rise in importance while others fall to the wayside.

I’m sorry, Once Upon a Time, but I must use you again as a bad example. The core cast was perfect. But with each season, it kept growing. And growing. Until the story was forced to only focus on a couple of characters at a time, while the rest were shoved into the background—some of them permanently. The writers also had to make the plot and characters continually shallower to account for covering so many points of view. 

A good show will balance old and new characters well, and Avatar does this perfectly. By the end of the show, you care about Toph and Zuko just as much as you care about Aang, Sokka, and Katara.

Challenges

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever received was from fantasy author Bryan Davis. He said that the best and most captivating stories are the ones where the characters suffer. A common phrase is “kill your darlings.” 

This is because suffering is a universal experience. No matter who you are, you have suffered in some way in your life—and that’s what ultimately connects you to a character in any story. 

When we see a character suffer, we then want to see them break free and conquer their suffering, because ultimately, we want that in our own lives. It’s a human need.

That’s why stories like Avatar make such an impact. Through each character overcoming impossible odds—both personally and in the physical obstacles presented by the story itself—we see ourselves overcoming impossible odds. The way Avatar challenges its characters to their very limits and doesn’t shy away from seriousness is one of the reasons why it’s so successful. 

What Do You Notice? 

I could go on about this series for days, which is why I intentionally left out some of the outstanding things about Avatar like Uncle Iroh and Zuko’s masterfully handled transformation. 

Maybe those are their own posts. Would you want to see more ramblings about Avatar? Or maybe a different story you’ve learned a lot from? 

Either way, this is a challenge to you to learn from the stories you read and watch. Don’t just be a spectator—be a student. Enjoy the story, and then understand why you enjoyed it. 

In the meantime, happy storytelling!
—E.J.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

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