Lou Killeffer
Mar 7, 20174 min
Storytelling plays an increasingly prominent role in business as brands have evolved beyond push marketing to the curated consumer engagement and experiences that foster long-term relationships. And like every angle on the art and science of marketing, this has created a fair amount of conversation.
Our lack of interest in reading has been lamented for generations. As has the death of the novel, increasing levels of social and personal stress, vanishing attention spans, the explosion of new media, what have you. I've no idea what the root cause might be but I don't think it's screen versus paper. It isn't about the delivery system, it's about us. Just what aspect of us escapes me, but I also know it's not new. As Gore Vidal said,"You hear all this whining going on, 'Where are our great writers?' The thing I might feel doleful about is: 'Where are the readers?'"
I've no idea where the readers are but I admit to a few biases. I'm confident when ideas brush up against ideas the results are often surprising and therefore rewarding. And I'm certain that experiencing any form of art, in this case reading, sharpens our perceptions about ourselves and everything around us as we view the world through the author’s lens. This is what storytelling is and how it works. How it imagines, implies, and even explains as it makes or suggests both new ideas and new connections to our old ideas.
A Modest Proposal
My advice is if you want to be a good storyteller, you should read a lot of great stories. And I'll recommend one here, Nutshell which is Ian McEwan's incredibly imaginative adaption of Hamlet told from the perspective of a fetus in utero. Sounds promising, no?
Nutshell is the moving, modern retelling of one of the all-time classic crimes of passion fueled by lust, murder, and revenge. It’s an altogether piercingly human story. Here Hamlet’s uncle Claude (Shakespeare’s King Claudius) and mother Trudy (Queen Gertrude) consort together and conspire to kill Trudy’s husband, little Hamlet’s father, so that they may wed and reap the rewards of his family estate with him safely six feet under.
Now before anyone’s eyes glaze over at the thought of Shakespeare, which I realize isn't everyone's cup of tea, Nutshell a very modern take on some very primal motives set in a Georgian townhouse in London today. The writing is remarkable; clean, crisp, and fast- paced, the narrative complete less than 200 pages. No iambic pentameter, no ghosts, no "Alas, poor Yorick!", no windswept Danish castle, and no men in tights.
Claude and Trudy's plotting, deceit, lust, and hatred are on breathtaking display and revealed through conversation, action considered and taken, and several intimate moments that only McEwan's passenger/reluctant witness/tiny friend Hamlet could overhear and be aware of. And the little guy’s quite sophisticated take on all this as he slowly realizes who's doing what to whom - why Dad's been kicked out of his own house, is never around and why his uncle is paying such, uh, attention, to Mom is at once tragic, comedic, and remarkably gripping.
Beginning from the jump on page one as our little Ham-let introduces himself and our story begins, ”So here I am, upside down in a woman.”