How to Write a Novel

Chapter Seventeen - How to Overcome Consumption Obstruction in Writing

What is consumption obstruction — and more importantly, what can you do to overcome it?

OUR GOAL AS WRITERS

Your goal as a writer is not to impress your friends, or to carry around this air of arrogance so when you meet people at a party you can tell them that you're an author in hopes that you appear more sophisticated (I've met plenty of these people).

Your goal is the same as my goal, which is also the same as every other content creator — it's to capture consumer attention.

That's the asset we're all vying for.

We want someone to take time out of their busy day and consume our content whether its a blog or a YouTube video a film or a book, and let's be honest, there are a lot of other things trying to compete for that attention.

When you write a book and bring it to market with the hopes that it gains an audience and a loyal fanbase, you are essentially asking someone to forgo all the other options they could be doing with their time from hanging out with friends and family, exploring the world, listening to music or podcasts, watching YouTube videos, movies, online shopping, playing sport, practicing an instrument, creating art... there are a million ways people can entertain themselves.

And let's be fair, reading a book isn't an easy thing to do.

My guess is that most people read less than 50 book in their entire lifetime and there are millions of books already in existence, and every day new books are entering the market, competing for that limited resource known as attention. In most cases, let's say the average person can read a book, cover to cover, in 10 hours.

They maybe get 30 minutes to an hour per day, usually before bed, to escape the stresses of the day, be entertained, be engaged, fall into a world, and be so consumed with the story that they forget about their troubles for a moment and don't want to put it down. This is the so-called page-turner effect. This is what we want to create.

So why did I go on this big rant and what does it have to do with consumption obstruction?

The reason is simple.

OUR JOB AS WRITERS

Our jobs as writers is to:

Write a book that stands out amongst all other entertainment options. To do this, we must, at a minimum, have an: 

— Interesting premise

— Intriguing title

— Captivating cover art

— An opening line that hooks the reader's attention

While all of this is extremely difficult and becoming more and more difficult everyday, let' assume we are able to do that. A reader has one of our books in their hand and they are interested in exploring it further.

Our job is not done. We still need to:

Keep the reader's attention all the way until the end, and then have the book payoff in such a meaningful, uplifting, inspiring, life-changing, perception-altering way that they recommend it to their friends, leave a positive review, buy our next book, become advocates for us.

That's the business we're in.

AVOIDING CONSUMPTION OBSTRUCTION

How we do all this is to understand what I call consumption obstruction.

In other words, evaluate your book and ask yourself — what, if any, obstructions or barriers are there for someone reading my book?

The first step is to identify them, the second step is to eliminate as many as possible.