New Writers, Have You Wondered Why No One Bothers to Read Your Stories?
Maybe, you need to let us get to know you better
Have you ever asked yourself why your stories get so few views?
It’s simple if you’re a newbie, and if you’ve been around for eight months to a year and written five to seven articles, I’d consider you a newbie too.
The reason you get so few reads is simple: You’re the New Kid on the Block, and no one knows you from having read any of your previous stories.
Did you know 47,000 stories went up daily in March 2021, according to Linda Caroll? So, yes, it’s very easy to get lost in the tsunami of stories.
But there is a way that you can stand out among all the stories and writers.
So what’s the solution?
Write a personal story that lets people get to know you a lot better like my brother and Medium newbie Michael L Butler just did with his story, “How My Buddy And I Snuck Into a Laker Game To See an NBA Historic Moment.”
Then write another personal story and another one to let readers get to know you better as well as the brand of coffee they drink in the morning. You want them to know you so that they will read your story with their morning coffee.
People will read you’re five to seven-minute story once they’ve read some of your other stories and you’ve read their stories, and you’ve gotten to know each other from your stories and connected through the comments.
So put some relevant dialogue into your story. Let readers know how you think and make it focus on how you react in the key moments in your story.
Turn yourself into a character of a short story and make sure your story has a plot that starts with a key moment and builds up to a climax.
Make sure we see and feel what you experienced.
Be vulnerable. Share your feelings.
Tell a story with plot structure
Give us details to take us from point A to B to C to D to E in your story. Make Point A a triggering moment and don’t rush us to get to your climax at Point D and don’t leave the climax moment out of the story, either.
Tell us what your experience meant to you too. That’s Point E.
This is how we’ll get to know you, and if you’re wondering what points B and C are, these are known as the progressive complication or rising action.
Those events between Point A and D to build suspense to the climax.
Yes, be literary in how you tell a personal story. Trust me, it works for Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver, and it will work with your stories too.
Write a good headline
Oh, I forgot: Make sure you open your story first by telling us the Who, What, and Wow in the headline. So many headlines on Medium are bad because they don’t have these three elements to make readers click on your story.
Don’t let your story die in the morgue of bad titles.
And if your title lacked a who, what wow, I give you permission to go back and revise it, so that readers don’t keep scrolling past your story. You want them to read your story on the East Coast while you sleep on the West Coast.
(FYI: Your story will also get scrolled past when people look at your profile or don’t open backlinks at the end of your stories. So open up your story, click the three dots at the bottom, click on edit, change the title, and hit publish.)
Check your stats and revise
Another thing you can revise is the beginning of your story. If you don’t open hard in that first or second paragraph, what do you think happens, my friend? A reader will STOP READING your story and move on to someone else’s story.
It happens all the time. We all do this. So don’t be surprised if people do it to your story. I consider my job to make people CARE about events in my story.
You can tell if people don’t like your story by looking at your stats. If you had a high number of views and low reads, this means they opened your story, but they didn’t read it long enough for Medium to calculate it as being a “read.”
Here’s an example of a “low read” story by me I thought would do better:
Maybe, my readers didn’t like the combination of football and love like I thought they would. Sometimes, all good stories get passed over by readers.
Seriously, though, if you feel more pain and stress being around your partner than love and joy, you should read Rodney Peete and Holly Robinson’s story.
See what I’m doing? Don’t give up on a story that adds value to your readers.
The key to a personal story
Emphasize YOU in your story. If you’re writing about coaching against a former NBA player in a middle school game like did in a recent story, be sure to make the focus be on YOU.
How did you feel? Did you out-coach a four-time NBA champion? What did you do at the critical moments of the story?
Do what creative writing teachers tell us: Show not tell.
Give us the critical moments and forget the rest of the details.
Take your time polishing your story. You might have one chance to make a good impression on readers to make us read another story from you.
Final Thought
I’m driving my point home here with a story:
Tel us that time you were teaching and farted in front of your class… but it was a SBD (Silent But Deadly), and no one knew you did it and your second or sixth-grade students pointed fingers at who they suspected farted.
That was me.
Or write about the time you and your wife were buying condoms at Rite-Aid and a student of yours was in line behind you…and you started freaking out.
That was me.
You got the idea. Tell us about yourself, give us your best personal story about sneaking into a Los Angeles Laker game to view a historic moment in an NBA playoff game that you’ve never forgotten, and then, I’ll read your story.
Especially if it’s written by my brother.
Thanks for reading my story
Check out my brother’s story or my story coaching against Kurt Rambis:
Or check out my YouTube video on a writing problem.