Summary: Not every bit of data you pour into a content pipeline is a story waiting to be spun. Technical feedback—such as error responses in JSON format—is not bad writing. It’s not even writing. It’s a system communication. This post explores why certain inputs, like system error messages for insufficient account balances, cannot be shoehorned into narrative storytelling, no matter how you massage them. Understanding where data stops and story begins is part of respecting both.
What You’re Looking At Is Not a Story
When you see something like a JSON flag that says, “account_balance_insufficient,” you’re not staring at a watered-down excerpt from a blog post or a rough draft of a customer case study. You’re seeing a backend system returning an error string. That’s it. It doesn’t represent a character, a journey, a tension, or a resolution. It represents a failed transaction, a rejected request, or a usage threshold exceeded. Treating it like story material isn’t just a category mistake—it signals a fundamental misunderstanding of what content is and what it isn’t.
Why Story Doesn’t Live in JSON
Let’s break it down logically. JSON responses are the language APIs and systems use to speak to one another. They are structured data objects—no verbs, no conflict, no arc. The message “Your request cannot be completed because your account balance is insufficient. Please recharge your credits” is transactional. It solves one audience’s need: the need for clarity in system function.
There is no tension here beyond the obvious: balance low, action blocked. There’s no change in perspective, motivation, or context. Which leaves a problem: what kind of value are you trying to extract from something that isn’t constructed to deliver anything beyond a literal state check?
The Misguided Urge to Turn Everything Into Content
There’s a trend among marketers and AI-content miners to treat anything that comes from a digital platform as potential story fuel. They think every log entry, every code snippet, every error response wants to be a Twitter thread or a sidebar story about “what went wrong.” That impulse isn’t creative—it’s reactive. It’s the byproduct of quotas and a misunderstanding of relevance.
That same instinct leads to marketing copy that’s hollow, vague, or dressed up in fluff. And people can smell that from a distance. Try reading this aloud: “In a world where balance errors block progress, recharge unlocks the path forward.” What does that even mean? Who benefits from that word salad?
The Real Message Behind the Error
Let’s take the system’s message at face value. It’s honest. It’s technical. It points to a real-world friction: when a platform is usage-based and requires prepaid credits, your request is a transaction. If the balance is zero, you’re told to reload. This is not an invitation for creative writing—it’s a prompt for action. “Recharge your account” is the entire message. And that’s fine. Some messages should just be useful.
What makes this worthy of attention isn’t the message itself but the system’s ability to convey it correctly. That’s something software developers, DevOps people, and UX designers care about. So here’s a simple question: What would happen if this error wasn’t delivered clearly?
Confusion. Dead time. Support tickets. Missed deadlines. Frustrated users. Truth is, the clarity of this response is more valuable than any embellished prose layered on top of it. It sets expectations, demands action, and keeps the system honest. That’s the real story here: the value of precision over posturing.
The Role of Story in Systems Communication
Now to be fair: stories can exist within platforms. Systems can be part of a larger journey. Think of Stripe, and how developers write case studies about why its API transparency makes it great. Or AWS talking about uptime in customer language. But none of that begins with raw JSON.
Instead, the story happens around the error. Take the example of a startup that underestimated its API call volume and got blocked mid-demo because they ran out of credits. That becomes a story about preparation, planning, and the hidden costs of not monitoring usage proactively. The JSON message is a plot point, not a protagonist.
This is like a marketing lesson in negative space. Just because a thing can’t be used directly doesn’t mean it’s useless—it just means it has to serve a different purpose in the communication structure. Can you think of a time your team treated a technical message as a marketing opportunity when it wasn’t? What happened?
Respect the Separation: Message ≠ Medium
Trying to squeeze story from error strings is like asking an invoice to be a testimonial. They’re adjacent, but not interchangeable. Respecting that separation—between functional data and communicative narrative—not only makes your writing sharper, it also trains your brain to ask better questions. Like:
- What’s the actual need being communicated here?
- Who needs to see this message, and what are they supposed to do next?
- Is this the moment for persuasion, or is this the moment for clarity?
You don’t win trust by trying to make everything poetic. You win it by knowing when to step back and just let the message be what it is.
Let’s Stop Pretending Error Logs Can Be Monetized Content
If everything can be content, then nothing means anything. Part of being good at storytelling is knowing when not to tell one. That’s not a cop-out; that’s discipline. It’s respect for signal-to-noise ratios, attention spans, and the mental energy of your audience. Not every click is a customer, and not every string of data is a chance to nurture leads. Sometimes an error is just…an error.
That means your job shifts from “storyteller” to “translator.” You take things like confusing UI, bad alerts, or repeat rejections and embed them into educational content—that’s the right context. But exporting raw JSON into a story format is just copywriting gymnastics. Nobody comes out smarter or more engaged on the other side of that process.
What Do You Write Instead?
Use technical messages to shape support FAQs. Build onboarding email triggers off them. Inform architecture choices, debugging guides, and payment logic. You’re building trust not by spinning a yarn out of JSON but by showing thoughtful control of the systems people rely on daily. And if you really want to build a story? Interview the user whose API call failed at a critical juncture and find out what happened next. That’s where the human drama lives. Not in the message—they’re in the consequence.
Value isn’t found in extracting emotion from dry system logs—it’s found in knowing when not to. Respect the data. Let tech speak clearly. And when it’s time for a story, make it about the people around the product, not the syntax inside it.
#ProductMessaging #CommunicationsDesign #UXWriting #TechClarity #ErrorHandling #SystemMessaging #MarketingDiscipline #ContentStrategy
Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Frederic Köberl (VV5w_PAchIk)
