Why Readers Might Put Down Your Book—Even if They Love It

http://helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com
http://www.kmweiland.com

Cautions against failing to identify and utilize the part of your book readers will like best.

Historical and speculative novelist K.M. Weiland offers tips and essays about the writing life to help other writers understand the ins and outs of the craft and the psychology behind the inspiration.

Intro music by Kevin MacLeod: http://incompetech.com/

Video Transcript: I'm going to start off today's video with a really important question, and that is: What is the best part of your book? I'm not necessarily talking about the best scene; I'm talking about the best piece of your book, the best aspect. It might be a really great character, it might be the interaction between two particular characters, it might be your action scenes, your mastery of suspense, you name it. It could be any number of things, depending on your particular story and your own strengths as an author.

The point of all this is that you are consciously identifying your story's greatest strength. You're doing this for two reasons: 1) so you can also identify and work on your weaknesses, and 2) so you can make sure you're doing everything you can to play up that strength. The last thing you want to do is add a really awesome aspect to your story, and then fail to take advantage of it. More to the point, you definitely don't want to hook readers in with this awesome aspect and impress them and make them fall in love with your story, only to then fail to pay off and give them what they want.

I'm currently reading a fantasy novel that does a great job with the witty repartee between its two main characters. This was the aspect that hooked me from page one. The author's extremely good at it, it's entertaining, and it's fun. But there's just not enough of it. The author chose to depart from these main characters for long sections of the story, and, not surprisingly, those long sections are the ones in which my attention to the story starts to flag, even to the point of skimming and wanting to put the book down. This is an important lesson for the rest of us to take note of. We need to identify what parts of the story readers will like best—and which parts they will like least. Then we need to do our best to give them as much as possible of the former, and as little as possible of the latter.