Writers: Watch Nanette

I originally was going to post a blog called “Information Flow and the Power of Stories,” but now I realize that really the only important thing is this: Hannah Gadsby’s one-hour show “Nanette” should be mandatory viewing for creatives, especially writers.

Three reasons:

One: It will make you a better human.
Wait, wait. At this point, you should stop reading this blog, go to Netflix, and watch it. Maybe with a friend or significant other, or maybe some other writers. Alone is less ideal, but whatever. GO WATCH. NOW.

I suppose, if you need more convincing, you can read on. But I don’t want to give too much away—I am NOT the person in my household who is obsessive about spoilers (*cough* ERIK) but I think in this case, it really is worth it to watch it without preconceived notions of what you’re getting.

Still, I will try to skirt the line here between the excessive gushing I want to do and the part where I try not to give away things that you really should discover for yourself.

But back to how it will make you a better human—I know, it’s weird: Nanette is technically a comedy routine. But it’s so much more than that. It won’t just make you laugh. It will make you laugh, and cry, and squirm, and come away with SO MUCH inside your mind and your heart.

Hopefully with empathy and compassion and humility—all things that are normally not a part of a comedy experience, but are so necessary to being a good human.

Two: It will make you a better storyteller.
….Actually this applies to both two and three, so I’ll differentiate here—in this case, I mean in the craft of storytelling.

Nanette is a master class in Information Flow.

I actually just started taking a workshop on information flow because—quite frankly—I am abysmal at that particular writer’s tool. I always give my readers information in the wrong order, especially in fantasy stories, and can easily fall into a confusing mess and lose control of the manuscript. Taking the workshop has already helped me immensely, and it just so happens that shortly before Erik said “Oh my god, Alex, you have to watch Nanette” (paraphrase), I had just taken notes from a video where the instructor said “Comedy writers are masters of information flow.”

And he was right.

And I could wax eloquent on the subject, picking apart every piece, every layer of Nanette from start to finish, but I won’t, because you just have to watch it for yourself.

Three: It will make you a better storyteller.
I mean this really as a combination of both points one and two…because you’ll become a better storyteller and a better human at the same time, because watching Nanette will make you think about your responsibilities as a storyteller, because t​he story you tell matters.

Whose part of the story you choose to tell matters.

And the parts of a story that you focus on—they matter immensely. Not just for those who read them, but for yourself. This is one of the core themes of Nanette, and it punches through you in unexpectedly profound ways over the course of the show.

What I’m really just saying is: if you want to tell stories because you want to make the world better, watch Nanette.

At least once to experience it, to laugh uproariously and sometimes uncomfortably, to get the gut-punch that comes from understanding something True. And then watch it again with a friend.

(And then watch it a third time and pay attention to how Hannah Gadsby tells her story, because it really is the work of a master.)