Unlock the Power of Stories: How They Resonate and Connect Us
Touching on Matthew Perry's passing and Halloween 2023...
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Hey there, Copywriting Storytellers!
Happy Halloween to all of you. I hope you enjoyed the weekend with friends and family. Stay safe if you’re trick-or-treating or partying Tuesday evening.
By now, I’m sure you heard of Friends’ star Matthew Perry’s passing. It’s hard for me as I age to see those who I grew up watching in television, movies, or sports move on from this life. I always saw Perry as a fun guy — mostly from his character in Friends, Chandler Bing.
I liked being a funny guy myself from high school to today. I certainly modeled Perry’s and Jerry Seinfeld’s humor and mannerisms.
Now, if you will, humor me as I share some storytelling lessons. Both from Perry’s work and from a man almost synonymous with Halloween lore — Edgar Allan Poe.
Lesson 1: Matthew Perry taught me that stories can bond brothers together
In 1998, a hilarious movie, Almost Heroes, came out featuring Perry and Chris Farley. No, it wasn’t a show-stopper and didn’t make waves at the box office.
But, Perry’s portrayal of “Leslie Edwards” and Farley as “Bartholomew Hunt” bonded the three Domzalski brothers. Quite frankly, it left us in stitches! We would watch it together whenever it came on. It was pre-Netflix, so you had to wait or record it.
We would repeat the lines to each other — and just laugh our behinds off. To this day, if I utter “she belong to me” to my brother Jim — we’ll both burst out laughing. That’s a nod to Eugene Levy’s character in the film.
Stories can bond brothers — or your own tribe — together. Thanks, Matthew (and Chris).
Lesson 2: Emotion begets emotion in our stories
I saw an Instagram post yesterday from Fr. Barnabas Powell of
He shared a part of Perry’s 2022 memoir — where he discusses finding God.Perry writes:
I started to cry. I mean I really started to cry — that shoulder-shaking kind of uncontrollable weeping. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I was crying because, for the first time in my life, I felt OK. I felt safe, taken care of. Decades of struggling with God, and wrestling with life and sadness. All was being washed away, like a river of pain gone into oblivion.
I don’t about you — but I feel his emotion there. I feel his joy and his pain at the same time. It’s beautiful and it’s tragic. I hope he felt God’s presence in his final moments. I hope he feels it now.
Lesson 3: Details matter and you should be as vivid as you want
This leads me to my final learning. It’s all in the details.
With it being Halloween, this one comes to us from Poe. It’s his masterpiece — The Tell-Tale Heart — that gives us this gem:
And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses? — now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
You can hear the sound. You know exactly how that speaks to your ears.
You can feel the man’s fury. Who doesn’t understand being roused or stimulated by something — a sound, an emotion, a feeling, etc.?
This is my favorite of Poe’s work — and similar to Dicken’s A Christmas Carol — provides that example of how to grab the reader. But, not just grab, submerge them in the world you’re creating. It’s profound.
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