Adding multiple surfaces for stories — fragments, scenes, or notes — increases discovery, engagement, and reader connection.
How Adding Surfaces and Entry Points Boosts Visibility and Engagement
What We Mean by “Surfaces”
When we talk about creating more “surfaces” for content, we mean giving stories more places to exist, be seen, and be discovered. Each surface is an entry point — a page, a post, a fragment, a snippet — anything that lets someone stumble on your work. Think of it like turning one single window into a whole wall of windows, each showing a slightly different view of the same world.
With our arts programming, we’ve been applying this idea to our Unfinished Tales and Short Stories and Winter City Stories projects. Instead of letting a story sit quietly on a single page, we create multiple surfaces: small fragments, mid-scenes, unfinished endings, process notes, and author reflections. Each of these is a chance for someone to notice the story, read a piece of it, and follow the thread back to the larger work.
Why Increasing Surfaces Works
It works because it multiplies opportunities for discovery. Not everyone has time to read an entire story, but someone scrolling social media or searching online might pause for a single intriguing line or an unfinished moment. That tiny slice — that fragment — acts as a hook, a micro-entry into the narrative.
Each surface also has search potential. Every snippet, fragment, or note becomes an indexed page that search engines can find. That means one story can now exist in multiple ways across the internet, increasing the chance of being discovered organically. And because each surface links back to the main story, readers can dive deeper if they want, giving you more engagement without creating a ton of extra writing.
How We’ve Seen It Work in Practice
Since we started adding extra surfaces to our Unfinished Tales and Short Stories, the difference has been clear. Readers are engaging with fragments, sharing quotes from unfinished moments, and following links back to full stories more often. Social posts that feature a small slice of a story get attention, conversations, and clicks that the main story alone rarely attracts.
This isn’t about tricking people into reading more; it’s about making content accessible in different ways. A story can now reach someone who only has 30 seconds, someone who loves quotes, someone who is searching for Winnipeg winter stories, or someone who stumbles on a process note and gets curious. Every surface broadens the net, giving more readers a chance to find your work.
Tips for Creating Effective Surfaces
- Break stories into meaningful fragments or scenes that work alone but hint at a larger narrative.
- Use process posts or author notes to add context and create a surface that feels intentional.
- Link back to the main story — surfaces are entry points, not dead ends.
- Experiment with different formats: a line, a moment, a micro-scene, a question that the story raises.
- Track engagement to see which surfaces resonate — sometimes the tiniest fragment gets the most attention.
Increasing surfaces isn’t complicated, but it is powerful. A single story suddenly becomes many ways to connect, giving readers multiple entry points and multiplying the impact of your work without multiplying your effort.
For us, this approach has helped our stories reach wider audiences while staying true to the spirit of experimentation and incompleteness that defines our work. More surfaces mean more readers, more discovery, and more conversations about stories that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
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