How to write inspirational stories – We’ve all been there at some point. Watched a heartening movie or had a blissful dream after which words of a beautiful story start to crave themselves on our minds. A truly inspiring story that makes us push harder.
For most, it fades away. But for those who write, the idea is enough to send a jolt down their spine! That’s what we’re discussing here – How to write inspirational stories.
No judgment here, be a beginner in writing or a successful one – writing an inspiring story isn’t a cup of tea.
The ultimate goal of a story is to communicate – passing on knowledge or learning through words. While writing a story that inspires, it isn’t just about passing on a message. It’s about how you express it. Something that touches your reader beyond the facts scribbled down.
In case you didn’t know, those motivational ebooks, stories, apps that you hear about. They make a LOT of money. The self-help industry is worth billions of dollars. Those who’ve made it to the top with these stories know exactly what they’re doing and conveying to the people.
There’s a vast number of small things to speak of about writing stories such as length of the story, editing, crafting every word to serve a purpose, and so on. We’ll focus on those aspects later down the line. Let’s focus on the 6 simple steps on how to write inspirational stories.
- Another article to read on short stories: Ending a Story the Right Way
How to Write Inspirational Stories – Targetting a Specific Niche
Like every story, an inspirational one has a specific objective. Remember that when it comes to inspirational pieces and self-help, your audience isn’t limited to general readers.
Your audience isn’t limited: The self-help books in fancy airport libraries are read by a variety of people. These books reach out to businessmen, corporate workers, or any other person that finds your work worth it. So mind the wide range of audience when penning down your story.
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However, your story target narrows down to an interested set of readers. Before we jump into it, let’s see where do we intend to go with these stories.
Keep a goal in mind
This is to make sure we’re all heading down the same niche. There’s one goal to all of the stories that inspire, to make people feel positive. Period.
The inspiration should be helpful to your readers – triggering them to push themselves forward and tackle problems in their lives. The inspiration idea you pen down should be keys that help your readers. When I say keys, it doesn’t have to consist of every detail on how to cross the obstacle.
That part can be left out to your readers to figure out. The key is to set an idea of why they should choose a particular path. Confused? Here’s an example:
(Kids, video games, stress)
Select Your Target Audience/Niche
Back to narrowing down to a topic, select a topic you know best of. You can’t write about something you haven’t experienced or have never come across.
Focus on a problem that you specifically had and how you came about figuring out the best for yourself. The problem can be anything – big or small, well-discussed about in society or something one can’t speak of openly. Don’t worry about the audience, there will always be people that face the same problems as you.
Sure, it can take time to gain a loyal readership when it comes to publishing. But when that happens, there’ll be no one those people look up to but you (That provokes you to write these inspiring stories, doesn’t it? You’re welcome).
Anyway, let’s get blunt and check out your target audience for inspirational stories:
Life Crisis
This genre helps in the problems one faces in the different stages of life (General)- School life, graduation, dating, puberty, bullying, parenting, family, retirement, even pet care.
Emotional matters
Staying positive, gratitude, optimistic, never-give-up, hope, faith, trust, love, confidence, empathy, being independent, and so on.
Day-to-day problems
Also referred to as outer problems: Dealing with nosy neighbors, children, disturbing views on life, job, unemployment, financial issues, societal acceptance issues, how to make people take you seriously.
Mental Health
Depression, burden, anxiety, acceptance, fear, giving up, mental ordeals.
Goals
Achieving success in financial terms, intellectually, physical strength, career advancement, maintenance, management.
Find your Suitable Topic
The possibilities of getting your idea for writing your story are endless. Usually, the best top-selling inspirational books are of real people and how they overcame their problems.
In case that’s a fit for you where you’ve been dealing with difficulties, write it down from a personal perspective.
Creating characters and developing deeper ideas is important. But making all of it relatable and down-to real-life examples is what brings your readers together. The beauty of a book is that words can speak more freely than we can speak in the outside world.
One good recent example would be of the LGBTQ community on how to deal with society.
When you’re writing a self-help inspirational book, you should set your mind in that direction as well. You can’t be a pessimist and write about positivity at the same time. You can only run for so long making your story up – your readers are smart, they’ll figure it out sooner or later.
So staying motivated yourself is a must. What’s next is to keep your mind fresh with ideas for your book. Medium is a great place to get ideas and find great topics. The social media influence being too strong today, I strongly recommend making use of all the platforms as well.
There are hundreds of self-help groups on Facebook, great daily motivation pages on Instagram, even YouTube can be used for more than cats and music videos – find opinions on Tedx videos. Get a hand on one of the top-selling motivational books. Here are some popular books that I’ve known for a long while.
How To Write Inspirational Stories
I’ve included all the points that you need to know already. But breaking all of it down, let’s brief it all up. Here are 6 steps on how to write inspirational stories:
Understand Your Readers Well
Focus on something very specific and build your reader base on it. When you have that, you need to know various aspects of your reader’s life. Your story shouldn’t just be informative to them. Your words should touch your readers through emotion.
The whole idea of improvising oneself in the story should implant itself into people’s minds.
Stay in Touch With Reality in your Story
Your story is a self-help book. There are times when you have to make readers feel the best of themselves. Even put in a little fantasy world in there. But always end back at reality. After all your story is a solution that will help in day-to-day difficulties in life – big or small.
With bright days in your story, don’t mind hitting those dark days.
Describe the Struggles
Pour out the rough times of the protagonist. People love tales as long as they’re interesting to listen to. As long as your audience finds it relatable, it also makes them feel less insecure that there are more people facing the very same issues.
Steer your Story towards Positivity
There can be ups and downs in your story. But make sure to finish with a positive tone. There are several ways to end a story, we all agree on that. But you’re aiming for people who are in need of advice – someone who needs that push to keep themselves optimistic.
Spread Hope and Mean It
You’ll never know how much your words mean to another. One can take a glance at your story and wave it off while another’s life decision can depend on it.
One thing they’re keeping an eye out for in your book, it’s hope. Hope is what keeps all of us going – and that’s what inspirational stories are made of.
Speaking of tips, this applies when you take on serious topics such as depression and anxiety. You may not be a physician or a therapist yourself. So best keep it simple and give out tips on how to overcome issues and nothing more. Keep it less or more of an anecdote.
Take Feedback
This step on how to write inspirational stories applies to all story genres. Ask a not-so-close person to read your story. Take their feedback. At times, when you look back at your story after a good amount of time, you may not find it as exciting as the time you wrote it.
There will be several edits you’ll need to work on after your first draft. Read more about editing stories here.
Other posts you might like:
Conclusion (and a Bonus Tip)
It’s important that your inspirational story comes across no obstacles and makes no mistakes. Craft it down with every word in mind. For spelling mistakes, feel free to use spelling and grammar checking tools. Grammarly is one great tool you can make use of – try it anyway, it’s free, to begin with.
- Check out my Grammarly Premium review here
That concludes tips on how to write inspirational stories – comment below and tell me if you have some more ideas :)
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great efforts and relishing one dear.keep doing more.
Thank you sir :)