We are Not Islands – the Importance of Describing Life Context

If you aren’t careful in your writing, most American readers will read it through the lens of our individualistic culture, the over-simplified paradigm that individuals alone are responsible for what we make of our lives. This predominant paradigm doesn’t take into account the social systems that give some people fewer choices, resources, and opportunities, as well as more risks, barriers to success, stress, health issues, and trauma.

People from oppressed groups are far more likely to have grown up aware of the truth – that people’s lives are shaped by how other people and social systems treat them, by what choices this context and their natures give them in response, and only then by what choices they make. Still, chances are that your readers will have the individualistic view to some degree programmed into their thinking by our culture, even if they have been working to reprogram it in themselves, and especially if they have had access to privilege. It is therefore important for mission-based writing to explicitly describe the systems that shape people’s lives. In addition to helping organizations address the barriers caused by these systems, this makes a critical difference to readers in the following three ways:

1. It Helps Shift Culture to Address Systemic Injustice

One of the first steps for addressing systemic injustice is to get it out in the open and develop a culture where we all explicitly acknowledge and talk about it. That means making a regular practice of intentionally countering the dominant individualistic paradigm. The more of us do this, and the more often we do it, the more thoroughly we will reprogram our own thinking, help others reprogram theirs, and influence others to continue explicitly contextualizing people’s lives within systems of oppression or privilege. Helping to make this thinking common practice helps shift US culture to a more accurate view that factors in both what is in an individual’s control and what is not. This culture change is necessary for both addressing the harms of injustice and ultimately eliminating it, and we are all responsible for being part of this change.

2. It Helps Shift Culture to Stop Blaming People for the Impacts of their Oppression

Describing life context fosters compassion by enabling people to imagine themselves in the other person’s shoes and not judge them. For example, many people would judge a woman described as a high school dropout who has not been able to hold down a job, has three children by three different men who are not helping at all, and is struggling to get by on Welfare. But what if they knew that her mother struggled with addiction and due to racial bias, was sent to jail instead of rehab, and she was placed in foster care, where she was never left in the same place more than a few months before being moved again, so she developed a “tough girl” persona, and her life was peppered with racist microaggressions from foster parents, teachers, and social workers who didn’t think she’d amount to much? It’s no surprise then that she wasn’t motivated in school, and her need to be accepted, coupled with her lack of access to birth control, led to pregnancy by the age of 14. Stories like this are not uncommon, and once we unpack all the oppression so many people are up against, we can eradicate the trend of blaming them and instead admire their resilience, offer them support, and work to change the systems that are truly to blame for their situations.

3. It Portrays the Context and Impact of Your Work

Showing what the people you work with are up against makes the importance and difficulty of your work crystal clear, and it shows how deeply people can improve their lives by participating in your programming, or what a deep difference the systemic changes you strive for or achieve will make.

This draws donors and funders to support you and makes constituents feel more comfortable receiving your help, since they know you won’t blame them or look down on them in pity. It also helps donors and funders adjust their expectations. For instance, it could show them that if you are working with people struggling for survival amidst oppression, you cannot be expected to quickly solve all of their problems or mold them all into organizing leaders – but what you can do is invaluable.

Mission-Based Writing as Creative Writing

Many people see grant writing and copywriting as necessarily dry and boring, but they’re actually most effective if you use your creative writing skills. The more you can bring your work to life, the more persuasive and memorable your writing will be. And one of the best ways to bring your work to life is to use sensory language that makes readers imagine what it looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels like.

Here’s an example of a purely factual description:

Suzie’s House provides beds, meals, and fun activities for youth experiencing homelessness. We have adult mentors facilitate the group activities, and the youth and mentors cook and eat all meals together. We even have a foosball table.

And here’s another description that’s about the same length, but feels completely different:

Suzie’s House finds youth sleeping on hard park benches in the cold, and brings them inside for cozy beds, foosball, and laughter. Youth and adult mentors connect while cooking and eating favorite meals together, such as pizza and spaghetti.

Try looking at your writing and thinking of where you can add sensory details that will make your readers imagine the challenges you address, how wonderful it feels to participate in your work, and how much better life can be afterward.

How to Bring Your Work to Life with Participants’ Stories

Whether you are seeking new clients, participants, donors, funders, or volunteers, you need your writing to bring your work vividly to life so they will imagine what it is like and want to receive it or help you provide it. Quotations and stories are the best way to illustrate what your work truly feels like to real people … but only if you use them effectively.

The last Flight Log explored what makes a quotation strong, how to fit them when you have very little space to work with, and how to collect good ones. Now let’s talk about how to effectively use participant stories.

How to Bring Your Work to Life with Participants’ Words

You need potential participants or clients to see why they should jump up and run to you, and you need potential donors and funders to see why they should give as much as they can. You can describe all of the benefits in perfect detail, but that won’t make readers imagine what it feels like to receive them. So what will?

Quotations! Never underestimate the power of a real person’s words. Direct quotations from participants bring in human voices that the reader can hear and can’t help relating to, voices that sound like people they know.

Which Should You Appeal to, Head or Heart?
Part Two: How About Both?

The last Flight Log explored the pros and cons of writing to appeal to your readers’ heads or their hearts. Which is the best choice depends on the reader, the situation, … and the way the human mind works. A number of Flight Log readers responded with a request for tips on how to appeal to both head and heart at once; fortunately I had already anticipated the question and drafted this article! Read on for two tips on how to assess your reader and three examples of how to appeal to your reader’s head and heart at the same time.

Which Should You Appeal to, Head or Heart?
Part One: Pros & Cons

Will data do more to forward your work, or will details of lived experience do more? If you want to persuade people to make a donation or grant, or to choose your method and hire you to provide it, should your writing speak more to readers’ heads or to their hearts? Here are some pros and cons to consider to help you decide which method will work best for each audience and situation.

4 Ways to Make Your Brand Story Compelling

The word “brand” probably makes most of us think of sterile corporate logos, but in my last Flight Log article, I wrote about how a good brand story actually advances your work by adding human warmth to an overly commercialized and anonymous world. In this Flight Log, we’ll look at four traits that can make your brand story so compelling that your audience not only remembers it for years, but wants to connect with and support your business or organization.

Succeed through Storytelling:
How to Advance Your Work with a Brand Story

There’s a lot of hype about brand stories, but can they really advance your work?

Take my own business is an example: most of you know that I started from scratch in a new field and a new region where I hardly knew anyone, and I quickly created a thriving business … but you may not realize that my primary business-building tool was (and is) my brand story. Many of you first met me at a cafe for tea or just at your office, and I began by telling you how I got to be sitting with you. It felt (and was) genuine, not sales-y, and it got many of you interested in hiring me. That was my brand story.