Shout it out

Hello, friends! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m glad you stopped by for today’s post. All month long, we’ve been talking about the things readers are looking for in the things they read, and discussing how we can apply those things to our own works of fiction. After all, we’re writing a story that someone will read, so we ought to make stories which those people love.

Thus far in the series, we’ve talked a bit about characters, about stories that make us really think (and maybe even learn something), and about the stories that make us feel, in a way we’ve never felt before. These are things that readers love in stories, things that readers look for, long for. But there’s more than just that.

#5: Stories that make you scream

I mean this in a couple different ways, of course.

For you horror writers, I mean this in the way you think I mean it. Readers are looking for a story that will make them scream out loud, close the book, but be too enthralled by the story to put it down for very long.

But for the rest of us, this is also a key point. Many readers look for tough stories, stories that make us so frustrated that we can’t help but scream.

And that’s what I really want to talk about today.

See, this is a lesson I actually need to learn. I hate writing stories like this, with frustrating characters or plot lines that annoy me to the point that I just want to scream. But I know a great many readers who love those stories, and so I really do try my best to write them. The editing process isn’t so fun on those, either.

Sometimes, we readers get the most out of the books we read when they frustrate us to the point of screaming. Those are the books we remember, the stories we can’t get enough of. Those are the ones that mean the most to us, the ones that have really made us feel, made us think.

All because of a bit of frustration.

But how do we, as writers, achieve this?

I’m still figuring that out, in some ways. Really, it’s all about making characters and storylines that, in many ways, frustrate us as well. It’s about making sure our characters make enough wrong decisions that sometimes don’t make any sense at all—all for the betterment of the story, and so when our protagonist wins in the end, it actually means something.

We writers tend to forget the number of bad decisions that happen in real life, and don’t write them into our stories. But really, bad decisions are what make people what they are. We learn through bad decisions. So our characters should, as well. Even when those decisions are stupid and we hate writing them, even when we find ourselves hating that we’re putting our characters through them. 

That's what readers are looking for, because it's more real than the average book. 

It’s just making art imitate life, a little better than usual.

[love]

{Rani Divine}