Writing Advice, Beautiful Books and Farting Around

Hey all,

We’d really like your help. It’ll take you just two minutes. And we’d love you forever.

You know we’re obsessed with developing formats. So we’ve submitted a proposal for a session at SXSW 2024. The session will get the audience to collectively develop a content format, live, using our process. It’ll be really fun and successful and we’d love to do it. But we only get to do this if you vote for it. So please, if you have 60 seconds, give us your vote. We only have until August 20th.

What are you all doing around lunchtime on Thursday 31st August? Not a lot? Then grab your sandwich and join us for Proper Fancy. It’s our open show and tell that everyone can join. It’s fun. We look at and chat about interesting creative stuff. Sign up and we’ll send you a link.

OK. Some absolute beauties in the stories today. Enjoy and let the weekend begin...

Hugh

Nick Cave on Finding Resilience to Make Beautiful Things (4 min read)

Kurt Vonnegut: We’re Here on Earth to Fart Around (1 min read)

We Find Our Greatest Bliss in Moments of Collective Effervescence (6 min read)

5 Things About My Audience – Ben Young (7 min read)

How Cooking Video Formats Have Changed Over the Years (6 min read)

Writing Advice From Russell Davies (not that one, that one) (2 min read)

Can You Create a Brand Out Of Just Three Words? (4 min read)

The 50 Best Book Covers of the Year (3 min read)

How to Enter a Flow State (5 min watch)

Why You Should Always Ask the Silly Questions (1 min read)

How can we help you?

Storythings is a strategy and production company based in Brighton, London, Berlin, and Ibiza. We'd love to help you with some creative and bold ideas. Here are 3 reasons to get in touch. 

1. Audience Strategy – Do you struggle to understand constantly changing audience behaviours, and what strategies you need to reach them?2. Content Format Development – Do you want to develop and test content formats that give you a direct relationship with your audience? (e.g. videos, podcasts, newsletters, etc).3. Production – Do you need help creating and running an existing or new content format?We do other things too. We're very friendly and always enjoy meeting people, so get in touch. 

Nick Cave on Finding Resilience to Make Beautiful ThingsNick Cave, once again, is incredibly eloquent on the subject of whether we should use AI in the creative process: “As humans, we so often feel helpless in our own smallness, yet still we find the resilience to do and make beautiful things, and this is where the meaning of life resides. Nature reminds us of this constantly. The world is often cast as a purely malignant place, but still the joy of creation exerts itself, and as the sun rises upon the struggle of the day, the Great Crested Grebe dances upon the water. It is our striving that becomes the very essence of meaning.”(4 min read)

Kurt Vonnegut: We’re Here on Earth to Fart AroundAnd just as wonderful as the above, here’s Kurt Vonnegut on why he doesn’t buy his envelopes online. I might get a “We’re here on Earth to fart around” poster made. (1 min read)

We Find Our Greatest Bliss in Moments of Collective EffervescenceI came across this Adam Grant piece via this great essay by Ash Mann on how digital can help people gather in new ways. It’s the first time I’ve heard the phrase collective effervescence but it’s one I’ve been searching for for years. It’s described as: “The sense of energy and harmony people feel when they come together in a group around a shared purpose. Collective effervescence is the synchrony you feel when you slide into rhythm with strangers on a dance floor, colleagues in a brainstorming session, cousins at a religious service or teammates on a soccer field. And during this pandemic, it’s been largely absent from our lives.”(6 min read)

5 Things About My Audience – Ben YoungWhat would you really like to know about your audience but don’t have the tools to do so? Here’s Ben Young from Nudge: “It would be handy to understand where else or what other form they may want this content: if not email, what else? Is LinkedIn where they want the tidbits, should we syndicate it as a column in the paper, or an audio chat? A bonus – it would be nice to know when we strike a chord. When someone gets an email and goes, this is exactly what I was looking for today. Sometimes they do tell us! Which is wonderful.”(7 min read)

How Cooking Video Formats Have Changed Over the YearsThis is nice from the New York Times. This interactive story looks at how cooking video formats have evolved since the days of Julia Childs and gives names to the three most popular formats you’re likely to see in your stream today. It dates the ‘hands in pans’ format to 2015 which is around about the time I first came across the Body Coach’s ‘Lean in 15’ 15-second videos. I do remember how game-changing they felt and still use it as an example of a smart format that creates a lot of value in the least amount of time. (Via Content Technologist)(7 min read)

Writing Advice From Russell Davies Russell Davies has finally committed his thoughts on how to be interesting to a book. It’s going to be fantastic. I haven’t read it. But it will. Just trust me. Anyway, here’s a short bit that didn’t get into the book. (2 min read)

Can You Create a Brand Out Of Just Three Words?Everyone’s favourite tone of voice newsletter Tone Knob returns with a mini-sode (is that what we are calling a shorter version of a longer episodic format?) to bring to our attention this smart brand that has a three-word title. A title that does a lot of the heavy lifting – excuse the pun. OK, you’ll have to read it to get it. (4 min read)

The 50 Best Book Covers of the YearIf I was in a bookstore and I was judging a book by its cover, the first three I would pick up would be Butts: A Backstory, Florida! and Dynasty, Thomas Raat. (Via Kottke.org)(3 min read)How to Enter a Flow StateThis is a great watch on how to enter a ‘flow’ state and importantly, why you shouldn’t focus too much on reaching it: “Flow is more than just concentrating or paying attention; it's a unique mental state of effortless engagement. And those who more frequently experience flow report higher levels of positive emotions, creativity, and feelings of accomplishment.”(5 min watch)

Why You Should Always Ask the Silly QuestionsA nice very short story explaining the power of asking a question you might be afraid to ask. (Tweet)

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Thanks for reading. We’ll see you all next week.

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the whole team at Storythings.