There’s a Real Story Trapped in Here Somewhere

Sometimes the real product management story is buried underneath the article.

By Tremis Skeete, for Product Coalition

Somewhere between paragraph eleven and diagram number four, I start negotiating with myself.

Maybe I should answer my WhatsApp messages first. Maybe I should have another Diet Coke. Maybe now is finally the right time to reorganize the Downloads folder on my laptop like the responsible adult I keep telling myself that I am.

Because sitting down to review a difficult submission… especially when it’s technical in its subject matter… sometimes feels less like reading and more like someone kept building additional floors onto a house without realizing the reader still has to climb the stairs.

And to be clear, I am not talking about bad writing. Bad writing is easy. You reject it and move on with your day.

The difficult submissions are the ones where you can feel intelligence everywhere. The writer clearly knows things. The diagrams and frameworks are detailed and thoughtful. The explanations are very precise. Every paragraph feels like it was crafted carefully by someone trying very hard to communicate something complex and important.

And yet somewhere around section five, your concentration starts looking for emotional support. Not because the writer failed, but because the paragraph introduced another framework and more explanation. It started to feel less like a story and more like drilling a map into your head.

Sometimes the Story Is Buried

Editing product management writing for long enough teaches you something. When I first started noticing it, I honestly thought it was strange… until it kept happening almost every time I opened the submission queue.

Sometimes the story is buried underneath the article itself… underneath layers of concepts, explainers, diagrams, and frameworks packed tightly on top of each other.

After a while, reading with editing in mind can start to feel less like reviewing an article and more like standing at an excavation site knowing there is something valuable underneath all the earth and rock. You just have to keep digging long enough to uncover it.

And eventually, if you’re willing to keep digging… excavating that story just becomes part of the job.

Immersion, Excavation and Augmentation

Recently I reviewed two completely different submissions back-to-back.

The first story was about the acting profession and product leadership. Honestly, it’s a good read. The emotional core was already there. You could feel the lived experience inside it. The writer described film sets, rehearsals, camera angles, scene partners, and slowly connected those experiences back to product work in a way that felt human and grounded.

Did it need refinement? Sure. Could some sections have gone deeper? Probably. But the story was already breathing.

So the editorial decision became relatively simple. Do not ‘beef up’ or overengineer this thing. Instead, we strengthened the atmosphere around it. We removed the self-promotional elements that distracted from the story, then added visuals to support the narrative as it unfolded.

The goal was not decoration. It was immersion.

We amplified the human feeling already present in the writing. It’s to help readers feel like they are moving through the story alongside the writer instead of standing outside of it reading paragraphs from a distance.

In this case, the article didn’t need excavation. It needed augmentation. That is a very different kind of editing.

Then came the second submission. sigh.

The Density Problem

This article was… a lot. Dense paragraphs. Dense diagrams. Dense frameworks. Explanations explaining other explanations. Every diagram and image looked like it contained enough information to qualify as its own graduate-level certification program.

At first, my editor brain started doing what it always does in moments like this: looking for escape routes.

“Okay… maybe I should come back to this later.”

“No, keep going.”

“Wait, why does this diagram feel like it has its own internal economy?”

“Focus.”

“Am I tired… or is this article trying to explain seventeen interconnected systems simultaneously?”

And somewhere underneath all that negotiation, another thought quietly starts forming: “There’s probably a real story trapped in here somewhere.”

That feeling is difficult to explain unless you edit professionally. Because sometimes writers do not realize they have accidentally buried their most valuable insight underneath layers of abstraction, precision, and intellectual ability. Especially technical writers and engineers.

And I say that carefully because this is not criticism of engineers. My own background is in computer science and software engineering. I deeply respect technical thinking, but engineers are often trained to optimize for accuracy and system completeness.

Educational writing in product management is optimizing for something slightly different: cognitive movement. Readers need to feel like they can flow and travel through the story and ideas.

And sometimes technical people unintentionally keep reinforcing the same concept from different angles. The instinct makes sense. If the reader understands every layer, every edge case, every dependency, then maybe the idea will finally feel complete.

Was the writing technically wrong? Not really. Was the thinking impressive? Absolutely. But eventually the article stops flowing and you can feel readers getting tired inside the writing itself.

The Excavation Begins

So instead of rejecting the article, we made a different decision. We started digging. Not rewriting randomly. Not simplifying everything. Excavating.

“Okay… what is this article actually trying to say?”

“No, seriously.”

“What is the human problem underneath all this architecture?”

“Wait… why does this section feel important even though I barely understand the diagram above it?”

“Hold on. There’s something here.”

Over time, that became the editorial process. Not chasing terminology. Not obsessing over frameworks. Just trying to figure out what readers were actually supposed to recognize inside all of this.

And slowly, the real story started appearing. Not frameworks or diagrams. Not terminology.

“The story… a person trying to understand what happens to organizations when AI fundamentally changes the economics of execution.”

Now we had something.

Suddenly the article stopped sounding like a technical document and started sounding like someone grappling with a real shift happening underneath work itself. That clarity changed everything.

Excavation Brings Clarity

Something else started happening during the excavation process. Once the writing itself became clearer, I had to go back and look at the diagrams all over again. And weirdly enough, some of them suddenly started making more sense.

Not all of them. Some were still trying to explain enough material to qualify as their own semester-long university elective. But a few of the visuals actually contained real educational value once the surrounding density was removed.

The problem was never about “too many diagrams.” The problem was that the diagrams and the writing were competing for the same cognitive breathing room.

Once the article stopped trying to explain everything simultaneously, the visuals could finally support the story instead of overwhelming it. And that became part of the excavation too.

Now the question was no longer: “Should this diagram stay?” The question became: “Does this image help the reader recognize the story underneath the framework?” That is a very different editorial decision.

One diagram became a clean visual metaphor instead of just another systems map. Another finally helped reinforce the organizational shift the writer was struggling to explain all along. A few others quietly revealed themselves to be doing the opposite: adding architectural weight without adding educational clarity.

So we removed them. Not because they were unintelligent. Honestly, some were thoughtful. But educational writing is not a museum dedicated to preserving every good idea the writer had during their creative process. Sometimes part of editing is protecting the reader from cognitive overload.

And ironically, once the unnecessary weight disappeared, the writer’s real insight became easier to see… even through the remaining diagrams themselves.

Once you find the story, editing becomes clearer. Now you know what stays. Now you know what goes. Now you know which paragraphs are supporting the educational experience and which paragraphs are simply proving the writer understands the subject.

That distinction matters because educational writing is not a competition to write down the maximum amount of intelligence per paragraph. Readers are not trying to admire how much information can fit onto a page.

Readers are trying to understand something clearly enough to carry it back into their next meeting, explain it to the team, make a decision, solve a problem, or avoid making the same mistake themselves. They want to understand it and actually use it.

The Difference Between an Article and a Story

Sometimes a story can be buried underneath everything surrounding it: the jargon, the frameworks, the diagrams, bullet points, the performative certainty, maybe even the quiet fear of sounding too simple.

And ironically, the strongest educational writing usually feels lighter, not heavier. Not because the ideas are shallow, but because the writer finally trusted the reader enough to communicate clearly instead of defensively. And honestly, excavating that clarity can become challenging but surprisingly rewarding work.

Because once in a while, while sitting inside an article that initially felt exhausting, you suddenly uncover one sentence or paragraph that feels alive and sounds undeniably real. That’s the moment where the writer stops performing and talks about reality by sharing a story.

This may be another one of the most honest things editing has taught me:

Many people love to submit articles. Far fewer try to submit stories.

With an article, a lot of the time they feel like the writer is saying:

“Here are some ideas I know.”

But with a story, a real story, the writer is saying:

“Here is something I experienced, struggled with, misunderstood, survived, noticed, or learned… and maybe you’ve felt some version of it too.”

Being able to recognize the difference is what ultimately gives me enough energy to keep digging. Because that’s when I believe that there is at least one product person out there that will be curious enough to read the story and say to themselves afterwards, “I learned a lot there.” or “This is gold.”

And when I hit… “Approve and publish”, that’s when the article stops sounding like content and feels like lived experience.

It’s when you quietly think, “There it is.”

The story was in there after all.