Whee! This marks our 100th article on the blog. This article covers a lot of ground, very broadly. Stay tuned for follow-up posts that cover these topics in more depth, like this one!
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Who doesn’t love a good hot take?
Admit it. You’ve encountered more than one wittily-worded, possibly scathing, and definitely provocative opinion-stated-as-fact on the internet that made you chortle with glee. You’ve also definitely encountered takes that got you all hot and bothered—in righteous indignation. It’s no wonder judgy social media posts get the most attention and engagement. Who doesn’t love to have an opinion?
The most captivating pieces of cultural criticism—including book reviews—are the strongly-worded ones. We immediately get something to respond to.
I’ve had my share of judgy thoughts about books. You can ask my reading buddies. I’ve thought about writing some of them up as blog or social media posts. I’d get some attention, I think gloomily while faced, yet again, with jazzing up my blog metadata with traffic-driving SEO (insert the little vomiting emoji here).
Who doesn't love a good hot take? And judgy readers are our allies in the quest to spread our stories far and wide. #writingcommunity #writerslife #readingcommunity Share on X
What I’d do with that attention is another question. Indeed, I suspect that much of the equation for writers of hot takes is simply receiving the attention itself.
And that got me thinking: Isn’t this what we most want for the books we write? Attention?
Which is why, dear reader, judgy readers are our unwitting allies in the quest to spread our stories far and wide.
They get us attention. Now, how can we use it?
Feeling travels farther than thinking
You don’t need to look further than the news and politics to realize that feelings connect people to stories more effectively and quickly than intellectual argument.
I have a hypothesis that strong feelings also engender the highest number of book reviews. Take a look at the site of your choice and see how many 4-, 5-, and 1-star reviews you can find, versus 3-star. Those people have feelings. They didn’t simply complain to their IRL friends and then stop. They went online, logged into an account, and left a whole review! (Granted, 1-star reviews can sometimes be trolls…but it’s also good to remember the 5-stars can be shills. Isn’t cynicism great?)
Feeling travels farther than thinking. And getting your readers to feel (aka care) comes down to four basics—audience, goals & obstacles, stakes, and pacing. #writingcommunity #writingtip Share on X
I’m willing to bet that those people remember more details from the book than 3-star reviewers. Feeling travels farther than thinking.
No, you don’t have to write only about a hot-button topic, or have your characters espouse divisive views. Getting your readers to feel (aka care) comes down to four key basics:
- Knowing your audience
- Goals and obstacles
- Stakes
- Pacing
All of these can be courses of their own, so for today, we’ll keep it simple.
Make us care: the basics
Knowing your audience
I’ve talked a lot about this before (starting with Know Your Genre and Why You Should Read Your Genre). Key questions:
- Who’s reading your book and why?
- What’s your genre, and what do readers expect of your genre?
Goals and obstacles
Character goals are both inner and outer.
- Outer: what the character wants, and knows it
- Inner: what the character needs/needs to become, even if they don’t know it; subtext of book
- Characters also have flaws. Keep those in mind and use them.
An obstacle may be internal (stage fright) or external (your brother makes you late for school); personal (a villain) or non-personal (the weather).
- What is the book’s big obstacle?
- What individual obstacles do characters face?
In a memoir, the most important goals, obstacles, and flaws will be yours (assuming the book is about you). In self-help, the goals and obstacles will belong to your readers. When writing narrative nonfiction, they belong to your key characters (aka the Real People you’re writing about).
Stakes
Like obstacles, stakes may be external (a building filled with people has caught fire) or personal (one of those people is the firefighter’s child). Stakes force choice.
- What does the character stand to lose? Gain?
- What are they risking?
- How personally are they invested in the outcome (the more, the better)?
Address stakes at the scene and chapter level as much as at book-level.
Stakes are usually self-evident for fiction and memoir writers. If you’re writing nonfiction and you think you don’t need to consider stakes, think again. You are missing out on the best way to make your audience care about your book.
Pacing
Characters, goals, obstacles, and stakes are part of the story. Pacing is how you deliver the story.
Two aspects of pacing to keep in mind:
- Though genre expectations come into play, as a general rule, you can’t go wrong with the following: as the story progresses, stakes and tension should rise, and the pacing needs to keep up. The reader ideally will have a sensation of events happening more quickly, and disparate pieces coming together.
- Contrast is king. Every story, no matter how action-packed, needs to have “breather” periods of slower pace. This allows readers to catch up with what’s going on, take on board emotional implications (which means they’ll feel more), and contrast with any action sequences, making that action more impactful. Slower-paced stories need moments of intensity for similar reasons.
Again, mostly self-explanatory for fiction and memoir. Dear nonfiction writers, consider to what conclusion you are building…and how much information you need your readers to absorb to get there. Keeping them on board and un-confused is your pace.
Bottom Line
You want your readers to draw strong judgments about your book. You want them all to love it, I’m sure. But as long as any negative judgments come down to personal preference, rather than a mechanical or structural failure on your part, that strong feeling is still a win. Because chances are, they’ll tell someone about your book who has a different taste—different genre preferences, interests that mean your goals and obstacles mean more to them—and your story and your message can continue to spread.
Your story doesn’t touch or change anyone—including yourself—if it remains a closely-guarded secret. How to tear free from the cloak of obscurity? My hot take: Write a book that makes your readers feel something.
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Want a sober and well-reasoned take? A manuscript evaluation could be just the thing.
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