Do you like big stories or small ones? The clash of ideas or the throb of new love? I predict this week you'll play a starring role in a story that feels monumental and minor at the same time. And since everybody's the hero of their own story, I wonder, what will your superpower be? Incredible strength, keen insight, killer dance moves, or lashes of your dashing, devastating charm? Or will you finally realize you've got deep and unquenchable reserves of them all?
When I was a young geology major in college — a choice of major I attribute entirely to having stumbled across the works of John McPhee at just the right time — I was introduced to the idea of the quadrangle kid.
The idea is that there are two kinds of geologists: The ones who study and write about the great sweep of time, about continents kissing each other roughly and then shifting apart, of the long, weird dance of animals and the imprints they leave behind in the sand. Their canvas is massive, their scope is grand.
And some geologists (ahem) dedicate their lives to the study of just one quadrangle, one patch of ground. They spend their whole careers recording in minute detail everything there is to know about that one square on the map. Every fossil, formation, and fissure falls under their gaze.
I knew right away I was a quadrangle kid. I am a sucker for the small story.
Small stories are just epic tales in disguise.
Alas, academia turned out to be too... a lot of things... for me, and I eventually found a more congenial home in startups and tech. But the idea has stuck with me, and as a writer I've kept close to the small, intimate, domestic scene ever since.
I remembered the idea of the quadrangle kid when someone sent me Ronald Blythe's obituary last week.
Blythe lived to be 100 — heck yeah, I love a long life — and he wrote dozens of books, essays, and poems while he was here. But he was mostly known and beloved as the careful chronicler of life in a small, fictional village in southern England he called Akenfield.
His work drew on a lifetime spent in just that one patch, and from countless conversations with those who shared it with him. "Farmers, gravediggers, and retirees," as the New York Times put it. Regular folks, living regular lives. But out of those stories, big themes emerged.
He was a quadrangle kid. He kept his eyes focused on the small stage, and that's how he shined a light on the much bigger stuff.
I think any writing works best when it's written with the scope of a real person in mind. You immerse yourself in one person's world and let them talk about what matters to them. You ask them, and keep asking them, what's true for you?
It's true in good marketing, copywriting, and product content design. What the heck, let's throw in poetry and fiction while we're at it, too.
Who are you? What do you want to do?
So we ask, and we listen. We interview users. We listen to their words and how they talk about things. What songs do they sing under their breath? What makes them laugh when no one's around?
Too often, the writing we do (especially at work) starts from a different perspective. We ask, what do we want the reader to think or do next? What do we want to get them excited about now?
Pardon me, but that's not our job.
Our job is to look at the world through their eyes. Our goal should be to map and navigate the world they walk every day.
What does that look like, if we're writing at work? Here are three, fairly small, unimportant ideas:
Hey, nobody's perfect. We all lean on sweeping generalizations sometimes (look, there's one now). But I think we tell better stories, and get closer to the truth, when we stick with the personal, particular, local, unique. If we want to make a point about the big themes of our time (and truly, who doesn't), we're much better off starting with what's right under our feet.
So. Who are you? What do you want to do?
John McPhee wrote a bunch of books about geology and geologists in the US, and I love them all. In Suspect Terrain is what converted me from a mellow, undeclared-but-probably-English-major into a big old geology nerd and rock hound for life. Ironically, studying geology is how I finally figured out I wanted to write. McPhee went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Oh, and here's Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village. I'm reading it now.
Do you think design thinking is dead? Yeah, neither do I. But I liked this here think piece about why storytelling might really be the next big thing in design. It's a little doomy-gloomy in parts, but it's still worth the read.
Mardi Gras is coming this week, and I know some of you are feeling the weight of the world. I see you. You're getting up every day and doing what you gotta do. But goddamn, you deserve a break. Come on. Stand up. Shake your butt and swing your hips all around. Just Do What You Wanna for a minute instead.
My Love, My Love by Tom Hammick