Shoresy’s lessons in storytelling: “F**k plot”
Why B2B communicators should focus on character development
Shoresy, now streaming on Hulu, is the best show you’ve never heard of. It’s a Canadian sitcom about a group of players for the Sudbury Blueberry Bulldogs, one of four teams in the Northern Ontario Senior Hockey Organization, an amateur adult hockey league that the characters affectionately refer to as “senior whale shit hockey.”
It is, bar none, one of the funniest shows on television.
Shoresy’s humor is typified by juvenility, with rapid fire, rat-a-tat-tat dialogue and multi-layered jokes that land not just across a single scene, but across multiple episodes, and even across entire seasons. The jokes1 range from insults of youth players’ moms to savage roasts of the hockey players themselves. Underneath side-splitting humor is heart — Shoresy’s stunningly emotional journey wouldn’t be out of place in an Emmy-winning drama.
Jared Keeso, the creator and executive producer, also plays the titular Shoresy. Ultimately, the first four seasons of the show is about the arc of a man giving everything to the only thing he knows and loves — hockey — and then grappling with an identity crisis when he’s forced to move beyond the lone pursuit to which he’s devoted his body, mind, and soul.
In the most recent season, the owner of the Sudbury Blueberry Bulldogs tells Shoresy about how she struggled after the death of her mother. She explains that she had to “find somewhere to put her love” that she couldn’t give to her mother, so she put her love into the hockey team. For anyone who’s ever lost anything or anyone they cared about, the sentiment is a gut wrenching reminder of how hard it can be to move forward in the face of grief.
That this scene appeared in the same episode with the adult hockey players teaching 18-year-old high school graduates an absurdly silly choreographed dance so one of them can win over his crush is a testament to Keeso’s ability to deftly balance tonal swings. It also reminds me of some sage advice from Mr. Robot creator and director Sam Esmail:
“Fuck plot”
Characters are the people who populate a story. The plot is the main event of the story, what those people do. When Esmail says fuck plot2, what he means is that the best stories, like Shoresy, focus on the arcs of the characters — how they grow and change because of the plot.
Character is something that writers for B2B/B2G brands, myself included, often ignore. Most case studies you read from startups are plot-heavy, centered on the problem a customer had, how the brand’s technology works, how the technology solves the problem — everything but an emotional exploration of the user themselves.
Watching Shoresy, alternating between laughing so hard that my abs hurt and getting teary-eyed at the displays of emotion, made me realize that a fundamental element of good storytelling — character arcs that make readers feel something — should not be limited to fiction. Startups, too, can show readers how a user changed and grew (character) rather than solely focusing on how technology solves users’ problems (plot).
Communicators like me are wont to say we’re storytellers. So the next time I write a case study, I plan to dig deeply on not just how a startup’s technology improved the day-to-day work of the customer (like the plot of a show), but I also plan to focus on who that customer is, how they changed and grew, what they felt, and why technology mattered for them personally and professionally.
I’ll refocus on character because I am a storyteller. And Jared Keeso reminded me that a story lacking in character isn’t really a story at all.
Shoutout to Emily Ann Hill for providing feedback and editing this essay. Check out Junetail Creative to see how Emily can help improve your writing and, for small businesses, develop an unforgettable brand experience.
The best insults of youth players' moms; a deep dive into the Aqua Dump; Huh?, my favorite running bit; an amateur reporter roasting Shoresy, giving him a taste of his own medicine; and in general, the hockey players (also known as sluts) acting like complete idiots.