Telling Great Stories Is Essential For Blogging Success — Here’s How To Do It

“Am I going to die, Dad?”

Those words came out of my mouth early Christmas Day after I fainted in a pool of my own blood.

He looked down at me, tears in his eyes, and said “ —

— wait a second...

Do you want to hear the rest of that story?

Too bad. This isn’t a post about my Christmas Day Emergency — it’s about how to tell good stories in your blog posts.

You know what’s the difference between writers who get a lot of views and writers who get next to none?

Good story-telling.

Great writers know how to tell a damn good story.

There’s a few necessary components to telling a good story, and I highlighted four of them down below for your viewing pleasure.

Let’s get into them.

1. Use The Three Act Structure (Hollywood Movies Do This)

As a twelve year old I read books about how to write good scripts. I was obsessed with movies and wanted to be a filmmaker one day. I was weird.

What I learned was all movies typically follow a 3-Act structure:

Act 1

Here you establish main characters, the setting, and have a turning point that changes the main character’s world, thrusting them into Act 2.

The turning point in Act 1 for Star Wars was when Luke Skywalker’s family gets killed by the Empire. At this point, there’s no turning back for Luke, and he starts his adventure learning about the force with Ben Kenobi.

Act 2

This is the longest Act. Characters encounter obstacles, villains foil the plans of the main characters, and our hero typically reaches a “lowest point” moment where all hope seems lost. Then a turning point in Act 2 thrusts the hero into the final Act of the story.

The lowest point for Luke Skywalker in Star Wars is when Ben Kenobi, his Jedi teacher, gets killed by Darth Vader. The turning point in Act 2 occurs after the heroes manage to escape the Death Star and make their way to the Rebel Base on Yavin 4.

Act 3

This Act is for resolution. The main character meets the villain for a final confrontation, and either emerges victorious or fails.

In Star Wars this is obviously when the Rebels blow up the Death Star. In this case, they were victorious in Act 3.

If you start looking at stories in your life from the “3-Act Structure” lens, then you’ll start finding stuff everywhere.

When did you have problems that you overcame?

How did you overcome them?

Chances are you can build a three-act structure around it in your blog post.

2. Hook The Audience In The First 3 Sentences

Great stories need to hook the reader from the start. I remember how Mission: Impossible 3 did this. The movie opens with a confrontation between Tom Cruise and the main villain of the movie.

It’s not just any confrontation— the villain’s threatening to kill Tom’s wife right in front of him.

The first 5 minutes of that movie was as visceral a movie opening as I’ve ever experienced, and it’s a good example of how to “hook” the audience.

There’s a few ways to hook the audience:

• Start tragically
• Be provocative
• Blow their mind

Each of these three hooking methods need their own explanation.

Start Tragically

Mission: Impossible 3 did this. It started with a visceral situation. Use sadness, high-stakes, and life-or-death situation when aiming to start your story off tragically.

Be Provocative

Pictures of hot girls as a blog post’s cover photo translate to an article getting more clicks. It’s sad, but true. I’m not saying you should do this, but being provocative is definitely a way to get clicks. Stating controversial opinions, doing controversial things, or going against the status quo in any form is a surefire way to be provocative.

Mainstream Media are absolute PROS at this.

For instance, sometimes when I post videos on LinkedIn I deliberately take my shirt off. I do that because I know many in the LinkedIn crowd will crap a brick and leave a comment telling me how shirtless videos aren’t what LinkedIn was made for.

Being provocative can really help drive engagement and clicks.

Blow Their Mind

State a ridiculous fact. Share a story of someone doing something awesome. Share a story of you doing something awesome. Anything you think could blow the audience’s mind is fair game.

This is sheer entertainment value. Style over substance. Use it sparingly.

3. Be Raw

A crucial aspect of a good story is to be raw and authentic. Hooking the audience gets their attention, but keeping their attention requires giving them a reason to keep scrolling.

To do that, we need to write things that most people are afraid to write.

Here’s a few things people are afraid to write about:

• Deeply traumatic events
• Mistakes they made
• Anything that makes them look stupid
• Anything that makes them look like a bad person

Basically you just need to start being brutally honest.

Most people are not brutally honest. Most people write barely readable stories because they’re too afraid to write anything that’ll make them look bad.

You can follow their lead, but just know it’ll be hard to write compelling stories that way. You need to bleed onto the page. This is EXCEEDINGLY important.

4. Use Twists, Turns, And Surprises

I’m not just talking about narrative twists and turns, I’m talking about stylistic twists and turns, too.

Yes, insert some surprises into your story, but I also want you to make your sentences snappy as hell.

If you read a blog post that was nothing but 4-line paragraph after 4-line paragraph for 6 minutes until the end, you’d be bored out of your mind.

GET SOME VARIETY IN THERE.

Use one-line paragraphs. Like this one.

Drop f-bombs.

EMPHASIZE words by capitalizing them.

Spell out how sounds sound. EEEEEEEEEK!!

Use short sentences. Like. These.

Use punctuation — it helps create mental pauses and restarts, like this. Read that last sentence again and make note of how the dash almost makes the sentence grind to a halt. Dashes, commas, periods, semicolons, and colons should all help with this.

The reason audiences typically love Han Solo the most from the original Star Wars movie is because we don’t know what he’s going to do. He’s a wild card. He’s a scoundrel. We’re not sure where his loyalties lie.

Keep audiences on their toes both in your story and in your style and they’ll keep reading until the very end.

Mix All Of These Together Into A Cocktail Of Narrative Awesomeness

These are the tips that work most for me.

Mix them all together to create something special.

I suggest working on your 3-Act structure first. Once you get that down, work hard on your “hooks,” then when you get that down, start working on being unbelievably raw in your articles.

Those are the top 3 things to focus on to be a better storyteller.

I hope it helps.

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