What excites me most about Notes is that it is a new space for storytelling. When we first launched Notes, some people started off importing their assumptions about how other “social media” platforms work—there were a few scuffles, a little bit of trolling, occasional bouts of virtue signaling—but it quickly became apparent that Notes is something different, something new. The rules here are different.
In using Notes, the ultimate goal is not attention or likes; it is to form deep relationships between writer and reader, especially when expressed in paid subscriptions. So what’s the best way to start those relationships?
Among the best ways, in my view, is for writers to use Notes as a storytelling space. For that reason, I wanted to talk to
, an esteemed author and critic who built her reputation at the Village Voice in its glory days, about how she writes flash fiction and “flash memoir” on Notes and entices readers into exploring further. Check out, for instance, this two-paragraph story about how to handle aggression, which includes the memorable line “They were both in the business of meeting you and saying they could feel the secret suffering inside you…”For Laurie, writing in this way is an act of seduction. Don’t tell the reader to follow you; make them want to. “I think what I have to sell can be sold through seduction, and that means providing pleasure,” Laurie says. “And to provide pleasure is a lot of work on my part.”
Readers are rewarding Laurie for that hard work. Last month, over 20% of Laurie’s new subscribers came from Notes.
I hope you’ll enjoy the conversation Laurie and I had as part of an hour-long workshop about how to think of Notes as a space for seduction. The video is above, and some key excerpts are below.
Quotes from the conversation
On voice
My voice really developed over a long time, and the Village Voice was a fantastic place to experiment and allow a voice to emerge. A lot of experiments seeing what your writing does to people. How do people respond?
We didn’t have the great advantage of this kind of feedback [that writers get online today]. It’s not just thumbs-up, it’s thumbs-down. It’s also interactive. People say, “This moved me” or “I felt this,” and then you think to yourself more and more, “Well, what did I do there? Let me break down what I did, so I can understand technically what was working, what affected people emotionally, what got them reading and going.” That’s what I did over a very long period of time, just writing pieces without that kind of intimate feedback, but now it’s very helpful, even though I have a more developed voice than I did when I started writing for the Voice in my 20s.
On stand-up
For writers, you’re always thinking about the reader, and I don’t mean pandering to the reader’s needs and tastes. The way I think a piece of writing comes alive to the reader is you trick the reader into making the reader think the story is about the reader. How do you do that? You do that by never letting the reader think you need anything from them.
For me the great model of this for text is stand-up [comedy]. The reason I mentioned stand-up is you’re alone. You’re in your box speaking, and you want people to stay in front of you, to listen to you. If the solo performer leaks anxiety or need to the audience, they’re dead. The audience wants to sit back and not care about the performer’s need to be reassured or to think they’re going to fail. So a lot of that self-deprecating humor doesn’t really work in stand-up. What works in stand-up is for someone to just start talking to you with a lot of confidence and a belief that you will listen.
On getting paid
No one paid me before to [post online], and now they are. This happened in nine months of being on Substack. But the reason I’m mentioning this is I’ve always been promoting as much as I can that writers [should] make as much money as they can for their publications. Do not write for free. If anyone expects you to write for free, they are bad people. You say goodbye. The thing that is so exciting is that now I have even more incentive to write.
On self-promotion
Everyone hates you if you self-promote.
I thought Facebook would be a party and I would meet people. I did meet people. And some of the people I met, if I met them at a party, I would say, “Oops! Uh, I gotta go get a drink now.” Because all they did on Facebook was take, and ask you, and promote their events.
I’m very guilty of this, by the way, but ultimately I don’t even think whatever I have to “sell” can be sold that way. I think what I have to sell can be sold through seduction, and that means providing pleasure, and to provide pleasure is a lot of work on my part.
On the five elements
No one wants your sad-sack stories. I think one of the things that it’s very hard for people to believe is, no one cares about you. [Readers] don’t care about you as a human being. They say they do, but they don’t mean it.
But you can get them to care about your narrator, if your narrator is clever and is funny. I have this little checklist. I don’t really remember how it developed, but it is a good little list for me to check against a story or a piece of writing. As Hamish [McKenzie, Substack’s co-founder and Chief Writing Officer] said, it could be a 200-word piece or a 2,000-word piece or a 20,000-word piece.
The 5 things are this:
Start in the middle.
Fail to arrive.
Remember to love something.
Make the reader hot.
Make the reader laugh.
On virtue signaling
I don’t have that much virtue, you may have noticed. I don’t think virtues are an honest emotion. Everyone has mixed feelings. You’re a human being. That’s the story. The story is the mixture, the ambiguity, the complexity that can’t be resolved. That’s where the comedy lies—if you really engage the ambiguities of an emotion or a moment.
Three other writers who are using Notes well:
- , Beyond Bloomsbury (profiles and portraiture)
- , Both Are True (absurd humor)
- , The Department of Salad (food writing and photos)
See you at the next workshop! Stay tuned to
on Notes for more.
Laurie Stone is using Notes to seduce new readers