Details are the hallmark of a story you can relate to
But they work only when you nail the larger narrative.
Before he could start enjoying his job, Jack Warr had to find his place in the world. The interaction between a quest to reconnect with his identity and the mounting urgency of the crisis in a new case depend on each other to make the story work in Lynda LaPlante's latest crime series. LaPlante turned to writing after a successful acting career. You may know her name for her work on Prime Suspect.
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The gap between the story you tell and your body language is what gives you away. Which is another way of saying stop breaking your promises. What you say and what you do are connected and interdependent. The gap widens when you don't know or realize who you are. To make the story work, you need to figure this out.
In the very first episode of “Conversation on Value” podcast, I spoke with Christina Patterson about Value in Narrative. So much content (including media) is limp and lazy. Yet, when we're appropriate, precise, and thoughtful about the stories we tell we create value.
In The Art of Not Falling Apart Christina relates an encounter she had right after losing her job. She went to a literary party and to her horror and surprise here were both the editor and managing editor of the magazine cowering in a corner.
“I, in my high heels, much taller than these rather short men marched over to them and said in this rather aggressive way, 'hello, how are you'? And they were desperate to run away.”
You can just imagine the scene, can't you? Now that you have the larger narrative of participating to an industry event after being fired, you can see the shift from insider to outsider and observer. Everyone who's lost a job knows how devastating it can be. Anything that makes you feel like Christina did when she followed in the footsteps of the managing editor who literally locked himself in the loo can feel the liberating beat of the chuckle.
The loss of status is the most unbearable. Because our identity gets wrapped in the story—a columnist in a renown national paper is a proper thing in the UK. Work does mean an enormous amount to us. Perhaps the product of a highly individualized culture, where shame is wrong and alienates the person who feels it or talks about it. Which is the only possible reason why people lie when they stand up in support circles and say things like, “losing my job was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Believe me when I say nobody ever feels that, not even the person saying it. Christina confirmed it after one such meeting.
Our short conversation is filled with delightful tales and earned wisdom on storytelling, unconscious competence, how writing is a craft, and doing the work to achieve “music of the prose.” When she saw the podcast was live, Christina said, “I loved this conversation!” So did I. I learned a great deal about the energy of anger and not letting it define who you are and the value in your narrative.
Christina is now doing her journalistic work, mostly as a literary critic for the Sunday Times and discussing politics and current affairs on the Sky News press preview and BBC Radio 2’s The Jeremy Vine Show. She and I also talked about fortitude, asking different kinds of questions, and listening in a new way.
If you missed the trailer to the series for Traces & Dreams, watch it here. It will help you gain an appropriate appreciation for the context of each conversation in the coming weeks. Watch my first with Christina below.
