Mastering the Anecdote

Photography: conversation by Rebecca Key

Anecdotes can be both signature content and a powerful means to prove or illustrate a point. They’re also one of trickiest writing elements to do well, and an ill-suited, over-long or badly placed anecdote is probably the single greatest killer of otherwise solid content.

The tips in this post should help ensure your content is never again sabotaged by a weak and sickly anecdote.

Getting the story right

The formal definition of anecdote is the retelling of a short biographical incident. Anecdotes which fire-up web writing, however, also encapsulate the essence or spirit of your overall point, communicating through example.

In Fight Copywriting Flab: How to Tone Your Writing Muscles, Chris Garrett begins by describing his somewhat flabby physique — something he attributes to lack of exercise. Once, his abs were “washboard tight”, now they’re more suitable for “collecting belly-button lint”. The anecdote about his changing physique illustrates the essence of the article: that solid copywriting muscles must be built by exercising them regularly.

In Plan Your Next Week’s Posting Schedule, Darren Rowse explains the situation that led him to start planning his posting schedule in advance. It illustrates the pitfalls of not planning posts and contrasts them with the later described advantages of doing so. It’s a long anecdote (while the first one I mention was very short), but they both work because they capture the essence of what is being said. However…

Capturing the essence is not enough

If nobody reads far enough to grasp the main point of the anecdote then its purpose is lost. Unfortunately, many web writers fall into the trap of placing anecdotes badly. First, I want to explain how the above two examples did this well. Then, I want to show you an instance where I think an anecdote failed to find its feet.

When to start with an anecdote

If you’re going to start with an anecdote, make sure it’s short. When readers see a headline they expect the writing below it to contain content which relates to that headline. There’s only so much time a reader will spend with an anecdote about cooking when the headline suggested the article was about luxury cars: even if the anecdote, at its end, would have captured the essence of what the author was trying to say.

I think the Copywriting Flab piece mentioned above is a great example of how to start with an anecdote. It’s short enough that a reader won’t lose patience before the writing returns to the topic at hand. One article where I believe I put this into practice was Creating Signature Content. There, I started with a short anecdote that I think worked well.

Making long anecdotes work

The Posting Schedule piece above contains an anecdote that’s quite long. I want to suggest that this kind of anecdote has the potential to work very well as long as the reader knows what they’ll get at the end of it.

In the above example, the anecdote is given a context because it isn’t placed at the very beginning of the article. Readers know what the article is going to tell them in broad terms and so they know what to look-out for within the anecdote. It’s also given an explanatory heading: “How I became a blogger that planned”. These are all cues that reassure the reader that the anecdote is relevant to the topic.

Avoid a key mistake

Starting with a long anecdote that appears to bear no relevance to the headline is the number one killer of otherwise good web writing. I don’t mean to criticize the author by using this piece as an example, as it’s an otherwise great read, but I do think it illustrates a common mistake.

The example I want to use is Social Networking: Am I a Person, or an Item? The article begins with a six paragraph anecdote that does not once mention social networking. By this point, many readers unfamiliar with the author will have lost patience with the piece. When using long anecdotes you need to let your readers know before you begin how it relates to your topic, or many readers will drop out of your article before you have a chance to illustrate your point.

I chose this example in particular because Liz Strauss is a talented writer and a popular blogger. It shows that even the best of us will make this mistake at some point.

More essence in less words

The function of an anecdote is to convey something about your broader point. Think about your anecdote as a whole and consider which details help do this and which do not. Extra details like dates, names, descriptions and diversions, if not necessary to the essence of the anecdote, serve only to distract the reader.

In summary

• The best anecdotes are short and to the point.
• They focus on communicating their essence as succinctly as possible.
• Don’t use long anecdotes without a context.
• If starting with an anecdote, keep it short.