Rewatch, reread, retell

On the calm of repetition in uncertain times. Also, introducing my romance habit.

HELLO, I HAVE AN IMPORTANT ASK: Whether you’re new to the Substack or you’ve been here since the beginning, I’d love to know what questions you have about storytelling. Will you hit reply to this email (or comment on the website) and tell me your questions, challenges or advice you could use? Any genre, no question too small, too big or too specific. I’ll choose a few to answer in future Story Letter posts!

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One of my very tall soapboxes, you might already know, is that storytelling is wildly individual. Your style is YOURS, and there’s no “right” way to tell a story.

And here’s a corollary: how you want to consume storytelling in your life is as individual as your style, and it changes with time and circumstance. 

Here’s an example from my life, right now. This has been a hard and painful week in the U.S., and I’ve needed to balance processing the results of the election with friends & family, with some good escape/dissociation. So I’ve been rereading some of my favorite books. They’re romances, and I know how they end. But— actually? I knew how they would end the first time around, too. Romances always end in a “happily ever after.” No exceptions.

We often say a story was “surprising” or “unpredictable,” and we mean it as a compliment. And a lot of people dismiss romance novels as too “predictable” or formulaic. But I propose to you that during stressful times, there’s serious power in both formula and predictability.

In the summer of 2020, I had left New York City after living there for twenty years (!), and I was staying on an air mattress in a friend’s barn in upstate New York. There were some old paperbacks in this barn and I picked one up— a dog-eared romance with a dark-haired, bare-chested duke (apparently) on the cover. There wasn’t much else to do, so I gave this book a try. It was funny and sweet. It felt like watching a very good romantic comedy. 

But what surprised me more than that: reading it did wonders for my nervous system. 

In those strange, pre-vaccine months of the pandemic, I didn’t need true stories or jump scares. I just needed to know that for this couple, at least, it was all going to turn out okay. 

After I finished that one, I looked up some other books. I found a couple book critics I liked, and read what they suggested. And before I knew it, I’d developed a pretty serious romance habit.

It’s now four-plus years and literally hundreds of books later. And I’m responsible for introducing many of my friends to the genre. I’ve read widely enough that I’m a little like a Buzzfeed quiz you can take: tell me if you want contemporary or historical, straight or queer characters, low-angst or high drama, if you want any vampires — and I’ll recommend you your first romance.

I’m also still a story nerd (and kind of a story snob!), even about romance. There are great questions to explore about story structure, representation, and the complicated politics of the romance genre. And there are frameworks and shapes to these stories that get repeated over and over, and brilliant writers who innovate like hell inside them, without breaking the very strong contract they have with their readers: that their main characters will arrive at happiness by the last page. 

Listen: I understand why I found these books, and why I stuck with them, in the last few years. I didn’t know my own future! My own “book” had just completely switched up the plot on me, and I didn’t have any kind of blueprint for where I was, who I was, or what I was going to do next. While reading romance, I could feel like I knew what was coming, at least for those few hundred pages. And these books gave me time to store up the energy to make big moves, to face big unknowns, and meet my own life with calm. 

They still do.

Sometimes we need our stories to surprise us. But when things are stressful, a lot of us just want to rewatch our favorite show. Or reread our favorite book. Or retell a story, for the 40th time, or hear our friend retell their story for the 40th time. Or... watch a procedural drama, where we know it will all be resolved by the top of the hour; or a mystery, where the killer will be caught; or a sitcom, where life will reset by the closing credits.

Formulaic stories and repeated watchings aren’t just comforting. In the face of uncertain futures, I think predictable story shapes can be a solid way to escape, to rest, and to shore up our resources. So we can face and fight whatever’s ahead.

What are you reading or watching or listening to right now? What stories feel like rest?

Respectfully and enthusiastically yours,

Micaela

P.S. Speaking of romance, and escape. If you need to read something silly right now, a few years ago I wrote a FAKE BOOK PLOTS thread on Facebook: I asked friends to name a JOB/CAREER and I wrote the synopsis of an imaginary romance novel featuring a character WITH THAT JOB. The results are unbearably goofy, they’re up for a limited time only, and they’re available here.