Writers Can Influence Others To Change The World
Are you interested in writing to influence others and make an impact on their life?
As a fiction author, I hope I entertain readers or distract them for a few hours, but I doubt I make a lasting impact or influence them to make a remarkable change.
Now in business writing, I teach college students that everything they write is intended to influence the reader. Sales letters, business proposals, even when responding to a complaint letter the writer is persuading and influencing the decisions of the reader.
So, I tell my students that they really need to understand their reader. You can’t help or influence anyone if you don’t understand what they want and need. If you understand the reader, you can also anticipate their problems and objections and deal with those before they state them.
Writers also must understand themselves and the purpose for writing in the first place. If we as writers understand our purpose and our goals, we are in a stronger position to influence others so that everyone gets what they need.
Lastly, they have to understand the writing and text itself. Business writing calls for concise and clear writing. Novel writing is different, and the expectations of the reader are different too. Memoirs, self-help, personal development and so on also have their expected style and structure. The writer has to understand that well to write effectively.
These lessons from business writing are important because they do help us be more influential writers. Non-fiction or memoir writers will follow the same principles. They also need to know the reader, themselves, and the text they’re writing. But often when I think if influencing and making an impact, I think of more than these three things. I think of inspiring or connecting with my readers.
Some of you may want to write this type of book. And if you do, then how do you do that?
The first and most important way is to be authentic with your readers.
What are you sharing with readers and how much of yourself are you sharing? When I think of books that I loved and that influenced me, they are books where the author was authentic. I’ve mentioned in previous blogs how much I loved Elizbeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, and one of the reasons it made an impact was because of how authentic her voice is. It feels like she’s speaking to me. Readers can tell when a writer is sharing from the heart, when they believe in what they’re writing. It doesn’t matter if they’re writing a memoir about how to overcome a debilitating addiction or if it’s a book on how to do a cleanse in 10 days, it will make an impact on the reader if the writer comes across as genuine.
The Second Way to Influence Readers is to Touch Them Emotionally
I suppose this is where we fiction writers can come in and make a difference.
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Alchemist
The Bridge Across Forever
Siddhartha
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
1984
These are books that I could read again and again and that I think of often. They influenced me because I made an emotional connection either with the plot, the characters, or the ideas in the book. They made me think and they made me feel. When the writer creates a connection with the reader, they will influence the reader’s hearts
The Third Way to Influence Others is to Write Things That Matter
This might be obvious, but I mean it on a large scale. You might have read books that changed the way you thought completely. There are the obvious books like religious texts, but if we don’t go to grand, God-inspired writings, there are still books that have changed the course of human thought.
Common Sense by Thomas Paine supported and encouraged the American Revolution.
Walden by Henry David Thoreau about the importance of communing with nature and enjoying solitude. Maybe one of the first living in the present moment books.
The Meaning of Relativity by Albert Einstein which was a collection of his writings and ideas.
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson written by a woman which was huge at the time, about the importance of caring for the environment.
It doesn’t mean that we have to write books on this scale. We can look at more recent books like: The Diary of Anne Frank, Man’s Search for Meaning, Think and Grow Rich, The Power of Positive Thinking, The Power of Now.
These are all books that again have influenced thought and that have contributed to changing society’s way of thinking. In every genre there are examples of books that have influenced today’s leaders as well as the everyday person. Books on diets and technology and politics and relationships, etc. have impact us enough that whole industries have changed. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, Eric Schlosser, for example, had a recent effect on the fast food industry in America.
If you are an expert in any area or have had experiences that can be shared with others, you might want to write a book that will matter to many and become a book people refer to again and again.
What we want to remember is that writing is an amazing influential tool, and writers can impact thousands or millions of people across time. We have the power to influence others with our words, and our messages can inspire, motivate, persuade, and touch reader’s hearts. Writer’s words can push people to take action and inspire them to change their lives and the world.
And that is awesome!
Have a story to tell? Want to learn how to record personal experiences before they’re lost or write a novel? Let started by downloading for free Julia Amante’s “Free Your Story†framework.