Why should someone want to read what you write? Say you’re a writer seeking to sell stories. Obviously, you are pursuing readers, lots of them. So how do you appeal to them? What do they want to read? Above all, you can’t have them asking “So what?” as they read through your story.
So let’s put ourselves in the mind of the reader. Most of us like to think of ourselves as virtuous, unselfish, and caring. But let’s face it, when we pick up a story to read, we’re set for a solely personal experience, a solo cruise. Reading a story is not a chance to show the world our magnanimous side. It’s just ourselves and the author’s work. As readers, we have a choice of billions of stories to read and only a single lifetime, with several other things to do in it aside from reading. So a reader wants a story that relates to her or his own life.
The writer G.K. Chesterton said, “A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.” Please permit me to add my own ending to that quote—“A better novel tells us the truth about its reader. The best novel tells us the truth about what the reader aspires to be.” Or put another way, the closer your story’s point-of-view character matches the reader’s inner vision of herself or himself, the more appealing your story.
If we shift viewpoint now and look at the situation as a writer, we face a problem. How are you supposed to know what all readers aspire to be? How do you craft stories to appeal to so many unique inner desires of so many different people? You won’t attract them all, but there are some common elements.
All of your readers are trying to struggle through life as best they can. They all have conflicts and problems, bad relationships they wish were better, skills or character attributes they wish they had, dreams they wish they could fulfill, fears they wish they could overcome, past choices they wish they’d made differently, and hard future choices they hope they’ll make wisely. Those universal experiences are what you must tap into. Given their precious and limited reading time, readers are going to devote it to a story where the point-of-view character, or the protagonist, is experiencing the same things. What keeps them reading is to find out how the problem might resolve—not for the character—but for their own inner selves in their real lives.
Throughout your story, you must keep that linkage in mind and keep reinforcing it. Your story is about your reader’s inner thoughts. The methods by which authors maintain that connection are through writing techniques such as describing a character’s thoughts and feelings, showing rather than telling, including all the senses, and ratcheting up suspense and increasing the level of conflict.
I may well address each of those in future blog entries. In the meantime, as you write, pause from time to time and ask yourself if your reader would be wondering, “So what?” That’s the question to be avoided, or I’m not…
Poseidon’s Scribe
