A small handful of almonds seemed like a good snack to tide me over until dinner. Yet the first almond I thoughtlessly tossed into my mouth seemed to have an odd texture, so I spit it out. Almonds have little legs?

Almost instantly my tongue burned with the pungent cilantro sensation that gives the stink bug its nonscientific name. So I did what any right-thinking man would do. I got primal and yelled for my wife.

Competition for mindshare is fierce and approaches from every angle. Yet even in this environment, louder is not always better.

Chris ran into the kitchen and asked what had happened. By then my mouth was wide open, with my tongue sticking straight out in a desperate attempt to isolate the burn. No matter what, I thought, I can’t let my tongue touch any other part of my mouth.

“I ate a stink bug,” I calmly explained, which to her sounded like, “ahh aaey ah hhinh uugh.”

“What?”

I took this as an invitation for volume: “AHH AAEY AH HHINH UUGH!!!”

It wasn’t getting through, so I yelled even louder, to no avail. Frustrated, I finally summoned my inner mime, pointing to the bag of almonds, then to my mouth, then to the slimy brown lump on the countertop.

“Oh, I get it. You ate a stink bug,” she said. “Gross. What do you want me to do about it?” Good point.

In a constantly changing media landscape, the struggle isn’t even to be understood, but to be noticed at all. Fierce competition for mindshare approaches from every angle. Yet even in this environment, louder is not always better.

From the writer’s wing of storytelling, the challenges have never seemed more bewildering. The online venue almost always demands shorter copy. Since “shorter” is a discipline and discipline usually clarifies, that constraint can be a blessing in disguise — perhaps in the way ab crunches are fun. Or so I’m told.

At any rate, it’s not enough to keep the overall copy length under control. People reading on a website — or worse, a smart phone — want simpler, shorter sentences.

It works. Sometimes. Not always.

Or we can present our words in other ways, among them:
• Extensive
• Bullet
• Points

There is a growing emphasis on “SEO” writing. SEO, for those nonresidents of Nerdia, stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” It means getting onto the first page of search engine results. Half the game is techy and requires things like embedded keywords. But the other half involves littering your copy with as many hot search terms as possible.

Oh, that reminds me: sex, cheerleaders, football, weight loss, Obama and Angry Birds. And sex.

It’s all about building exposure through ad hoc connections. Consider this column. Imagine the cross-demographic appeal to either fetishists or foodie cheapskates scouring the Internet for recipes involving “putrid cilantro.” This thing’s going viral. And by the way, would it kill you to like me on Facebook?

Or maybe we panic just a little much. It’s very easy in the face of uncertainty.

Truth is, great storytelling has always had competition. For our forebears uncounted generations ago, the challenge was to keep the tribe listening around the campfire when there were mastodons to hunt into extinction. Today, the competition is everywhere in multiplying forms and platforms. But with it, the opportunities multiply as well.

Yet even in the crowded virtual marketplace of today’s ideas, simply raising your voice rarely works — any more than a shouting match passes for intelligent debate or yelling about a stink bug gets the message across. Great stories are spoken with grace, written with eloquence, illustrated with beauty or sometimes even whispered with private glee. A great story often savors the detours, in the way that a driver forgoes the crowded freeway for the pure joy of a country road.

In the end, the format changes more than the inner form — and with it an unspoken promise between storyteller and audience: “Give this a look and I’ll try to make it worth your while.” Keeping that promise involves more than bullet points and diminished language. Like a good meal, a great story needs seasoning, pace and the surprising tang of unexpected ingredients.

But watch the cilantro. It can be a little strong.