What Do Readers Want?

Introduction

What do Readers want? Why do they choose to read one story or the other story but not your story? Why do they ignore the fact that your story is cool, or in style, or better than other would-be writers' stories?

Some writers choose to handle a lack-of-interested Readers by marketing their stories relentlessly. They read every book-marketing ebook that comes out there, even ones by obscure authors whose work they have never read before. They try everything. They send out a dozen read-my-book or read-my-Wattpad-story tweets every single day. And then wonder why their Twitter account is so dull.

But book marketing doesn't work unless the book involved can attract Readers. Book covers can't help. Book editors can't help. Your story must have certain Reader-attracting powers or it is not a story but a collection of random words on a never-read page.

How do you learn to do that with your writing? People are not taught that in school. Our early writing experiences were a lot like our first finger-painting experiences. We put paints on a page on finger-painting day, and every child got praised for it, whether the finger-painting showed any skill or not. Our very first written works were like that. If Teacher could recognize some of the scribbles on our page as letters that formed words, we got a pat on the head and a gold sticker. Teacher didn't care if our writing was interesting. Teacher had to read it anyway.

Later on in life, we may have learned that writing, like artwork, was all about self-expression. It didn't matter whether the self-expression interested other people. We would write little clusters of words that got called poems. These word clusters might have pleased or repelled readers, but as long as we felt they expressed our feelings, they were good 'finger-paintings.'

In the adult literary world, there is 'avant-garde' poetry that seems to be mostly self-expression. There are 'literary' stories that don't have beginnings, middles or ends, and that feature characters that are repulsive, dull, or peculiar. But they work as self-expression for the writer, and if the gatekeepers of the literary fiction world praise such works loudly enough, they might sell to the over-educated reader, no matter how Reader-unfriendly they are.

To become more Reader-oriented, think about yourself as a reader. What is your very favorite book by your very favorite author? Now, imagine if you had discovered your favorite book, stripped of its cover and book content description, without the author name visible. You start reading at the beginning. What about the story would have held your interest, even if you didn't have things like author name or book cover to encourage you?

For many of us, the answer would be that we identified with something in the beginning of the story— a character, the character's situation or problem. And then, stuff happened. And we wanted to see what things would happen next. Would the character escape the bad guy? Get the girl? Find the magic stone? And then what would happen?

To attract Readers, start with a story that pulls the Reader in. Things must be happening. The setting must either be familiar or be interesting or exotic. The main character can be a nice guy, like Harry Potter, or an evil guy, like Dexter Morgan. But there must be something about that character to identify with, or like, or to root for.

The character of Dexter Morgan, in the novel series, may seem an unlikely one for Reader identification. He's a serial killer. But, unlike real-world serial killers, he doesn't kill anyone likable, but just other serial killers. And he's not scary. He's kind of hen-pecked, by both his sister and his wife. The author of the series uses a lot of techniques to create more ways that the Reader can identify with this guy, and by the end, we want Dexter to keep on getting away with his serial killings.

The task of the would-be writer is to learn how to give Readers what they want and need to like the story. Readers need to know certain things, which means that the writer must state these things. A writer after nothing but self-expression might base his main character on his fascinating ex-spy friend, Bill. But he may end up writing a cardboard cut-out character that does none of the interesting things the real Bill does. The self-expression writer just assumes that since he finds Real-world Bill interesting, that the story Bill will be interesting. Or maybe he tells the Reader that Bill is interesting. But the Reader won't find story Bill interesting unless he does something, onstage in the story, that the Reader (not the author) finds interesting.

Imagine a story about a girl born with purple skin. And everybody treats her badly because she is different, having purple skin. Now imagine that the author doesn't mention the fact that she has purple skin. Would the Reader be able to follow that story, minus that essential fact? Or would the story seem dull and pointless from the beginning?

But who are the Readers? There are many different types of people in the world, some you might like, some you won't. And some of each group of people are regular Readers— of something. They may like different kinds of stories, and often all of their demands cannot be met by one writer. You can't meet a Reader's demand for 'diversity' if that Reader includes, as part of the demand, that the writer of the story be a different type of person than you. And if one Reader wants nothing but sex novels, and another Reader insists on more traditional, dignified writing without sex scenes, you cannot please both Readers with the same work. You need a specialized group of Readers that wants to read things you can write and want to write.

Never forget that writing fiction is essentially an act of communication with a Reader. You may write alone in your room, and not show the work to another soul until it is finished and polished. But the Reader— or your imaginary picture of the Reader— is with you. Will your Reader understand that scene? Does the Reader need that bit of information right now, or can it wait for later? Will the Reader like your Scarlett O'Hara-like main character, or will the Reader think she's a bitch?

Becoming a more Reader-oriented writer is the key to creating fiction that pleases not just you, and not just your creative writing professor, but that pleases a significant group of potential Readers. Until you can start pleasing some Readers, no amount of book marketing in the world will make your work profitable, or much read. When you do start pleasing some Readers, your work will start selling itself by word of mouth as well as by the results from the book marketing work you do. It's a technique essential to successful writers.