It’s Important to Tell Our Readers a Story

by Beth Vogt @BethVogt

“Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.”Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011), first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction
Let’s just be honest with each other, writer-friends: We complicate this whole writing process. We devote a lot of time and energy on crafting quirky characters and witty dialogue and vivid setting and layering in symbolism and metaphors. 
But Beth, you say, we need all that stuff to write a good story. What’s the problem?
The problem is that in the process of doing all that work, we forget the most important thing: the story we wanted to tell our readers in the first place.
When we clear away all the do’s and don’ts, all the tricks of the writing trade and the must-haves, we writers are storytellers. 
We can laugh at the overused opening lines of “Once upon a time”or “It was a dark and stormy night,”but there’s a part of our heart that leans forward at the sound of those words.
Why? 
Because they promise a story.
Story is powerful. A story engages our hearts and minds, evoking emotions and memories, allowing us to re-experience time past or experience something we thought was beyond our grasp. Stories heal and bring hope. Stories invite us into a unsolved mysteries or cultures. Stories cause us to question who we are or reaffirm the values we lost sight of.
As novelists, it’s imperative to always remember the story we started to tell – or, as it’s said: to remember why we started. 
We started because we wanted to tell a story. As we move from fast draft to final edits, from chapter one to The End, let’s remember to tell our readers a story … the story that sparked our imagination and poured out as words onto the page.
What story are you telling your readers?
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Award-winning author Beth K. Vogt believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “Never.” Having authored nine contemporary romance novels and novellas, Beth's first women's fiction novel with Tyndale House Publishers, Things I Never Told You, released May 2018. Moments We Forget, book two in the Thatcher Sisters Series, releases May 2019. An established magazine writer and former editor of the leadership magazine for MOPS International, Beth blogs for Novel Rocket and The Write Conversation and also enjoys speaking to writers group and mentoring other writers. Visit Beth at bethvogt.com.