9 The all-important narrative
Having a consistent and engaging narrative makes the content worth reading.
Information in text is presented serially, so it needs a plan to make it have meaning. That plan is the narrative. It ties together each piece of information to build an evolving context that prepares the reader for what follows, eventually getting to a conclusion that is a logical outcome of what was presented before. This makes the narrative all-important in how the content is processed by the reader.
But a word is not just a concept but a trigger for all that each person associates with the word. It activates a multidimensional map inside the reader. Each additional word adds a further map that modifies the current internal map. This is the key to creating immersive fiction, but is also essential to non-fiction writing: the reader still needs to be given an experience world to inhabit. Let the words do the setup and let the reader join the internal dots.
Our writing is the building of an internal reader state that does not necessarily need explanations to be effective, but just a narrative that allows their being to flow with it so that they feel like they have come to the understanding themselves. We are manipulating them, but we need to respect their conscious cooperation in the process, otherwise they will reject the narrative. Propaganda uses this process to deceive, but we can use it to help people open their perceptional world.
Narratives occur at all levels of a body of information, whether they be for the structure of a site, the sequence of articles in a category, the sequence of content in an article, or within each of its sections or subsections, and down to individual paragraphs and introductions. To have a coherent body of knowledge, all the narratives have to form a singular hierarchy, with each fleshing out some part of the next level up.
To maintain consistency, narratives have to be carefully curated, by being willing to both pare out what does not add to the narrative, and add content that the narrative demands. This is something bloggers generally do not have to bother with, as each article is just what they are interested with at the time, but disappear into a chronological waste-dump after their brief airing. Narratives are effectively a content plan which sets the scope of all content within it, and so needs to be carefully managed to keep the content within scope.
Each step in the narrative will be more coherent and believable if its causal link to the previous is shown. When the reader can follow the steps unfold because of the causal links, it will appear like solid reasoning to them rather than what might otherwise seem like a dumping of reactionary opinions. This is what builds trust, even for topics for which there might not be much proof.
Narratives work better when each step is left for the reader to complete. It is about setting up their thoughts for them to take on what is implied and make it explicit in their minds. This is what allows them to feel as if they are co-creating the narrative and wanting to keep reading. Of course, this process can be used to deceive, which is why it works for fiction and propaganda, but these require overwhelming the reader's thinking. Reality-based writing allows plenty of space for the reader to think through the narrative. They are pushed along but still feel in control of the pace.
This does not mean there cannot be some organic growth of topics from the bottom up, but they will still need to be integrated into the levels above them. This is how a body of knowledge evolves, but it does involve decisions as to how to accommodate the divergent content. It could be handled by adding a new category, modifying the name and description of an existing category to be more inclusive, or in the opposite direction, need its own subsite or subdomain if the content is a significant change in scope or depth than the rest of the site.
The narrative at each level must be self-contained so that it makes logical sense at its own level, but adds value to the level above it by explaining or illustrating a point made in it. This trans-level relevance is what makes a body of knowledge coherent and integrated. Even at lower levels, this approach does the same for them. This necessitates periodic evaluation and maintenance to keep the content relevant and coherent. Narratives are living things that need attention to be relevant to where the area of knowledge being written about is currently at.
Even historical contexts are continuously being updated as a result of more recent research, so a site can lose relevance if it is not kept astride of later developments. Unless the site is about the latest gossip, that does not mean having to be manically reading all matter of new information. It is about seeing trends and identifying what will be making material future changes to the area of understanding, so that the content of the site is adapting to what is really relevant, rather than of transient and minor interest. That makes site maintenance more manageable.