Summary: Technical communication often trips when it shifts from clarity to conjecture. Here’s how a plain system error message—free of story arcs, character dilemmas, or moral tension—can still spark confusion among writers and marketers trying to extract meaning where none exists. This blog breaks down why not every piece of text needs a narrative, and when to let the data simply speak for itself.
System Messages Are Not Stories—And That’s the Point
When you encounter a raw communication like { "error": "insufficient_balance", "message": "Your account balance is too low to perform this query." }, there’s a temptation—especially in branding, marketing, or content creation—to find “the story.” But this isn’t storytelling territory. It’s transactional. It’s functional. It’s infrastructure talking to user—silently expecting resolution, not interpretation.
Many professionals, particularly those in marketing or media, are conditioned to insert narrative into everything. But not all communication requires a narrative wrapper. In fact, trying to force meaning where none exists slows down resolution, crowds out logic, and risks misrepresenting the reality of the situation.
Why This Confuses People: Assumptions About Language
When people see text, especially structured content like JSON, their brain activates familiar patterns. They hunt for context, characters, or emotion because that’s often how they’ve been trained—especially in content marketing. But the JSON error message isn’t a fable or a fumbled customer service moment. It’s a straight technical return value. It’s not asking to be rewritten; it’s asking to be understood.
The confusion deepens when text is extracted without context. Someone might mistakenly think they’ve been handed a support ticket or user testimonial, when in fact, they’re looking directly at the engine light—not the story behind the trip that triggered it.
The Danger of Overwriting: Turning Functional into Fiction
When professionals attempt to convert system logs or API messages into content, the intent can shift dangerously. What was once actionable becomes anecdotal. If you try to rewrite this type of error into storytelling terms—such as painting the user as the victim of a tech company’s complexity—you now risk misleading the reader and muddying the purpose of the communication.
Let’s be practical. If the message is: “You can’t run this query because your account balance is too low,” any attempt to elaborate it into a metaphor about opportunity, limitation, or struggle only creates noise. What you have is a direct statement: You’re out of operational currency. That’s it.
Empathizing Without Fabricating
That doesn’t mean we ignore human emotion. Someone reading this error might feel frustrated, confused, or even defeated. Our job as communicators isn’t to overwrite reality but to speak into that emotional experience with direct empathy. Something like:
“Looks like your account doesn’t have enough credit to execute that request. Want help adding funds or understanding usage limits?”
Notice there’s no invention, no backstory, no drama—just clarity and a bridge to support. That’s effective communication. That’s persuasion in plain language.
No Narrative, No Problem: When Utility Wins
Like a stop sign, this JSON message exists to halt action until something is resolved. Without story. Without inference. Its value is clarity. Professionals who understand the power of technical communication know that resisting the urge to insert story where none exists can sometimes be the most persuasive action.
This is where consistency and authority matter. If every system message starts to carry narrative flourishes, users stop trusting the logic behind the system. They begin to second-guess outcomes. They wonder if the issue is as straightforward as stated, or if something subtler lies between the lines.
What to Learn From This: Speak Plain. Think Clear.
Use strategic silence for what it is—a pause in action, not a cue for filler. Respect when text exists to report, not persuade. Acknowledge that some communication isn’t creative—it’s mechanical. And that’s okay. System feedback should flow fast and frictionless.
When your balance is too low to run a query, that’s not a character flaw. It’s not a metaphor for ambition. It’s a call to action—top up the account, rerun the query, move on. The fix is mechanical, not emotional. And understanding that distinction is the mark of a mature communicator in any field.
The moment we stop trying to extract content from messages that are meant to be constraints, we create room for more honest, clear, and effective communication. And that’s what your users, your clients, and your systems actually want from you.
The takeaway: Not everything that looks like a message carries a message worth rewriting. Sometimes reality just is. Don’t dilute the signal by forcing sentiment where structure already says enough.
#PlainCommunication #TechClarity #MarketingDiscipline #SystemMessaging #SayOnlyWhatMatters #DirectLanguage
Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Ilya Semenov (6uFROinaC3g)
