Remix Recipe №69
The Prescribed Stack
Prescribe a short stack of practices for one specific routine, credit each to its source, then add your own twist.
The hook template
If I could prescribe a the routine routine to every who it's for, it'd be these how many things
The hook in the wild
“If I could prescribe a post-show routine to every comic, it'd be these four things.”
“If I could prescribe a payday routine to every person rebuilding, it'd be these three things.”
The recipe
- Topic
- One specific routine your people already have, named by timeframe or occasion
- Take
- Your modification to each practice, and where you got it
- Format
- A simple yap, straight to camera, no cuts
The structure
- Name the routine
Pick one with a descriptor on it and make it unusual. Mornings are the obvious choice and therefore the weakest one available to you.
- Credit every source
Name the real person or book each practice came from. You are claiming taste, not invention, which is easier to believe and harder to copy.
- Add your twist to each
Say what you changed. Helen Garner style diaries, not dear-diary diaries. The modification is the whole value.
- Admit the weak one
Say out loud which item you are least sure about. Naming your own weakest link is what makes the rest credible.
- Land on your own thing
If you made something that fits the stack, this is where it goes, as the last item rather than the pitch.
Your Studio follows these beats when it writes your script.
Why it worked
This is not a habits listicle, it is a curation. Every item is credited to a real source and then given her own modification. Helen Garner style diaries, not dear-diary diaries. Upbeat meditation, and she stops to say the upbeat is really critical. So she is not claiming to have invented anything. She is claiming taste, which is a much easier claim to believe and a much harder one to copy.
The honesty is what holds it together. On the woo item she says out loud that she has no idea whether it achieves anything cosmically, but she likes what it does to her brain. Admitting the weakest item is weak is exactly why you trust the other three.
The routine itself is the variable. Mornings is the obvious pick. A payday routine, a post-show routine, a night-before routine all imply you have thought about a moment nobody else bothered to systematise.