Now I have a confession to make. I really didn’t want to talk about roles and hats and value. I wanted to talk about story. But I didn’t want to talk about story directly. Instead, I wanted to illustrate it by structuring my entire presentation as a story.

You’ve seen that with each of the headings, I labeled a component of the story. I began with a problem and a yearning, and moved through a series of catalysts that brought about change, ultimately leading to a crisis point that presented a crossroads, and finally an epiphany and a resolution.

Whatever role we play, our core deliverable, our most important contribution will probably still remain the written word. For the most part, we are writers. I said at the beginning that many organizations feel that “anyone can write.” When you focus only on grammar and style, on rhythm and diction, on correct punctuation and format, then ultimately it’s true: any literate person with a college degree can do a good enough job to pass off as a competent writer. But good writing is more than the text. Good writing is story. Story is the magic formula that makes everything work.

When we think of story, we often think of novels and fiction. Conflict, change, and resolution. But if you loosen up the definition of story a bit, you can see its application everywhere. When a user encounters a problem and attempts to find a solution, that’s story. Good stories also involve the element of change, but even flat stories (without much change in the characters) are still stories.

When we write blog posts, or marketing material, or give presentations, it’s easy to see how to implement story. You paint a picture of the problem that you or the user are up against, the complexities and attempts to solve the problem, and finally the resolution.

But writing documentation also follows a similar process. You get inside your users’ heads and think about the problems they’re trying to solve. Not only the problems they’re trying to solve, but the problems they’ll run into with the application as they’re trying to solve the problems. The solutions you find and present will provide the ending to the user’s story.

You have all the elements of the story in technical communication: motivation, conflict, change, and resolution. It’s not just a model for fiction writers. In fact, Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks have just written an entire book called Storytelling the User Experience. Whitney sent me an advanced copy that I’m reading now, and it’s fascinating. Early in the book, she quotes Ira Glass, host of This American Life, to explain the power of story:

Until you hear a story and you can understand that experience, you don’t know what you are talking about. There has to be a person’s story that you hear, where finally you get a picture in your head of what it would be like to be that person. Until that moment, you know nothing, and you deal with the information you are given in a flawed way.

Not only will our communication be ineffectual without story, without understanding our users’ stories, we won’t be able to know what to communicate.

Carry the story mindset with you in any situation — not just writing the documentation, but in designing the user interface, in creating test scenarios, in presenting training to users — and you will see your writing take on a whole new life and energy. You will become a better writer, for sure. But more important, when you involve story, you will also become better at whatever role you play.

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Here’s an example. Listen to this two minute clip from the latest podcast from This American Life.

Are you hooked? The question — why are American cars still not as good as foreign cars? — draws me in.

You could break this topic down into a typical story structure and rephrase it. For years America has tried to match Japanese quality when it comes to cars. They’ve studied Japanese business models, routines and patterns in plants, and have even initiated programs to even replicate the Japanese culture of teamwork in American plants. While these efforts helped move companies like GM forward a little, GM still went bankrupt. It seems that whatever GM tried, it couldn’t adopt the Japanese model.

One could approach the topic like that. But isn’t all the story inherent in the question too?

When you’re looking for stories, rather than look for conflicts or journeys of some kind, instead try asking questions until you come across an intriguing question. Chances are the intriguing question will lead you down the path of a story.

Blog Sponsors

• 3Rabbitz book
• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree

Three guys who go by the names Professor So and So, Jojobean and YeaWhatever spend part of each day running elaborate cons on Internet scammers. They consider themselves enforcers of justice, even after they send a man 1400 miles from home, to the least safe place they can bait him: the border of Darfur. The three self-made enforcers tell Ira their story. For more on what they did, along with photos, maps and phone recordings, go here. (29 and 1/2 minutes)

In short, Ira Glass tells the story of how some “baiters” returned a con on one of the Nigerian email con men. It’s hilarious at first, and then becomes somewhat dark and unethical.

While you’re downloading podcasts, be sure to include Alistair Christie’s podcast on Virtual Machines — very useful if you’re writing installation documents.

Just being in the same room with an Iraqi makes him start trembling and thinking of ways to remove him (for example, by “choking him out”).

Sam recognizes the irrationality of his fear. After he enrolls in college, he decides to join a Muslim Student Association (MSA). After several months of attending the MSA’s meetings and activities, he develops a close friendship with a Muslim. The friendship completely changes him.

Sam’s experience shows us one way of dealing with our fears: immersion in the very thing we fear. The producer’s larger vision (of all the acts in the show) is to explore battles with inner demons.

Reflections

Sam’s strategy might work well for physical fears, perhaps, but what about more abstract fears? For example, my wife is terrified of snakes (not sure why). If she were to watch Anaconda she would probably start hyperventilating and run from the room. Following Sam’s therapeutic technique, one way of overcoming her fears might be to immerse her in a cage of snakes.

But what if your fear is more abstract — fear of failure, fear of humiliation, fear of not becoming anything, fear of unemployment, fear of death? I’m not sure if the same strategy would apply.

At any rate, the therapist in the Devil in Me episode recommended to Sam that he approach his fears with a more gradual introduction of the thing he fears, rather than complete and immediate immersion.

Question for Readers

What do you fear the most? How do you deal with that fear?