Creating Connection through Storytelling

The best way to get someone interested in your writing is to connect that writing to something they care about. 

And what’s the one thing that every single person cares about, no matter who they are and where they’re from? 

Themselves. 

Yep! We’re all selfish, self-centered people. That’s not a bad thing. In fact, it can be very liberating as a writer to accept your selfish goals and lean into them. We can only write when we know ourselves and our true desires. 

But we are not writing only for ourselves - we are writing for other humans. That requires us to offer some value to the reader. In business writing, that’s our products or services, or some piece of advice or idea based on what we do for a living. (Click here for my free download! Get 20% off using code LINKEDIN today!) In creative writing, it’s offering some form of emotion, entertainment or release. Without offering value, no one is going to want to read what you are writing.

Or, more realistically, no one is going to keep reading what you’ve written. If you don’t hook people and draw them in, it’s very easy for the reader to swipe away or put down the book and pick out something else to consume from the massive infinite content cavern from the internet. We can all think of some influencer or newsletter who lost our interest over time. 

How do you sustain attention? Through stories. The best way to connect with other humans is to tell human stories. That’s how you keep people coming back, because they can see themselves within the stories and want to keep reading. 

Telling vs. Telling a Story

Let’s look at a couple of different examples of writing through telling vs. telling a story. 

Here’s a perfectly well written sentence:

There is nothing more unfathomably sad than the loss of a child.

Simple, declarative, to the point. Maybe the adverb is a bit lazy, but that’s ok. The sentence sets the stakes for whatever will come next. It communicates the writer’s ideas quite effectively. If it’s the opening of a book, you’re probably in for some heavy stuff! 

Now, check this out:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Well! Shit! With six words, the sentence offers a roller coaster of emotions (forgive the cliche) and a deeply personal connection to the reader. The sentence isn’t at all clear in the mechanics of the ideas, demanding questions from the reader: Who is selling the shoes? What happened to the baby? Is the baby ok? Probably not, right? 

But what it lacks in details, it makes up in evoking a clear emotional connection in the reader. I still can’t read that sentence without a deep pain filling my chest. Whatever comes after this sentence, I’m going to want to read. How can you not?

Let’s use an expanded example that’s a bit more relevant to modern writing:

Mo Jarmon always wore two things: one was his father’s old wristwatch. The other was a smile. 

Mo wore the watch backwards, with the face on the inside of his wrist. If you asked him why, his smile would grow larger and he’d say it was how his father wore it. He'd tell you that one of his earliest memories was hanging off his father’s arm, looking up at the face of the watch, as he was slowly pulled up to eye level.  

What he wouldn’t tell you was that his father didn’t give him the watch. Mo found it at the back of an old desk in his parent’s guest bedroom, as he was moving them out of their house into a nursing home. Mo asked his father for the watch, and he said yes, with the same puzzled look he’d always had whenever Mo asked him for something.

See, Mo was a middle child and rarely had the chance to ask for much. He learned quickly in life that requests were for other people, mostly his older sister and younger brother. He also learned the best way to get along was to smile and stay out of the way. 

The watch was always on his wrist, and the smile was always on his face. They remained - through all his success - for a simple reason: Mo did not believe he could ask for what he wanted. The watch and the smile were not markers of a happy childhood, or a warm and helpful personality, but instead of a deep fear that he was not enough, and never would be. 

If this was a fiction story, the writer could then tell Mo's journey towards self-actualization and fulfillment, or a possible descent further into insecurity. If this was a nonfiction article or book, maybe one on leadership or self help, the writer could go on to talk about how we all are Mo on some days and how everyone struggles with articulating what they need in life. The writer could bring in further evidence to illustrate how doubt plagues the best leaders, as well as advice on how to avoid the trap Mo found himself in. 

There are many ways to take this story, because it makes us want to keep reading. We want to know what comes next. The story makes us care about Mo, because we see he is human with very human challenges, and we recognize our own challenges within his. 

We want to keep reading, and deepen the connection, because we want to know the end of his story. It reflects our own deep existential desires: We want to know what the end of our own story might be. It might be sad, it might be happy, or (more likely) some combination of all these things and more. 

Either way, though, if the writer is skilled, the story about Mo or Luke Skywalker or Huck Finn headed down the river or the other Wes Moore, keeps us reading. We want to deepen our connection with that person in the story - real or not. 

The uncertainty in storytelling, and our desire to know what will happen, mirrors our own desire to know what will happen in our own lives. There’s no better way to get a reader hooked.