Summary: A machine delivers a status message: “insufficient balance.” No characters. No motives. No plot twist. Just a technical alert inside a JSON response. Yet many people expect a story to be distilled from it. Misunderstanding what makes a story leads to poor communication, failed marketing, and diluted messaging. Let’s get precise—because clarity is more powerful than creative fiction when the purpose is insight, not drama.
Error Messages Are Not Stories
If someone handed you a receipt and asked you to rewrite it into a high-stakes thriller, you’d pause. An error message, especially one like this—{"error_code": "402", "message": "Insufficient account balance"}—is the digital version of that receipt. It can be important. It can have context. But it is not, in itself, a story.
A story demands elements like characters, tension, progression, conflict, and resolution. The JSON example lacks all of these. It’s not that the message is unimportant—it just isn’t structured to deliver narrative. This confusion usually comes from teaching that “everything is a story.” Well—no. Not everything is a story. But everything can lead to one.
So what’s really behind the request to “rewrite a story” from a message that says, in plain digital English, “you need more money in your account”? Let’s break it down.
Where This Misunderstanding Comes From
Modern marketing has glamorized storytelling so much that even raw data gets labeled “narrative.” We’re told consumers don’t want facts—they want stories. Writers are told to wrench emotion out of any sentence—no matter its source. Marketers are pressured to dramatize everything or risk sounding “boring.”
But good judgment requires precision. And precision starts with correctly identifying what something actually is before deciding what to do with it. Are we making that decision strategically—or just reacting emotionally?
Here’s a way to reframe the original situation: Why would someone try to extract a story from something that isn’t one? What does that tell us about their goals? This is the negotiation tactic Chris Voss called “calibrated questioning.” Let it open the discussion.
Why Clarity Beats Fiction (When the Stakes Matter)
Telling people a piece of code is a story sets a dangerous precedent. If everything becomes narrative, then nothing can be factual. That’s how people start treating technical messages as if they’re emotional stories, leading to overreaction, misinformation—or worse—missed accountability.
Let’s ground this in reality: a 402 error likely affects a transaction-based system—maybe subscription billing, maybe API consumption. To the end user, it’s frustrating. To the developer, it’s operational. To a product manager, it’s a retention flag. Everyone interprets the message differently, based not on any invented “story,” but on their stake in the outcome.
The meaning is contextual, not narrative. Everyone brings their own frame—and that’s okay. But don’t layer fiction on top. Instead, ask a smarter question: “What story led to this error?” Now that’s strategic. That opens the door.
From Data to Narrative: When Storytelling Actually Begins
If you want to create a story, the 402 error can be the result of a story. For example:
- A startup founder ignored their AWS usage cap, triggering a halt in services.
- A subscriber lapsed into non-payment and lost access to their service.
- A development team missed a retry logic during peak load.
Each case is a potential story. But it must start with the human behavior and consequences around the message—not the message itself. That’s your story-hunting process: move backward, not sideways.
This is where Blair Warren’s persuasion framework shines. The message can reflect a failure someone fears, a suspicion they confirmed (“The system shut me out again!”), or even a justified frustration that needs to be addressed. But none of that can be built inside the message itself. The message is just the mirror.
Why We Must Protect the Line Between Fact and Fiction
Writers obsessed with narrative often cross the line between interpretation and invention. In technical or professional communication, that isn’t creativity—it’s confusion. Precision isn’t a limitation. It’s ethical, strategic clarity. The line between narrative and signal is one of the most important walls in critical thinking.
And this applies far beyond JSON errors. Treating any document—legal, financial, medical—as “just a story” invites bias. We need to ask the question Chris Voss always returns to: “How can I make this make sense to them?” That starts with telling the truth. Before you persuade, define. Before you dramatize, clarify. The power of “No story here” is a boundary-setting move.
So, What Should You Do Instead?
If you’re a marketer, product designer, or content strategist handed a system message and told to “make it shine,” here’s the approach that holds up:
- Ask: Who is the audience? This changes everything. Developers, customers, finance teams—each group wants something different. Tailor accordingly.
- Mirror their frustration. “So you’re saying this is the third time this message stopped your app?” Let them feel heard.
- Use calibrated questions. “What led to this point?” “What was the user expecting?” “How do we prevent it?” Those questions tell the story.
- Clarify before you stylize. Don’t decorate error logs. Help others understand what to do next.
- Translate, don’t fictionalize. Turn jargon into relevance. Not into theater.
Clear writing is persuasive writing. That’s persuasion without spin. That’s style grounded in truth—and in today’s noise, that might be the most powerful messaging advantage you can have.
Final Thought: You’re not failing if you resist turning everything into a story. You’re respecting language. And by refusing to pretend an error message is a plot device, you open the space to ask what really matters, what really caused the issue, and how to fix it. That’s leadership through language. And that’s how you serve your audience best.
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Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Ilya Semenov (6uFROinaC3g)
