Writer’s Digest did a piece titled, “10
Things Shakespeare Can Teach us About Writing Thrillers.” The ten tips actually
help with any genre. Shakespeare was a great writer and a suburb storyteller.
It’s the combination that makes him world renown nearly 400 years after his
death. In his day, he was not a literary figure; he was the equivalent of a prime time
screenwriter. Shakespeare wrote to fill theaters with paying audiences. (Somewhere
around forty people depended on his plays for their livelihood.)
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| Populist or Elitist? |
One of my
favorite writer quotes comes from Raymond Chandler; “It might reasonably be said
that all art at some time and in some manner becomes mass entertainment, and
that if it does not it dies and is forgotten.”
Shakespeare is remembered
because he aimed for mass entertainment. Shakespeare’s appeal to the general public is what makes
these 10 writing tips powerful. All of them have to do with the storytelling
side of his great talent. From an artistic standpoint, he was an unbelievably gifted
wordsmith, but craft alone will not make a writer immortal.
Nor, quite frankly,
will storytelling divorced of good writing. Just ask Harold Robbins.
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