We’re big fans of non-fiction books over here at Dangerous Words Copywriting. They’re great for learning the skills you need to take your business to the next level. There are some great non-fiction books that teach you how to improve your content writing. However, we think that reading fiction books is a great way to become a better content writing.
Why Does Reading Fiction Improve Your Content Writing Skills
Fiction is great. It helps you to see the world from different perspectives and explore the human experience. Fiction reading also teaches you a lot of skills that you can apply to writing content for your coaching business. The most important one is storytelling.
What Is Storytelling
Storytelling in the context of content writing is about communicating information in an engaging way. People reading your content will become invested in the content and want to keep reading. Just like in fiction writing, storytelling in content writing requires:
- Interesting and relatable characters
- An impactful problem
- Pressure to solve the pressure (a ticking clock or serious consequences)
- Additional conflict while implementing the plan (optional)
- A satisfying resolution
- A lesson learned (optional)
This framework can be applied to examples, case studies, and entire pieces of content to make them more engaging. Rather than just telling your readers the results, you take them along the journey with you. They experience the highs and lows along with the subject of your content (the protagonist) experienced and are invested in the outcome.
It also provides you with the perfect opportunity to add more value to your readers because you can show how the protagonist’s mindset changed throughout the journey. You can also demonstrate common issues that may arise and how to troubleshoot them through storytelling.
How to Practice Storytelling to Improve Your Content Writing
Just reading fiction books will passively improve your content writing skills over the course of years. Actively practicing storytelling is the best way to significantly improve your content writing skills in a short period of time. You can do this by writing content or analysing fiction stories – a combination of the two is the quickest way to improve your storytelling skills.
Practice Storytelling by Analysing Fiction Stories
Next time you read a fiction story, analyse what worked and what didn’t so you can learn from what you read. Ask yourself some of the following things:
- Why did you care or not care about the main character achieving their goals?
- What emotional reactions (if any) did you have to any setbacks and successes?
- What made the main character likeable?
- What made the character unlikeable?
- Where did the story’s pacing speed up or slow down? What effect did it have on your enjoyment of the story?
- How did the story engage your imagination?
- Where did you lose interest in the story (if any)? Why?
- What are some examples of the author demonstrating something instead of simply telling you?
- What are some examples of the author choosing to prioritise just telling you something rather than just showing?
- Were there parts that made you chuckle? Why?
Practice Storytelling by Writing Content
Practice storytelling in your writing to improve your skills. It is perfectly okay if you want to practice privately before you start including it in your public content. Try writing something at least every second day so you can build the skill.
Start by writing simple stories about things that you have learned. It could be something like a lesson that you learned “embarrassingly” late in life or a seemingly simple lesson that had a big impact. Each time you write a story, try something new. Experiment with adding a Mission Impossible pace to a story. Try writing a story that engages all 5 senses at least once during the story. Experiment with a story that is written as if you were telling a friend over a cocktail. Try another one as if you are sharing an anecdote with an important professional contact.
These experiments will probably be bad. That’s okay, that is what happens when you exaggerate an aspect of storytelling. You are just trying out different things so you can see where these techniques work and where they don’t.
Every time you write a practice story, read the story back and identify at least one thing that you did really well and one thing that you would like to improve. If you read the story back and really don’t like anything about it, pick one thing that you could change to make a big improvement to the story. Then change it. Identify what the change added or removed that made the story better.
Analysing your writing helps you to improve faster because you are considering the impact of different writing choices. In time, you’ll see the tools you are practicing will spill into your content writing, even before you make the decision to use storytelling in your content writing.
A Combination of Analysing and Writing
Combining analysing fiction stories with practicing storytelling will help you to improve your storytelling skills at lightspeed. Read a piece of fiction (maybe a short story or poem) and analyse it using some of the questions in the example above.
Then, pick one thing you really liked about the story and try to replicate it when writing your own story. It could be something like how the author uses nostalgic imagery to describe the way the character is feeling. It could be something like how the author incorporated reminders about the stakes to keep you engaged with the main character’s purpose.
This will help you to identify and practice storytelling techniques. Continue to incorporate them into your writing where appropriate.