For years I tried to make my reports correct. Then I tried to make them complete. Eventually, I realized I wanted something else: I wanted them to be skön att läsa—enjoyable to read. At first, that sounded almost inappropriate. A report is supposed to be factual, objective and complete. It isn’t supposed to compete with a novel. Or is it?
Looking back over years of writing reports and giving presentations, I noticed a pattern. Of the many presentations I have delivered, those that received the strongest engagement were rarely the ones in which I tried hardest to explain every fact. They were the ones in which I unintentionally told a story. Not fiction. A real story.
Those presentations felt different. I was more relaxed. I wasn’t constantly wondering whether I had forgotten a fact or whether someone would misunderstand a definition. I simply invited the audience to walk the same path that had led me to the insight. The audience seemed to enjoy that journey as much as I did.
Only recently did I realize that the same principle applies to writing. Many technical reports feel like collections of facts. Everything is correct. Everything is complete. Yet reading them feels like climbing a staircase while carrying boxes. Every page asks the reader to do more work. What if the facts themselves are not the problem? What if the problem is that they have no journey to travel on?
The reader keeps asking:
“Why are you telling me this?”
A story answers that question naturally.
Ironically, storytelling may be one of the most effective ways to communicate technical ideas. Not because it simplifies them. But because it makes understanding feel effortless. A story does not replace facts. It gives the facts somewhere to live.
Yet storytelling and style are often treated as luxuries for which professional work has no time.
“Don’t waste my time. Just give me the facts.”
But facts without a story do not eliminate the work of creating meaning. They merely leave that work to the reader. Making a report skön att läsa takes time. Framing a presentation as a story takes time.
So does trying to understand a report whose writer decided that readability was a luxury.
So does trying to make sense of a presentation that is merely a wall of facts.
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