Writers sometimes make fatal assumptions like these:
- Readers want the answers that the author has discovered.
- Truths that are self-evident to the author should be self-evident to readers.
- The writing style we learned in school should be acceptable for most readers.
When is an assumption fatal?
We have a “story fatality” any time someone chooses not to read our story from beginning to end.
What is actually true?
- We live in an information age where a Googled question returns almost all the answers people want. So the only answers they’re desperate for are a scant few that they’ve frantically searched but not found.
- People have their own truths based on their culture, environment, and education. Ask ten people if they believe God exists and why, and you’ll be amazed how different those ten answers are. Chances are, none will exactly match what you believe.
- We no longer can depend on proper grammar and great sentences to hold attention. As soon as a story becomes boring, today’s audience will quickly flip channels, either with a television’s remote control or by closing the book and going to something else.
Where can we go to learn what works?
- The top priority: listen to what God is saying to your heart. The Holy Spirit is your best guide to take you from where you are to where he wants you to be. Improving your message and refining focus on your audience should be a lifelong process.
- How-to-write books, classes, and conferences are helpful only when what you learn is practiced in your daily writing. Keep doing the work with a passion to improve, and your communication skills will keep getting better.
- Know that what works for others will not work for you. If the claims of success seminars were true, everybody would be getting rich. Instead, most attendees are still looking for the magic that they’ll never find, because they’re looking in the wrong places. What will work? Your story.
The answer is found in your story.
Our constant challenge is to identify what our story is and then learn to tell it so others want to listen. Garrison Keillor has said we don’t know how to tell a story until after we’ve told it a dozen times. What’s he saying? The process begins with finding your story and telling it for the first time. And it should keep getting better after that.
During the Sharpen Your Skills classes on October 27 and 28, we’ll be talking about this and more.
