The monastery taught me something that will haunt your storytelling

This week I spent hours tearing apart our Nepal rough cut, leaving 30+ timestamped notes for our editor. And honestly? Those brutal feedback sessions taught me something way bigger than filmmaking.

They revealed the entire philosophy of how transformation actually works.

Here’s what I kept writing in my notes - *and all of these notes are verbatim from me to the editor, so you’re getting an inside-look here today*:

“We just arrived and I have ZERO excitement as a viewer because we didn’t give the viewer a reason to want it.”

“We are leaving story on the table, we are not making the viewer WANT what is coming next, we are just giving it to them.”

As I’m typing these critiques, I realized… this isn’t just about editing.

This is about everything we create.

We’ve Forgotten How Anticipation Works

Look, we’re all living in a world obsessed with delivery.

Get to the point.

Skip the setup.

Give them the takeaway.

Don’t waste their time.

But sitting with this footage, I kept asking: what if the setup IS the point? What if the longing is more powerful than the satisfaction?

I wrote (and these are raw notes to our editor…): *“Storytelling, especially in a feature, is a constant dance of curiosity loops - make them want it, then give them a bit more, then make them want more, then offer a bit in return. But never ever leave curiosity on the table when we have it to play.”*

Think about it - when someone shows you 47 vacation photos in rapid succession vs. when someone makes you desperate to visit a place by describing exactly how morning light hit those monastery walls…

Same information. Completely different universe of impact.

The Sacred Art of “Staying in the Room”

I found myself writing the same thing over and over:

“WTF… we just went into a magical scene and have the chance to immerse ourselves in it, and instead we cut away. We want them IN THAT ROOM.”

“stay in the room!!!!! we aren’t bored. we don’t want to leave…”

“Stay in the room… let this scene live on its own and focus on bringing us in”

This hit me like a truck. We’re so terrified of boring people that we abandon them right when they’re about to be transformed.

We cut away from the monastery when they’re finally feeling the sacred space. We rush past the emotional breakthrough because we think they’ll get restless.

But here’s what I see that we keep missing: people don’t want to be entertained out of meaningful moments - they want to be taken deeper into them.

One of my harshest notes was: “these is all AROUND scenes not in them - this is not at all connected to what is being said”

How often do we create content that’s AROUND our message instead of IN it? We talk about vulnerability but never get vulnerable. We discuss transformation but never let people feel the actual shift happening.

We give them drone shots when they need to hear footsteps: “i need to hear her footsteps… i need to be in the forest”

We show them the monastery from above when they need to sit in the room with the monks: “she has powerful dialogue here - use some of it and use sound sync so we see her speaking, then let her continue talking and as she gets emotional we see her in solace in the cave - this is how layers and truth resonate….”

What This Really Reveals

I kept writing: “start with shots that bring us into the location - more than just drone, let us FEEL and HEAR the city, THEN start the dialogue. We need to give the viewer the experience, let it unfold, leave room for curiosity”

This is about respecting your audience’s capacity for depth.

We’ve been brainwashed into thinking people have short attention spans. But that’s not true. People have short attention spans for shallow experiences. They have infinite attention for experiences that make them feel more alive.

“Use the dialogue, the sound, make us curious, then when we get there, then you can let the music sting and show us the big drone shots and reveal the location and take our breath away”

This Long Weekend

Sitting with my own feedback, I’m asking myself these questions (and I think they apply way beyond filmmaking):

• In your content: Where are you giving information when you could be creating transformation? What moments are you rushing past instead of letting them breathe?

• In your life: What conversations are you cutting away from right when they could go deeper? Where are you operating AROUND your truth instead of IN it?

• In your work: What deserves more reverence, more presence, more time to unfold?

Here’s what this editing session taught me: the deepest work isn’t about having better tools or strategies. It’s about developing the internal compass that knows when something has soul and when it’s just… functional.

That compass develops through presence.

Staying in the room when everyone wants to cut away.

Through patience.

Honoring the sacred pause before the revelation.

Through trust.

Believing your audience craves depth, not just delivery.

What are you rushing past that deserves more reverence?

What moments in your work, your relationships, your own inner world are you abandoning right when they could transform someone?

The monastery is waiting. The story wants to be told properly.

Are you ready to stay in the room?

• Patrick