The Importance of Story
I found out yesterday that one of my favorite authors, Steven Brust, is helping put together a conference specifically on story this summer. I am super excited about Narrativity, and am working to put all my ducks in a row in order to go. Because story is important. Story is important to all writers, and most creative people out there.
Story is not just important in fiction. It is important in non-fiction, including blog posts. It is important in game development, for video games, role playing games, board games. Story is what draws us in and keeps up coming back. Story is how we connect.
Way back when I was writing and personal finance blog and going to FinCon, I often attended panels about writing as a craft, and I often left disappointed. And that disappointment was because so little time was focused on story. Because honestly, story, your story, is why people will read your personal finance blog over someone else’s.
In the realm of personal finance, most people are going to be imparting the same kind of information – track your spending, spend less than you earn, get credit cards and student loans paid off, start a second job or a side hustle in order to make that happen sooner, etc. Even when it comes to things like investing strategies, where one person’s advice may not be exactly the same as another’s, most personal finance writers will agree on one thing – you should invest, and you should do it in the way that works for you. And since everyone out there is imparting the same wisdom, there is not an informational content reason for readers to choose one blog over another.
No, the reason readers choose a certain blog has everything to do with story. They connect with the story of the person writing the blog. They recognize themselves in that story. Personal finance is truly personal, and no one is likely to take advice seriously from someone who they do not relate to. So our job as bloggers is to tell our story. To help people relate.
This was the same for the pet bloggers. While there is a lot more variation in “best practices” when it comes to things about pets, most of us did not follow a blog because they only talked about rescued animals and hated everyone who purchased a dog from a breeder. We did not follow a blog because they only focused on clicker training. We followed blogs because we connected, because we wanted the story. We understood the story of the loss of a life long friend, of the search for a new love, of the difficulties in training a puppy, or a shy dog, or a reactive dog. We followed for the story.
And truthfully, that is one of the things I am struggling with as I work to get this blog back on track. What is the story I am telling? I am not just telling the story of our finances or of our pets (in fact, I write very little about either of those), so there is a lack of theme/direction to help guide me. A lot of this blog, when I started was parenting oriented, and that is no longer appropriate.
So what is the story I am trying to tell here? Is it just about things I am grateful for? Or political rants? But those things will all make more sense, be more relatable to any reader, if they connect to me, if they can understand my story. But how much of that do I share? Where does my story overlap with the stories of other people (like my daughter) whose stories I feel it is inappropriate for me to share?
Story is important. The subtitle of this blog is “A blog about one life on this planet”. That life is mine. This blog is meant to be my story. I hope you will stick around as I go through some growing pains to figure out exactly what that story is.
