3 Ways to Reinvigorate Older Stories
Easy opportunities to keep your stories relevant.
Writing on Medium can feel a bit chaotic at times as there’s pressure to write stories quickly to ensure you keep your followers engaged and your readership up. Some writers are able to crank out multiple stories a day, so they’re constantly writing, publishing, and then moving on to the next story.
But what about those old stories? The ones that maybe didn’t perform stellar right off the bat and you felt deserved some more love and attention.
They don’t have to necessarily fall into the abyss of the internet never to be read again. Here are some ways to keep those older stories alive and well.
1. Link old stories to relevant current events
I recently published a story about the climate crisis and how we essentially have two paths before us that would lead to either climate destruction or climate rehabilitation.
When I saw that a policy paper had been released that detailed the existential risks that human civilization faces in the year 2050 if we don’t rapidly decarbonize, I saw that as a great opportunity to tweet about my story showing that we still have a brief window in which to try to stabilize the climate and avoid these catastrophic risks.
By doing so, I was able to make this older story relevant to current events and bring new attention to it.
Anytime you read about some event in the news or perhaps a research article, think about whether the stories you’ve written in the past could be utilized to help provide a valuable point of view on the topic.
2. Embed old stories within new stories
This tip is definitely the easiest of the three and should honestly be utilized anytime you write a new story.
You’ll first want to find one of your older stories that you think is related enough to the new story you’re writing about.
Once you’ve finished writing the draft of your new story, copy the link of the older story and paste it at the bottom of your new story. Then, hit ENTER and a picture of your older story should be displayed (you can check out the end of this story for an example).
You can also embed links to older stories throughout your new story (as you may have noticed in the first tip), which can be a more subtle way of attracting new readers to these stories, but just don’t go overboard with the links!
3. Utilize old stories to make new stories more powerful and valuable to the reader
This last tip is useful if you’re trying to work on a larger narrative or theme in your writing, such as the importance of being environmentally friendly. Using this as an example, you might have multiple stories about recycling, using energy-efficient appliances, taking public transportation over driving, etc., and then use those stories to help craft your new story that builds upon these elements. You can use the link embedding feature mentioned in the previous tip to do so.
To see how this might look, I’ve crafted an example statement to be used in a new story that utilizes pseudo links to some older stories:
There are several ways that you can be more environmentally friendly including recycling, buying energy-efficient appliances, and taking public transportation, when possible.
This not only can give new life to your older stories, but will help you craft more powerful arguments and create stories that offer more value to the reader by providing them with additional material to read.
What strategies have you used to give older stories new life?
Share below in the comments!
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