What Readers Want

It's simple. By thinking about what readers want from their stories, writers can harness the power of reader emotion to write amazing stories, novels, screenplays, picture books, poems, and more.

Hello. My name is Mary Kole. Welcome to my class, "What Readers Want." So the reason I'm speaking to you today is that I have worked 10 years in publishing. I worked at Chronicle Books, Andrea Brown Literary Agency, as an agent, and Movable Type as well as an agent. And then I was out in New York. And I met my husband and he dragged me to Minneapolis kicking and screaming, and I decided I didn't want an agent when I was outside of New York City. I wanted to do something, go back to my first love of working one-on-one with writers. And so in 2013, I started Mary Kole Editorial, and in 2019, I started Good Story Company, which works with writers of all skill levels in all categories to help them tell good stories. So that's who I am. That's why I'm talking to you today. And if you wanna know more, you can check out my book, "Writing Irresistible Kidlit" out from "Writer's Digest." It is geared to writing middle grade and young adult, but a lot of the craft tips are applicable outside of children's books if you wanna check it out.

So what readers want. Now, a lot of writers taking this class might wonder, "Well, why are we talking about readers? I'm here to take a writing class." I would pose it that the reader's experience is something that becomes more and more important in your writing journey as you go from writing the story, getting it down, getting the draft out, revising that draft. At some point, you have to realize that you are telling the story to somebody else, not just yourself as you do in the early craft phases, but to that reader, that audience member that will eventually love your story, tell their friends about it, and really, really make it one of the books of their lifetime. So I do want to have you pay attention to your readership, your audience as you sort of pivot to this idea of, "Oh, yeah, I am telling a story for a reader."

So in today's class, we are going to talk about what readers want. Spoiler alert. It is to care. Then how to make readers care. We're going to talk about the beginning of your story and setting it up in a way that's relatable with theme. We'll talk about objective and motivation in your character and characters to care about. A lot of readers really enter a story through the focal point of character, and so nailing that character, really, really getting that connection going is huge for engaging that reader. Then we'll talk about stakes and story, the things that your character experiences as they go through your manuscript. And finally, we'll talk about an ending that really engages the reader and rewards them for spending 4, or 5, 10 hours of their time reading your story. So let's get started.

Your job today in this class is to sit back, relax, and have fun. This class is on-demand, and so if you miss anything, I try to pack these classes with as much information to honor your valuable time and give you as much just general writing advice as possible. So you can always come back. You can always watch again. Don't worry too much about taking notes. And if you miss anything, if you have any questions, I welcome everyone that has ever taken a class from me to email me at mary@goodstorycompany.com. And you can get the answers to your questions. So don't stress out. There's gonna be a lot flying at you, but I want you to sit back and enjoy.

The big secret of the class. I'm not gonna make you wait until the end of the presentation. What do readers want? They want to care. They want to care about character. They want to engage in a story viewed from the character's lens, and they want something that's relatable to their own lives that they can take away at the end. They want to care. It is the human connection to story that we've enjoyed for thousands and thousands of years. And this is what you're aiming to do with your book. Now, the good news, readers are wired to care. They come into a reading situation. They wanna care. They want so badly to engage with your story. The bad news is you have to earn that. You have to earn their eyeballs, you have to earn their trust, and you have to earn that emotion that connects your reader to story. How do you do that? Well, you have to tell a good story and this is why we're here today.

The beginning is super important. You hear this all the time. Agents, publishers, they read the first 10 pages and if they're not hooked, they will put your manuscript down. Unfortunately, the same with readers in a bookstore. They're flipping through. Maybe they read the first page. Maybe they read the back cover. If they're not hooked, they put the book down. There's a lot of competition for those eyeballs. So how do you begin a story that engages readers? First of all, I would like you to start in action. Start in a sense of normal for your character, their normal life. Whatever they're doing is about to get majorly rocked by some kind of conflict. You're gonna start in scene. You're gonna get tension in here. Your character is just bopping along, and then something out of the blue or maybe it's expected, it changes their life. There's a before and an after. And this sends the signal to readers that something is about to happen to the character, and then they're going on a story, they're launching on a journey, and the reader wants to follow along.

Another thing to keep in mind is the sense of interiority. Now, this is a term I use to describe a character's thoughts, feelings, reactions, and inner struggle. If you dive into your book with a sense of the character in some kind of conflict with themselves, not just with the outside world, readers will be intrigued immediately because we all wrestle with things, right? We all have conflicts, tension, friction in our lives that we struggle with on a daily basis. So if you bring a character to the page that does the same, readers will wanna plug in. Another thing to keep in mind for a beginning that hooks readers is theme. We don't wanna get too heavy-handed with it. We don't wanna explain, "This is a story about coming of age," you know. You want to, though, have it playing on the back burner. Start strongly with some tension or some conflict that has to do with coming of age. And then you revisit your theme throughout the story and bring it to a culmination at the very end so readers know the promise of the story. They have this seed from the very beginning of what the story will be about. This respects the reader's time and their attention because you're sending a signal. This is what we're here to talk about. This is the kind of story that you're going to tell.

So how do we create a character that readers care about? Well, ideally, the character will be relatable and they will also be proactive. Remember, the word protagonist has similar roots to proactive. That means the character doesn't just sit back and have the story happen to them. Even if they're trapped in a bad situation or they feel helpless, they still take steps to drive the story forward, even from the very beginning. So with your beginning, it's important to establish who is your character? What is their tension? What are they fighting for or what are they fighting against? This is kind of the opening tension that you wanna start with. Remember, readers want to care, especially young readers, memoir readers, readers who really wanna sink into a character's experience. You have them already. You have their goodwill. Now, you need to use it.

Let's talk about character objective and motivation. So objective is what your character wants. Motivation is why they want it. What has sort of happened in their lives that brought them to this point where they want this thing? Whether it is a relationship with another person, whether it is a personal goal that they wanna achieve, or whether it is just something societal where they want to raise their fists in the sky and shout, "Damn the man," kind of why is your character wanting what they want? That is the most important piece because wanting is relatable. We all know what it's like to deeply, deeply want something in our lives. So if we meet a character on the page that wants something, and we understand kind of what's going on behind the scenes, why they want it, we are that much more likely to hook in to their story and wanna follow it.

Another thing to track and start thinking about is does the objective change over the course of the story? People who are dynamic are more interesting to read about. So are there conflicts that sort of change the character's objective? Maybe they change the character's motivations. Does this sort of grow and track along the course of your story? This is what makes a character interesting, not just at the beginning, but in the middle and toward the end as well. Speaking of story, When we loop into story, we wanna think about something I call the emotional plot. So we have the characters start out in their normal. Things are about to get really messed up for them, and they are going to spend most of the story trying to claw their way back to normal because it's what they think they want. Life was so good before that giant asteroid fell out of nowhere and killed my parents, right? And so they spend a lot of time in the plot trying to revisit their normal because it feels safe. It's what they know. It's what they want.

Unfortunately, plot does not work that way, and if you do your job as a writer, you are going to make the plot very, very difficult for your character. They're gonna hit some real emotional low points. Now, the lowest point, ideally, is going to happen around the climax where your character is just really, really presented with this idea that their normal is gone. They have to make a new normal or they have to figure out a way to live with whatever their situation is. And this is usually kind of a dark night of the soul type of moment. Readers really, really hook into characters who are feeling something so deeply, who are going through something so vulnerable and so intense. And then your character rises for the final step of the plot into a new normal. The story sort of evens out. Now, it's not the normal they had before, but part of the emotional journey is that they have to make do with it. So this is sort of the emotional view of plot from normal to new normal with some real, real low points down toward the climax there.

One of the things to really, really keep in mind is this idea of mixed feelings, right? We wanna live in the gray area. That's where readers are going to find complexity. That's where you as a writer are going to find your complexity. And so as we go through this emotional plight from sort of the normal to the new normal, we want to really expose some mixed feelings. We want the highest to be high, but also maybe bittersweet, and then the lows to be low, but maybe there's some hope there. There's something redeeming about the low points. These sort of complex emotions are really where your readers are going to hook into your story.

One of the other ways to get readers invested in your story is to connect character and plot. And so as the character goes through your plot, they're going to have events happening to them or they're going to be making events happen. Every time an objective shifts or motivation changes, that's a turning point. Ideally, your character turning points align with your plot turning points, and you can make a really, really interesting moment in your story when everything is dynamic. As a character hits these turning points, make it very, very clear to your readers that something is happening. A mind is changing. A heart is shifting. Something is going on with your character that's going to make them maybe take off in a new direction. And so these moments, these turning points are especially engaging to readers because they send the signal that this character is dynamic. Lots of stuff is going on with this character, and they're on a journey. The reader wants to come on a journey with a character who is sort of aware of what's happening and kind of changing their mind as the plot changes.

One of the great ways to tie character and plot together and maximize that reader engagement is stakes. So what are stakes? Stakes are the personal ramifications for your character if something bad happens to them. Also, if something good happens to them because remember, sometimes fear of success is more meaty and juicy than fear of failure. Everybody fears failure, but fear of success can be surprising. So what happens to your character if bad thing happens? What happens if good thing happens? Explore these ramifications. For example, if I'm stepping into an audition, I can think like, "Oh, my goodness, if I totally screw it up out there, this, you know, all this horrible stuff will happen." But I could also be thinking, "If I ace it and I get the part, I actually have to perform the role," and that opens up a whole new level of nuance. So for every event in your story, I'd love for you to ask, "And? So? So what?" You have a plot point. Now, ask, "So what? So what for the character? How does this split the action or the character's development maybe into a before and an after where something has happened and they're maybe not the same person?" This is an issue of stakes.

One great way to anchor stakes and character, and take a break if you've been going guns blazing with plot, is to build in some time for reflection about the ramifications that you've sort of engineered. So if you have a lot of action, maybe balance it out with a quieter moment where your character is like, "Well, wow. I am so screwed now," or, "Well, that works better than I expected." And that character can really take a moment to connect, and when you do that you are connecting with reader. One of the questions I get all the time as a writing teacher is, "Do characters have to change? Do they have to?" And a lot of the time the writer there is sort of writing an anti-hero character. But I posit that yes, readers love to root for characters that do change. They don't have to change in an unrealistic, one-dimensional way from "Oh, I was an evil villain, and now I'm a wonderful guy." But there has to be some kind of arc for the character from beginning to end in order to make it worthwhile for the reader.

Usually, readers do like to see this sort of shift in a character. It makes the ending satisfying. When a character changes, they will fulfill some of their objectives that you start out with. Maybe they'll leave some unfulfilled, but the character and the story will also fulfill the promise of the novel that you established at the beginning of your story, in terms of what is this whole story about? If it's a coming of age story, to use our earlier example, then the character by the end is expected to at least have made some shifts where they have come of age or at least explored what that means. Theme, of course, comes into play at the ending. And so you will have explored whatever you set out to do, whether it's self-discovery. Whether it's faith, whether it's coming of age, you will have a contemplative moment at the very end of your book where you really meditate on your theme, whatever that may be. You have the character reflect on it.

And this is such a nice sort of full circle, coming home moment for your reader, as well, where they get to ruminate, and they get to take something from the book to maybe use in their lives. I read a really great coming of age story, and it helped me think through things in my own life a little bit differently. That's the sort of thing that you wanna leave readers with. Don't be too heavy-handed with theme. Again, you never wanna talk down to your reader. But creating a really nice resonant ending that meditates just a little bit on your promise and on your theme is going to give readers that, kind of, the warm fuzzies that you can only get by reading a truly good story.

Another word for this is the core emotional experience, the image, the feeling that you wanna leave readers with when they close the last cover page of your book. And this is something you can send them home with. Ideally, it's universal. It's something relatable. And trust your readers to get it. That is one of the hardest lessons that I teach to writers. Trust that the reader gets it because remember, from the very opening of our talk, readers are just...they're waiting to care. They wanna care. They wanna sink into an experience. They want to relate to character. They wanna relate to story. They desperately want to do this reading work. And so with your ending, with your final message, with your core emotional experience, put it on the page and then take a step back. Trust readers to do their jobs because you trust yourself, maybe not now, but you will to do yours as a writer.

Remember, though, this is a work in progress. Your writing journey is going to last your entire life, and so I encourage everybody to try and love the process of writing. You can look at the end game, publication, book signings, book tours, all of that. You can look at that and draw inspiration from it. But the process, the work, the day-to-day sometimes drudgery of writing should really be inspirational for you because your readers wanna care, but you have to care first. If you don't care about your own character, that's gonna be a problem because readers are not gonna hook into a character that you couldn't even be bothered to care about. So it's really important to draw those connections to your character, to your writing self first, and then transmit that empathy to readers. And this is very much a work in progress. I like to encourage writers to have some empathy, to have kind of connection to other people, to gather these skills, and build these soft skills so that they can put it on the page and then readers can step in and care.

So what do readers want? They wanna care. And that all starts with a writer who cares. I hope this was helpful. Once again, my book is, "Writing Irresistible Kidlit." It's out from Writer's Digest Books. I also have a manuscript submission blueprint. This is a 10-hour self-paced writing course all about agent research, publisher research, putting together submission lists, that dang query letter, and everything you need to know once you're ready to take the next step in your writing journey. Now, you can also check me out at goodstorycompany.com. And here are my social links, your Twitter, your Instagram, your YouTube, all of that. Come find me. I love hearing from writers and thank you for joining me today and giving me your valuable time.