Summary: Many marketers, writers, and consultants mistakenly hunt for “the story” in every piece of content they come across—even when the material is plainly not narrative. Technical data, API responses, or machine outputs aren’t failed stories waiting to be rescued. They just are what they are. Knowing when to stop searching for drama in data isn’t cynicism—it’s clarity.
Chasing Ghosts: When There’s No Story to Tell
Let’s say you’re given a JSON response:
{"error":"Insufficient balance"}.
That’s it. No characters, no motivations, no twist mid-way or feel-good ending—just a clear signal that a transaction could not happen due to lack of funds. Suppose someone hands you this and says, “Rewrite this as engaging content,” or worse, “Find the story.” Here’s the hard truth: there isn’t one.
And there doesn’t need to be.
Pushing to extract narrative meaning from purely functional technical output is like trying to read poetry from your toaster. The error message serves a transactional function. It’s not a plot device. It exists to inform, not entertain. Mistaking these roles leads to miscommunication, confused messaging, and worst of all, credibility loss.
Why Marketers Fall Into This Trap
We’re trained to look for “engagement.” We’re told that storytelling moves the needle. Emotional resonance equals buying behavior—fine. That’s true when your material has human decisions, stakes, conflicting desires, or a goal worth investing in. But error outputs from software services? That’s not where you find emotion. That’s where you meet logic at the speed of code.
Ask yourself: are you adding clarity or just noise when turning this status message into performance art? Are you clearer or just louder?
Knowing When to Say “There’s No Story” Is a Sign of Professional Maturity
Being persuasive doesn’t mean spinning yarns from zeros and ones. It means knowing your medium and your audience. The audience here isn’t a reader looking for insight. It’s a developer, an analyst, or a backend engineer. What they need is confirmation: Is the transaction happening or not? Why or why not?
Trying to pull narrative from a JSON string derails the entire purpose. Instead, we must speak the correct language for the correct audience. Precision earns trust. Padding collapses it. Pros know when to push for story—and when to shut up and show the data.
Instead of Inventing Fiction, Provide Context
Still want to add value to that dry system message? Do this: provide context, not character arcs.
- What caused the insufficient balance? Bad planning? Pricing misalignment?
- What’s the risk of recurring failures? Downtime? Customer upset?
- How can users prevent it? Auto top-ups? Alert thresholds?
- Who needs to know this, and what should they do next?
By answering those, you’re not “telling a story”—you’re solving a real-world problem. That’s better than fiction. That’s useful.
Build Trust Through Restraint
Let’s apply some of Cialdini’s persuasion principles straight to this issue:
- Authority: You’re the adult in the room when you say, “No story here, and that’s OK.” Confidence grows from constraint.
- Commitment and Consistency: If you value clarity over fluff in your content, don’t betray that principle when you hit a dry patch.
- Reciprocity: Give users value by respecting their mental bandwidth. Don’t waste it.
And from Blair Warren: Let’s not pretend every technical message is an underdog story. People aren’t looking for a motivational arc—they’re looking for clarity. Confirm their suspicion that not everything must be “engaging.” Allay their fear of “missing something.” They’re not. The message is exact. The issue was insufficient balance. End of data.
The Skill? Knowing When to Stop
You show skill **not** by spinning more, but by carving less. Knowing when there’s no narrative to yank out of a message is leadership. In marketing, restraint is an act of power, not absence. It tells your audience: “I know what this is, and I’ll deal with it as it is—nothing more, nothing less.”
Want to be seen as a trusted voice? Learn to say:
“There is no story here, just an outcome. Let’s move forward.”
#ContentStrategy #TechnicalCommunication #MarketingMaturity #KnowYourAudience #SimpleWins #ClearOverClever
Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Steve Ding (T42j_xLOqw0)
