Fly Fishing Fellatio

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

Like Scientology, Fly Fishing is a religion I don’t entirely understand.

Practitioners rave about the sport with such exuberance that one wouldn’t be wrong in assuming that the trout perform fellatio on the fishermen upon capture.

Gone Fishing, Cole Schafer

Background

These were the first sentences of a recent piece about Cole’s fly fishing trip in the Great Smoky Mountains. The article isn’t really about fishing, it’s about enjoying the process—in whatever you’re doing. It’s a great message hidden inside a well-told story.

What makes it wonderful?

Can you read those sentences without bursting into laughter?

I’ve read them seven times now, and I’m still smirking.

This writing is wonderful for two reasons. First, it made me laugh. If a writer makes me chuckle before I’ve turned the first page, they’ve earned my attention. And usually the rest is worth reading.

Second, it was relatable—an important pattern we discuss over and over in these emails.

Luckily, I can't relate to the fisherman violating his catch. But I can relate to people who are obsessed with their hobbies.

We all know someone who treats his hobby like a religion. Hell, maybe we are those people. I’m guilty of belonging to the Church of CrossFit.

I’m sure you’ve heard about the internal struggle of a vegan CrossFitter. They never know which religion to tell you about first.

But it's not just CrossFit. I'm equally obsessed with golf. For my mom, it’s pickleball. For some people it’s birdwatching. For others it’s soccer, I mean, fútbol.

We all have our unconventional religions that others don’t entirely understand. That’s the familiar feeling Cole taps into with these wonderful words.

He’s making us laugh while connecting us to his experience by way of our own.

Let's get technical

Hmm, this one’s tough. I suppose Cole uses an analogy in the first sentence: Like Scientology, Fly Fishing is a religion I don’t entirely understand.

But analogy alone doesn’t make these words wonderful.

He also uses comedy, but that by itself doesn’t do the trick either.

It seems like the combination is what made the words wonderful. Cole hit me with a one-two punch of analogy and comedy. He gave me something I could relate to, and he made me laugh.

He stacked two tactics on top of each other and created momentum to keep me reading.

I often talk about one tactic per email, but one technique is rarely enough. In the wild, wonderful writing is a combination of techniques and tactics, stacked and staggered like a tall tower of Jenga blocks. One missing piece, and the tower turns to a pile.

So start stringing techniques together to see what you can create. The whole will be greater than the sum of its parts.

Happy writing,

Joe