
The Mary Marantz Show Streaming and the Future of Storytelling in a Distracted World
Jan 23, 2026
14:48
In this solo episode of The Mary Marantz Show, Mary sits down to tackle the effects of "streaming" on storytelling in an ever-increasingly DISTRACTED world. Referencing a recent interview where Matt Damon said Netflix asks its creators to recap the plot four or FIVE TIMES throughout a movie because they know audiences are also scrolling on their phones, Mary argues that we have, quite literally, LOST the plot. And that ACCOMODATING distraction is the wrong direction to go. Instead, we as creators (especially writers), need to keep our audience glued to the edge of their seat. And we DO that by making the Reader an ACTIVE Participant. Something Mary goes into in great detail about in her BRAND NEW guide… The MM Writing Prompts! Brought to you by The Writing Prompts from the desk of Mary Marantz: https://jmthestore.com/products/the-writing-prompts In this Episode: *The age of streaming is CHANGING how we tell stories *What we LOSE when we accomodate DISTRACTION *Spoonfeeding your audience diminishes the transfomative work of stortyelling *Why we NEED stories for SURVIVAL and are WIRED to crave them *What "Compression Culture" is robbing us of *True change ONLY happens when we actively ENGAGE with the material *How to QUICKLY make your reader an ACTIVE participant *Distracted work will never be your legacy, DEEP work will *… and SO much more! Other Links: Lisa Cron - Wired for Story Compression Culture is Making You Stupid and Uninteresting by Maalvika
