I joined the party late! I just joined the Writing Cooperative today, and that’s only 2 or 3 months after I found my writing voice. I’ve been reading your article a couple of times, and I still struggle because I find something lacking in this whole discussion…
“In the end, isn’t it about giving readers a different perspective? About sharing a sliver of your experience that might give your readers insight?”
This is so true, it really is. But the best stories help people to reach into their emotions, and confront their own emotions, values and even principles. I am a proponent of storytelling in the workplace or in the public space, even when using Powerpoint slides, to get a message across that isn’t just about facts and figures, but a narrative. That gives readers a different perspective, but it doesn’t force them to confront themselves, or make them want to change.
A good presentation or story is not a good news article. News tell us what we need to know, but the best journalists are supposed to try to keep their own bias out of what they write. That’s why newspapers don’t make good storytelling grounds. With that comparison, the emotional appeal of a story is so important, and cannot be downplayed. That is the mark of storytelling, that is the mark of losing ourselves in stories, where we relate to the author, where we try to help our audience to relate themselves to our feelings and emotions, whether fiction or non-fiction. A good tale always has these elements to help people to relate.
And when people relate, that’s where they start buying in, that’s where change can start to happen. So if we want to write to impact others, we need to look at how we relate to our own stories, and how others will then relate. If it’s something we’ll never really relate to, it won’t make much of a difference, and we will always wonder why our readers just don’t seem to get what we’re saying.
I would say, we tell stories, we write, to give our readers an emotional stake in what we have to say.
Thank you for a great article that really reminds us that we will make an impact with our stories, wherever we choose to tell those stories!
