The number of views exceeded 1 billion, and the plot account became popular by "playing awkwardly"

As a strong track of Douyin, the plot track has always had its own vitality. Now that creators are flocking to the plot track, how will the plot account develop? Is there still a market for the plot track? Let's take a look at the analysis in this article.

The love drama between Hou Xiaohua and Xiao Ba has come to an end.

When the two illusory figures appeared in the sky and slowly waved goodbye to Shangguan Wencai, many fans were shocked and speechless. Someone left a message in the comment section, "Can I be a be when I follow this kind of drama?"

Image source: @Audrey Houben TikTok screenshot

On May 19, the first episode of @奥黛丽厚本's new work "School Bully" was released, and a series of dramas that makes people love and hate it kicked off. The "love story" of the two leading actors has become the electronic mustard of many young people this summer vacation. The "old-fashioned" plot and "dog-blooded" interpretation made netizens tap their toes on the ground and couldn't bear to watch it, while closely following the updates.

It's not just @奥黛丽厚本. According to Kas's observation, this type of "awkward story" has become the new favorite of Douyin drama masters. More and more drama creators have begun to incorporate storylines that were criticized by the audience in the past into their works in order to gain a surge in traffic.

As a strong track of Douyin, the plot track has always been full of vitality and has attracted many short video creators to join in. However, the ever-changing short video market has also set up many problems for the majority of practitioners. How has the plot account developed recently? Is there still a market for the plot track where creators "crowd together"?

1. "The Cold-Faced Young Master Falls in Love with Me" Finds a New Way Out in Short Videos

"The drama that disrupted my summer vacation has finally finished, and these two people have also apologized by dying."

The most accurate way to describe the shocking feeling that "School Bully" brings to fans is probably "collision". Although @奥黛丽厚本's works are always unconventional, this new work still brings everyone's acceptance to a new level.

To put it simply, this is a work that is full of melodrama. If the plot is simply summarized: Hou Xiaohua, a poor girl from Nanbu County, becomes a deskmate with the school bully Xiao Ba on her first day of school. Xiao Ba falls in love with this "ordinary" girl at first sight after witnessing Hou Xiaohua shielding a snail from the rain on her way to school.

Image source: @Audrey Houben TikTok screenshot

However, the two have very different family backgrounds, and the process of their love is destined to be full of hardships. Not only do "classic supporting roles" such as the rich lady Juliet, the snobbish mother-in-law Xiao, and the black-bellied second male lead Shangguan Wencai come out to make things difficult, but the two protagonists themselves also suffer from kidnapping, amnesia, unexpected pregnancy, cancer, car accidents and other hardships.

In the end, Hou Xiaohua, who was suffering from cancer, came to the beach with Xiao Ba. After a day of fun, she lay in Xiao Ba's arms and slowly died. Xiao Ba also chose to commit suicide because he could not accept Xiaohua's death.

In fact, almost all the plots in the series can be found in Taiwanese idol dramas 20 years ago. However, such a seemingly "lack of novelty" story can get millions of likes for each update, and the cumulative number of views of the entire series on Douyin has exceeded 1 billion.

Image source: @Audrey Houben TikTok screenshot

After the finale, the heroine Hou Ben described this work as a "farce in the guise of a romance drama." Analyzing what drove the explosion of traffic in the series, Kas believes that the Hou Ben team did a good job in three aspects:

The first is the choice of campus themes. "School Bully" is actually a sub-series born from the "Challenge to Shoot 100 Romance Movies for Girlfriends". During the process, the team also tried to shoot works on themes such as Republic of China love, brother-sister orthopedics, and palace fighting, but none of them were as popular as "School Bully".

Firstly, campus life fits the life experiences of the majority of netizens, and the audience seems to be more involved; secondly, most people have a "filter" for topics such as adolescence and campus life, and the thoughts and actions of young people are inherently immature, so the audience will be relatively tolerant of bugs that appear in these works.

In addition, according to Kas's observation, many plots in @奥黛丽厚本's works are 1:1 reproductions of classic film and television dramas, such as the scene where the hero and heroine say goodbye at the seaside in "Autumn in My Heart" and the scene where the hero and heroine eat Western food in the rain in "The Little Princess".

Image source: @Audrey Houben TikTok screenshot

These dramas have extremely high national popularity and a large fan base. When netizens come across familiar stories in their information flow, they are easily curious about them, which gives the video an "advantage".

Secondly, during the filming process, other talents were constantly invited to join the show, which not only increased the freshness of the series, but also expanded the traffic and influence of the work. According to incomplete statistics from Kas, well-known talents who have appeared in the show include @爆胎草莓粥, @锅盖wer, @毛光光, @郑丽芬er, @皮晶姐姐, @空空日记 and others.

Every time a new person joins, it will trigger a new round of discussion among netizens, who are curious about what "handle" Houben has caught on these internet celebrities that makes them willing to join this farce.

Image source: @Audrey Houben’s Douyin comment area screenshot

Thirdly, the "heartfelt" plot + "casual" acting skills accurately control the "scale of embarrassment".

Houben and Xiao Yuhang have collaborated on many works before, and they can be said to be the official CP of the account. When portraying Houben's character, the team deliberately magnified her shortcomings such as being a nymphomaniac and arrogant, making her a funny girl with a less positive image. In this case, letting her "go to the heart" to shoot emotional scenes with the handsome guy Xiao Yuhang, strengthened the sense of separation between her appearance and the plot, and increased the humor of the work.

In addition, the two used exaggerated acting skills to show all kinds of greasy lines and plots. Although it looked very absurd, it aroused the users' strong curiosity to see "how outrageous it can be". Many fans said that they felt "PUA", which made them feel sick but also wanted to follow.

Image source: @Audrey Houben TikTok screenshot

2. Are all drama bloggers playing "awkward"?

As an important element in comedy, embarrassment has always been a topic of concern for plot creators. However, the "fast-paced" characteristics of short videos require creators to attract users' attention in the shortest possible time, and it is difficult to slowly lay out a complete story like long videos.

This has led to differences in the scripts for long and short videos. As a result, many short video teams have begun to shift from "writing a story that makes the characters embarrassed to trigger a comedic effect" to "writing a story that can embarrass the audience to trigger user resonance."

Yes, based on reality, they try to dig for gold in the fans' youthful memories.

Drama expert @叮叮喵dxy stood out from the fiercely competitive drama track with a series of works that evoked fans' campus memories. Not only did he achieve good results on Douyin, he also attracted a lot of fans on Xiaohongshu and was on the platform's fan growth list many times.

"Those Little Acts During Military Training", "Those Little Acts During School", "Those Moments I Miss During My Student Days", "We in Those Years"... By recreating the "little embarrassing" and "little pretentious" stories that happened to many people during their student days, it leads fans to recall that slightly immature period of time. Many people said that they "dug their toes into the ground while crying" while watching the show.

Image source: @叮叮喵TikTok screenshot

Some of them transcend reality and rush towards the direction of "cyber embarrassment".

In every work of @我叫星然啊, the protagonist Xing Ran is given some strange skills: she can turn into a certain type of girl by eating a certain flavor of food, she can see the name of the person someone loves the most, she can cool down by eating ice cream, and she can't help but punch someone when he says "I love you" to her...

Image source: @我叫星然TikTok screenshot

With these strange settings, the plot development of the work becomes more and more nonsensical. In Xingran's world, the beginnings of the stories are different, but they all have a heartwarming development process and eventually lead to an outrageous ending:

For example, Xingran, who couldn't help punching someone when hearing them confess, finally found a boyfriend who could tolerate this problem after being single for many years. When Xingran was in love and was very happy, she found out that her boyfriend was actually a boxer, and he approached her deliberately just to improve his ability to withstand blows, hoping to get beaten.

After knowing the truth, Xingran was heartbroken. Her boyfriend suddenly appeared and confessed his love to her, saying that he really loved her. Xingran was very moved and couldn't help punching the male protagonist, killing him...

Image source: @我叫星然TikTok screenshot

For example, the male protagonist who dotes on Xingran always eats the sugar on the candied haws that Xingran doesn't like. Xingran decided to marry him after the male protagonist helped her eat the sugar on 1,000 candied haws, but he broke up with her after eating 999. The reason is that the male protagonist suffered from diabetes due to eating too much sugar and really couldn't eat sweets anymore.

Image source: @我叫星然TikTok screenshot

In contrast to the thick version, @我叫星然啊's adopted "outrageous plot + sincere acting" to create a sense of contrast. After watching the entire film, fans almost all left comments such as crazy, outrageous, and sick, but they couldn't help but finish it when the next update came.

Image source: @我叫星然ah Screenshot of the Douyin comment area

3. Where are the drama masters going?

The plot track has a large flow of traffic and a large audience, and has always been a popular track in the short video field, and has also attracted the attention of many creators. With the continuous development of short video platforms, more and more production teams and individuals have begun to devote their energy to the production of plot short videos.

Accompanying this is an unprecedented level of “inter-volume”.

On the one hand, with the influx of a large number of creators, traffic has been rapidly dispersed, and the audience has more and more choices, making it increasingly difficult for newcomers to grow. In fact, no representative new talents have emerged in the past two years.

On the other hand, the Matthew effect of short videos is significant, and a large amount of monetization resources are concentrated on a few top plot accounts. Although plot masters have to spend more time and effort, the monetization ability of plot accounts is not stronger than other content types. Due to the length of the content, they also face problems such as few orders and low completion rate of advertising videos.

For drama influencers who want to transition to live streaming, not only do they not necessarily have the ability to be a host, but the product selection and coordination of the team, and the setting up and operation of the live streaming room are all difficult problems. Overall, the transition is not smooth for most people.

Will there be opportunities for the plot track in the future? Kas believes the answer is yes. But it is also certain that it will become more and more difficult to achieve results. In addition to trying to make efforts in the topic, form, and quality of the work and constantly improving themselves, Kas believes that creators can also focus on the following aspects:

• The first is to try the "plot +" theme setting. With the enrichment of the short video content ecosystem, the themes of short plot videos on the platform have gradually diversified, no longer limited to a single type of content, such as the previously popular campus love and family emotions. Try to add elements such as travel, food, pets, and technology to the works to increase freshness, which may be more attractive to the audience.
• The second is to try to enhance the interactivity of the work. Storytellers can increase the fans' sense of participation by adding interactive links with the audience in their works, such as theme solicitation and fan challenges. Doing so will not only help them better understand the audience's needs and feedback, improve the quality of the work, but also deepen the connection between the account and the fans.
• The third is to establish your own brand image. According to Kass’s observation, in the past two years, short videos with good performance in drama have shown strong continuity. Most influencers will follow their own popular topics and shoot a series of works to establish their own unique style and deepen the image positioning of the account in the minds of the audience.

In short, the future development prospects of Douyin's drama track are still broad, but it is also full of difficulties. Creators who still want to enter the market can only gain a foothold on the platform by constantly innovating and improving.

Author: Jiang Bei, WeChat public account: Kas Data