How Writing is Relevant to the Real World and How to be Relevant (Cultural Relevance)

For a class assignment, I had to analyze a story and talk about the cultural relevance.The picture to the right is what I did for the assignment. Cultural relevance is how a story relates to the world. In my example, I talk about free will. As I said, this is only one example in the book.

There are a lot more that I could dive into.

Why is it important though? Why does cultural relevance matter? Why should you care about cultural relevance in your own writing?

Reason 1

When you write a story, you want your reader to connect with the story, whether it be the characters, the plot, the setting, or whatever else. A good way to connect with the reader, is to make your story culturally relevant. By relating to whatever is actually going on in the world, whether it be the Stock Market crashing, global warming, new technology etc. etc. Whatever major event happen can be used as cultural relevance. It can be used to connect with your reader.

Reason 2

Cultural relevance keeps you up to date with the real world. As a writer, I know that the fictional worlds that you create are infinitely more interesting than the real world, but, some people say that you need to be up to date with what is going on in the real world, and being culturally relevant is a great way to do that. By researching what's going on in the world, you can be more up to date, and your stories can connect with the reader better.

As you can see, cultural relevance is very important to connect with the reader and keep you rooted in real life somewhat. Cultural relevance is very important in writing.