Your Book Must Connect on an Emotional Level
(…even if it’s Nonfiction)

Recently, I asked my connections on LinkedIn to finish this sentence: “A good book should…”

Writers of all backgrounds and interests responded enthusiastically. Most answers shared a common motif: the book needs to connect with the reader on an emotional level.

Yes, even nonfiction books.

I loved seeing this truth in action. I give the writers I work with the gospel of emotional supremacy all the time, but I’m only one person. It helps when I can point to other people and say, “See! It’s not just me!”

Many of us like to think we are swayed by ideas alone, or that we can sway others with our ideas alone, but the fact is that ideas are secondary. Emotions come first.

Hit your reader in the feels, and you’ll have them hooked, whether they want to be or not.

Appeal only to their intellect, and even if they find the premise interesting, they may put that book down again.

What the science says

The science is with me on this one. Emotions and logical reasoning are inextricably intertwined, and in fact, we can’t make decisions without emotion.

Think about this for a moment.

The decision to read your book (and continue reading it); the decision to take action based on the information that you share—the very foundation of all good narrative nonfiction, and yes I’m picking on nonfiction writers, since fiction and memoir writers already are innately convinced of this fact—cannot happen without an emotional response.

I cannot stress this enough.

Emotion and reason are typically portrayed as a dichotomy in popular culture, but this is not the case. They inform each other. As this National Geographic article says, “Emotion helps us screen, organize and prioritize the information that bombards us.”

Advertisers and marketers know this. Captivating speakers know this. Creators of political soundbites know this. We may complain about the ends for which they use this knowledge, but the knowledge is apartisan. It’s a fact of human existence.

The brain loves good storytelling. In order to do anything else—to take any kind of action—a story must first sustain attention. And this, as researchers point out, is “a scarce resource in the brain.”

Experiments have shown that “character-driven stories with emotional content result in a better understanding of the key points a speaker wishes to make and enable better recall of these points weeks later.”

Damn! Now that’s what I call convincing evidence.

You are competing for time and attention. Don’t you want to do this in the most effective way possible?

What my LI folks said

Back to my impromptu field survey. My commenters said a good book should:

• create relatable emotions in the reader
• spark their imagination, vision, and mind
• take [them] away
• immerse
• be a story they can’t put down but don’t want to end
• be clear and compelling
• make readers feel like more than observers—like participants
• generate enthusiasm
• begin with a great opening sentence (and what makes it great? typically it’s MEMORABLE)

This all reads like emotional content to me.

How to locate the emotional center

How do you locate your book’s emotional center? Or for that matter, the emotional center of each chapter and scene?

How do you hit your readers in the feels? What are their feels?

These questions, to echo Simon Sinek, start with why.

The question—and the answer—always comes back to the Why.

I might say that I want to read this story because I want to know more about France during the period of the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, but below that level, I’m fascinated by the chain reaction of ideas and events, the forces of a mob, and how people get and use power, or how power uses them—the visceral story behind it all (The Black Count).

I might say that I wanted to read a book that portrays Native American mythology and lived experience, but what first caught my eye was the story of a teenage boy trapped in one tough situation after another, and how he not only survived but maintained his empathy and kindness for others throughout it all (Son of a Trickster).

There is always a deeper layer.

Ask yourself why your reader is here, with your book. Then ask yourself what the deeper layer is, beneath that.

Bottom Line

No matter what kind of book you are writing, find the emotional core, and share that with your readers as much as humanly possible. Only in this way will your story be memorable and actionable in the ways you want it to be.

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Want help connecting to the emotional core of your story? A book structure intensive may be for you.

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