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.

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.