Additional thought on storytelling

Yesterday I talked about a scene from Queer As Folk, and how by allowing the audience to work out the characters for themselves, they make the whole story more compelling.

It turns out there was another possible reason I found the scene so affecting, which came up during an improv workshop with Stella Duffy. The group had to stand in the circle, say their name, and a fact about themselves (and later, a lie). The point that came out of it was that the facts we remembered were the ones that had "specificity", i.e. the ones that provided an interesting nugget of information to hold on to.

So everyone remembered that Jaane had eaten hamburgers all week, or that Olesia like white clothes with red detail, or that the man I saw earlier that morning was Peruvian. So perhaps that's why I still remember the chunky kit kat line from Queer As Folk, even now.