December 11, 2025

What Creates Great Storytelling?

Apple on books with text: Deepen Your Craft with Resident Writing Coach Jami Gold (at Writers Helping Writers)

It’s time for another one of my guest posts over at Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s Writers Helping Writers site. As one of their Resident Writing Coaches, I’ve previously shared:

With this turn for another coaching article at WHW, I’m looking at storytelling skills vs. writing craft skills. How important is storytelling and how can we improve our skills?

The Importance of Storytelling

Good storytelling can make or break or a story. Many books with only mediocre writing craft have become popular successes because the storytelling created such a compelling narrative that readers turned into fans.

Can great storytelling save a story with imperfect craft? Share on X

In other words, storytelling can help readers forgive our writing craft sins, so it’s in our best interests to improve our storytelling skills. Yet not many writing advice articles focus on storytelling or teach us how to improve our skills. Why?

Storytelling is an intangible skill, making it hard to teach, hard to learn, hard to identify issues in our stories, and hard to fix issues once we find them. But it’s not impossible.

Writers Helping Writers: Resident Writing Coach Program

That’s what I’m exploring in my guest post at WHW this time around:

What’s More Important: Storytelling or Writing Craft?

Come visit my guest post, where I’m sharing a few ideas about how to improve our storytelling skills, including:

4 perspectives on the art of storytelling
which writing craft elements are essential for great storytelling
how improving our developmental editing skills helps our storytelling
how storytelling connects to the reader’s experience
how storytelling reflects our story’s purpose

Then, come back here to get more details and tangible advice for implementing the improvements mentioned in Perspective #2 and Perspective #3…

Storytelling Is the Big Picture (Perspective #2)

The second perspective I share in my guest post is about how developmental editing skills overlap with storytelling skills. So the better we are at stepping back to see the big picture of our story and its potential, the better we can develop our storytelling to ensure we’re telling the story we want to tell in the best way we can.

How can we improve our storytelling skills? Share on X

However, developmental editing skills requires a multi-post explanation just on its own. (Seriously, that link contains links to dozens of posts about the relevant skills!) So here, I want to share some of the most important of those details in a step-by-step process we can use to help us analyze our story’s big picture and improve our storytelling.

Step #1: Add
What could we say with our story that we’re not saying yet? Are we missing elements or scenes for the story we want to tell?

For example, we might ensure that we’ve included:

all the major beats/plot points
our character’s full arc (any change, backstory wound, false belief, epiphanies, identity vs. essence, etc.)
theme (story level and character level, what changes or what they learn, etc.)
conflict, stakes, goals, motivations, etc.

Step #2: Change
How could we get across our premise or theme better? Are there any elements or scenes not telling the story as well as they should?

For example, we might:

rewrite scenes to use another character’s point of view because we’ve figured out they have more at stake in scene or their POV would simply be more effective
rewrite a scene to change the conflict (widening the gap between reality and their goals) and/or add more stakes to increase our story’s tension
rewrite a scene to change the mood or tone to better fit our story’s theme or genre
rewrite a scene (or a section of a scene) to strengthen our character’s arc, such as tweaking a subplot to better expose a character’s weaknesses or fears
rewrite an element of a story to improve the overall storytelling, such as changing a secondary character to a different gender/job/personality, changing a subplot, changing a turning point, etc.
rewrite sections of a scene to improve the story flow with a smoother cause-and-effect chain
rewrite scenes to ensure every scene includes a character goal (with stakes), conflict, etc. to improve our story’s tension and narrative drive

Step #3: Cut
What changes could we make that would strengthen the core story we want to tell? Are any elements or scenes a distraction or unnecessary tangent for the story we want to tell?

For example, we might cut:

unneeded and/or goal-less scenes or sections of scenes
unnecessary characters (or we could combine characters)
subplots or tangents that distract or interfere with the core story we want to tell
aspects of character development that no longer fit (such as if we changed our mind about their false belief, weaknesses, flaws, or fears)
conflicts that add pointless obstacles with no effect on the story or that don’t change the story through consequences
unnecessary scene-filler where we tried to figure out the point of what we wanted to say (most often found in rambling dialogue, wishy-washy emotional descriptions, information dumps, and the beginnings and endings of scenes)

(Want even more about the why’s and how’s of this revision process? Here’s my full post on the topic.)

Storytelling Is the Reader’s Experience (Perspective #3)

The third perspective I share in my guest post is how storytelling is about the reader’s experience. So the better we are at being aware of how our storytelling choices affect readers and their emotional journey, the better we’ll be at creating a storytelling experience for readers.

Which writing craft skills are most important for great storytelling? Share on X

In other words, the more conscious we are of how our choices will affect readers, the more likely that we’ll be able to create the story that we intend. That nebulous type of artistic choice is storytelling.

And again, there are a lot details involved in these choices (and my WHW Resident Writing Coach articles are limited in word count), so I’m sharing the details here. (My full post on the topic of storytelling and the reader experience is here.)

Think about the End of the Story (and the Journey)

Even though every aspect of our story contributes to the overall journey, the ending of our story is key to our readers’ experience. The goal of the Climax and Resolution is to deliver on the emotional promise we’ve been building throughout the story.

Think about Our Character’s Journey

For many genres and stories, the the character’s emotional journey, the internal arc of how a character’s thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, etc., change by the end of the story significantly determines a reader’s experience:

If a character “wins,” readers enjoy the happy ending.
If a character “fails,” readers look for lessons to take away from the failure.

Think about the Writing Craft Elements that Most Affect a Reader’s Emotional Journey

Point of View (POV) and Showing vs. Telling: A story’s POV and level of showing vs. telling affects the type of emotions and experience we can create:

Deep POV (which assumes more showing than telling) allows for readers to experience emotions and reactions that mirror those of the characters. This is good for stories where the storytelling experience needs a strong connection between readers and characters.
More distant POV allows for more flexibility in style, narration/perspective, dramatic irony (when readers know something the character doesn’t), etc. This works for stories where the storytelling experience doesn’t rely on a strong reader-character connection.

Theme: A story’s theme allows readers to explore an idea—what to believe, prioritize, doubt, dismiss, etc.—and judge how and why they agree or disagree with the story’s premise or characters.

Plot/Subplots: A story’s plot or subplots, whether they drive a character’s choices or tie into a character’s internal arc, affects readers’ experiences in many ways. Plots create the premise, worldbuilding, and stakes that make readers turn pages to see how it ends.

Genre: A story’s genre promises a certain experience to readers, from happy endings to thrilling adventures.

As I mention in Perspective #1 in my WHW guest post, some writing craft elements are essential for our storytelling. The same craft skills that I mention in my guest post coordinate with this list above because all of these skills are most closely tied to the overall story. When these craft elements are strong, they work together to create a story better than “the sum of the parts.”

So while storytelling is an intangible skill that can be difficult to learn (or teach), it’s not impossible. And that means we can improve our skills and abilities to create our own page-turning story. *smile*

Have you thought about how storytelling skills are different from (but related to) writing craft skills? Do you struggle with your storytelling skills (or even knowing what they are)? Do you have any other thoughts or questions about this topic? (My WHW posts are limited in word count, but I’m happy to go deeper here if anyone wants more info!)