Episode Twenty-Two: Why Fiction Writers Need to Put Readers First
I love writers but, I have to be honest, I don’t put you first. That honor belongs to your future readers.
And you, my friend, should be putting your future readers first too. Why? Because readers will ultimately decide whether your book is a success - or not - once it’s published.
Here are my top tips for fiction writers who want to revise with readers in mind:
Know Your Ideal Reader: If you try to write for everyone, you’ll end up writing for no one. Instead, I want you to get super-specific about who your book is for and what matters most to them.
Know Your Genre: Once you know who you’re writing for, you have to know what they want from you. That means getting super specific about what your genre demands at a structural and scene level.
Put Readers’ Priorities First: Readers care about the craft elements that most shape their experience. Conflict, character, immersive scenes that show instead of tell, and more. While you can also focus on your favorite craft elements, you need to deliver on the things readers want first.
Find Balance: What you love matters too! There are times when you need to make sacrifices for readers and time to stick to your guns and make sure that your book is still your book when you’re done.
Need help figuring out how to put your readers first in revision? The next round of Reader Ready Revisions starts soon! Not only will I teach you how to identify your ideal readers and genre expectations, you’ll get my feedback on your work to make sure you’re on the right track before your revision even starts!
Join the waitlist here and get early access + special bonuses.
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Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
Transcript
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
As a developmental editor and book coach, I love writers. I love working with writers. I love helping writers. I love seeing writers' dreams come true. But I will never put writers first because that top spot belongs to readers. In this episode, I'm going to talk about why that is and why you should be putting readers first too. Let's dive in.
Welcome to episode 22 of the Better Writer podcast. In this episode, I'm talking all about why writers need to put readers first in revision and how to actually make that happen in your process. Before we dive into the content, I just want to let you know that if you're listening to this episode, when it comes out, enrollment for my group coaching program, Reader Ready Revisions opens on Monday, but only for people who are already on the wait list and you'll also have access to the early action bonuses that I have planned for you. So if you want to be the first to know when the group coaching program opens and get access to those bonuses, make sure on the wait list, you'll find the link wherever you're watching or listening to the show.
Alright, now on to putting readers first. Before we get into the how, how we actually put readers first in revision, let's talk about why we should be doing that in the first place. And the answer is simple. Ultimately, readers are the ones who decide whether your book is successful or not. Obviously, it is more complicated than that. There is marketing, there is, you know, how your book is positioned. A lot of things go into your book's success that have nothing to do with individual readers.
But collectively, the decisions that readers are making to either buy your book or not, to recommend your book or not, to positively review your book or not, to post about your book or not, are all going to determine whether your book is successful. Because ultimately, that is our metric. Do readers buy the book? Do readers love the book? If a book is bought and loved and shared widely, it is successful. If it is not, it is not successful. And obviously,
We all define success differently. Not everyone wants to be a super mega bestseller. Not everyone wants the movie deal and the glitzy publisher's weekly announcement or any of those things. That is really fine. But I would argue that even if your goals are numerically smaller, readers are still going to determine whether or not you are successful, especially if you're the kind of person who is motivated by artistry or by sending a certain message out into the world that message is either going to resonate with readers or not. That message is either going to affect readers the way that you want it to or not. On the artistic side, people are either going to appreciate your literary genius or not. Ultimately, it is readers who evaluate our books, whether we like that or not. And there might be someone out there listening, getting their hackles up right now, thinking that, you know, if people don't get my story, they're just not on my level, they don't deserve me. That is fine. You can take that attitude somewhere else.
But in my world, we write for readers, we serve readers, and we need to do the work to make sure that our books are actually working for the people that we have designed them for. And that is going to differ depending on who you are. You might be purposefully writing for a smaller audience. That's totally fine. You might be purposefully writing for a bigger audience. Also totally fine. Whatever your goals are, ultimately, it is readers who are going to decide if you have hit them or not. Unless, of course, your goal is just to have your book exist as a thing that you've created. That is also totally legitimate. ⁓ But I, generally speaking, I am working with people who want their book to be successful in the market at whatever level they are aiming for or comfortable with or, you know, see it as possible. So if you are that person who, you know, you just want your book to exist and say, hey, I did it and then that's it, totally fine. ⁓ This may not apply to you as much. That is typically not the type of writer I'm working with. But if you are someone who wants your book to be successful with readers, whether that means selling 100 copies or 100 million, you need to think about readers, you need to put them first. So how do we actually do that? The first step is to actually know who you are writing for. And that means you have to make a decision that you are writing for a certain type of person. Some writing teachers will get more specific than that. They will have you come up with a single persona or a single reader.
I don't love doing that because I think it can be overly restrictive and I think that can cause us to not think about whether we are using tropes or stereotypes that are harmful to certain communities. So I like to be a little bit broader and think about who is the type of person or the group of people, generally speaking, that you are writing for. And there are gonna be a couple different things that go into that definition.
First, I want you to think about the age of your reader. And at this point, I don't want you to get super specific. I do not want you to choose one number, like 21-year-old women, whatever. For age category, I really want you to start by just thinking of what category your book belongs in in terms of publishing categories. Is it middle grade? Is it YA? Is it adult? And you do need to pick one, even if your book might have crossover appeal.
I want you to have one category in mind for revision so you can be really strategic in your decisions. I don't want you to make a less strategic decision to try to fit into two buckets when you could make a really strategic decision for that one bucket and then decide, does it also fit somewhere else at the end of the process? Because really, category is about marketing. We want to have that category in mind as we revise, and then we can decide if there's flexibility on the back end. But as we revise one category, be strategic.
We don't want to be trying to fit into all of the buckets because that is a recipe for disaster. This is a great time to mention, if you're trying to write for everyone, you will end up writing for no one. So we do need to make choices. We do need to limit our target audience because that is going to give us the flexibility and the freedom to really make our book work for that one group of people. And then if it appeals to other people outside of that, great. But you're not going to get there trying to make your book for everyone, I promise. All right.
Then there are other demographic categories to consider. Gender might be relevant depending on your genre. Sometimes it's not. And again, we mean gender in the social sense, not biological sex, but is gender a factor? If you're women's fiction, I think it's very obvious that yes, you are writing for one gender reader versus something like mystery, it might be appealing to people of all genders, it really just depends on what you're writing and whether gender is a factor or not. It's not always going to be the case. Then I want you to also think about life stage. This, I personally differentiate life stage from age, and I think it's important, especially if you're writing for adults, to think about where your ideal reader is in life versus trying to pitch and hold them to a specific age.
The reason being that two people can be the exact same biological age and be having completely different life experiences. You can consider a 24-year-old stay-at-home mom who is worried about losing her identity versus a 24-year-old who is just leaving grad school, starting a career in a new city where she has no family, trying to form an identity by herself in a new place. Those are two very different, equally valid experiences, but you can imagine that just saying, my book is for 24 year olds, doesn't actually tell us that much. It doesn't actually tell us anything about what kind of life experiences, what kind of conflicts, what kinds of themes is that reader looking for? What is going to resonate with that reader? So really what you're trying to think about with Life Stage is what kinds of questions, big life questions, are my readers asking about the world, about themselves, about their place in the world? And how can I write a book or create conflicts or create themes or characters that are going to resonate with where this person is in life. And that often is not defined solely by age. ⁓ Because, again, people are just different. And I really want you to think more about the life stage, the problems that they're dealing with, the questions they're asking versus biological age. I think it's more helpful to do that. And then think about how can your book tap into the questions, concerns, things that are present in their world because of their life stage.
You also want to understand what your audience believes, values. What are they worried about? What do they care about? And then you can decide to either challenge those things, to support those things. If you are religious and you're writing religious fiction, you might think about beliefs in terms of faith, but it could also just be beliefs about how the world should work. It could be moral, ethical, whatever it is. And again, you could decide, are you affirming those things or are you challenging those things? I'll be honest, challenging them can be more difficult. You don't want to come across as preachy.
You need to know what your readers believe upfront, and then we're going to decide how we're tackling that in our book moving forward. Again, it may feel odd to limit yourself in this way, but the more specific your vision of your ideal reader, the better a chance that you will actually write a book that resonates with that person, that resonates with what they're going through and asking and want to see in the world versus if you try to make it super general especially if you're trying to not offend people. And I think that can be really dangerous because if you strip anything that can be controversial or, you know, hard out of your books, it's really easy to take all of the soul and personality out of your books. So I would much rather you take a stance, write what you believe in, write something that is going to resonate with your readers or challenge your readers, take a stance, be firm in it, and then your readers will find you and they will be so excited that they did because they will see themselves reflected in what you've created, even if what you've created is fantasy that has no basis in the real world. What really matters is the characters, the conflicts, the themes. Do those resonate with your ideal reader or not? All right, the next thing that we need to do to put readers first is understand our genre because your reader is not just coming to your book as a blank thing. They are coming to your book as its genre. They are coming to your book with a certain set of expectations. They are coming to it for a certain experience. And you need to understand what those expectations are so that you can deliver. If you decide that you are going to write romance, you need to know what romance means to your ideal readers so that you can deliver on those expectations. For example, I think this is pretty much universally known, but in case you have not heard, a romance needs to have a happy ending. Because even if you're an ideal reader, is fine with tragedy when they go to a tragic book or a different genre. They come to romance because they want the assurance that everything is going to work out for the main couple. I can say that for myself. I have read tragic books that I loved. If I buy a fantasy romance, or especially if I buy a contemporary romance that is like a small town, something like that, I am coming to that book for low stakes conflict and a happy ending.
If I do not get those things, I am going to be deeply upset because I don't just reach for a book randomly when I go to my bookshelf. I... maybe this is not true for other people, but I am definitely a mood reader. And when I pick a book off my shelf, it is because that is the book that I think I need in that moment. For example, if I am reaching for a Bridgerton book, I am not having a good day. I don't want to be surprised by a tragic ending when I'm already having a bad day. I want my happy ending.
That is the rule. That is what romance is expected to deliver. So don't try to be cute with it. Don't try to challenge readers by subverting the genre unless you're being super clear upfront that that is what you're doing. But in that case, you're not actually writing for readers of the genre. You're writing for other people who want to subvert that genre or want to see that genre subverted. ⁓ understand your genre. Understand what you are promising when you take on that genre label. And then make sure you know what you need to do to deliver, which I think is the part that people sometimes miss. We know that we need to understand the genre and read the genre, but that also translates into a series of actions, things that your story needs to do. For example, with romance, I think the classic is we need a happy ending, but a romance also has to deliver on the relationship. I see a lot of people who come to fantasy romance from other genres, especially because it is so hot right now. A lot of people are writing their first fantasy romance book, and what I often see is that the romance is missing we have a great external plot. There is great magic, great world building, lots of external conflict, and the characters never fall in love on the page. The characters barely talk to each other on the page. And that is just a difference in genre expectations. In fantasy, the focus is external conflict, going to war, fighting the big bad villain. In romance, the plot is the characters falling in love with each other, which largely happens through dialogue, through intimate moments, whether that is sexual intimacy or not. ⁓
We need to see the characters interacting and falling in love on the page. And if that doesn't happen, it's not a romance. So you need to understand the storyline you are promising. I don't like the term obligatory scenes. I know that is a term that gets used in Story Grid. You need to understand the moments that you're promising, the things that readers are going to expect. And of course, those can look totally different depending on how you write them, the characters involved. That does not mean writing to a formula but you do need to understand what you're promising, and then you need to go deliver. And if that didn't happen in your first draft, it needs to happen in revision.
And if you are not sure where to start, you have no idea how to come up with your ideal Reader profile, you have no idea how to come up with your genre expectations or what that even means, those are two things that we will cover in Reader Ready Revisions. If you are interested in joining my group coaching program, it is a 16-week program where I will coach you through all steps of the revision process, including this pre-work of figuring out who is your ideal Reader, what genre are you writing, do you know the rules and requirements of that genre, all those are things that we will go over you will also get feedback on those things. So you'll get my insight to make sure you are on the right track before you even start revising. So again, Reader Ready revisions. You can find the wait list wherever you are watching this show. I do hope you'll join if you need help figuring out what you're writing and who you're writing it for.
Alright, once you have decided who you're writing for and what genre it is, what you actually need to do, then we need to actually put readers first at a craft level. And that means making decisions at a plot level, at a scene level that are going to serve readers. And I think this is where things get really, really difficult. Even if you know who you're writing for, even if you know what your genre is, sometimes when we get into the story and we start revising and we realize that there are big things that may not be working for writers, it can be really tempting to say, it doesn't matter, it's okay. ⁓ But we really need to do the hard work to make sure that every facet of our story is as strong as it possibly can be, and to make sure that we have set the foundation for an amazing reader experience from start to finish. So what does that actually look like? First, we need to prioritize the things that draw readers in. Number one is conflict. And...
I know we all try to avoid conflict in our real lives. I know that we don't want to, you know, have bad things happen to us or people we care about. And we often care about our characters, but we need bad things to happen to them. We have to make our characters suffer. Whether that is high stakes life or death suffering, or if it is just emotional suffering, or even if it is comedic suffering where your character just keeps slipping on banana peels or whatever it is. You know, there are different levels of conflict. It doesn't all have to be death and battle and war, but bad things have to happen to your character. Meaningfully, bad things have to happen to your character and they have to keep happening from start to finish. That can be really difficult.
But it is essential. Conflict is what hooks readers and draws them in. The other thing to keep in mind is that that conflict can't just be random. It has to feel meaningful to readers, which often means not trying to withhold it.
And again, you might be in love with your characters, you might be in love with your world, you might think it's enough to just explore your characters and world and have nothing happen, at least nothing bad, but that is not going to be engaging to your readers and is not going to sustain your story from start to finish. So we really need to have conflict, meaningful conflict. Your characters need to be making decisions to address that conflict. And again, it does not need to be death high stakes, but there does need to be conflict happening from the beginning to the end of your story.
The other thing to prioritize is character and characterization. Where we need to put readers first in that regard is making sure that our characterization is actually coming across on the page, because it can be so easy to assume that readers will just get it, that you already know so much about your character that you think it just automatically translates on the page, but too often I see people leaving out details or they're leaving out interiority or they are having the character do something that doesn't really make sense to readers, but because they know the motivations, they think that's enough.
So we need to get outside of our heads and start thinking about how will this action come across to readers? Do readers have enough information to understand why my character is doing what they're doing? And then do we have a reason to care about your character? Are they likable or intriguing or at least crazy enough that we actually want to see what they do next? There are many different ways to make a character entertaining and engaging. You just need to make sure that some aspect of that is happening on the page for readers to see.
The other thing that we need to prioritize is showing. It's hard work. Showing is hard work, but we need to prioritize bringing that story to life on the page for readers. I have talked about showing a lot on the show in a few previous episodes, so I'm not going to go a ton into it here, but we need to make sure that we are showing. It's important because that is what makes our stories engaging and that's what makes them come to life for readers so that they can fall in love with your characters and your conflicts and all the other beautiful things that you've created.
The other thing to prioritize is narrative focus and narrative drive. And these are two fiction elements that I don't see people talking about a ton, but that I am constantly talking about in my editorial letters because narrative focus and narrative drive are what make your story feel cohesive to readers. And too often, I think we go off on tangents, especially if you're a pantser Much love, I'm a pantser too, but we have a tendency to kind of have this other idea come up.
And all a sudden we're going off on this other road and we need to bring it back. We need to pull back the focus so that everything feels purposeful for readers. Because a story isn't just you capturing everything that could happen around your characters. It is a series of intentional choices you are making to entertain readers. And if you go off on a tangent that is not entertaining, you have not done your job. So you might become very attached to a subplot or to a side conflict or a side character or something that just is not cohesive and we need to be willing to either make big changes to make that thing cohesive or let it go so that you are telling the story that serves your readers. Again, that's not always easy but it is essential. With Narrative Drive, we also need to make sure that there is something pulling us along from start to finish that readers can actually see or feel even if it's not always immediately present on the scene. There needs to be some element of cause and effect. Some element of this story feels like it is moving towards something, otherwise you are not going to keep readers hooked or engaged.
And then finally, we need to make sure that our priorities as a writer align with our readers. That means we need to make sure that our goals as a writer on a craft level don't impede the reader experience. I've talked about this before on the podcast, but sometimes writers come to me who are really attached to a certain twist. They really, really, really want to surprise readers. But unfortunately, because they are trying to surprise readers, they have withheld so much information that readers actually have no idea what the conflict is. And because there's no conflict happening on the page, readers will disengage. So your priority as a writer is not just to surprise people. You can surprise people. That can work so well, but not at the expense of conflict that makes your story entertaining for readers from start to finish. So that is a moment where you need to let go of your idea of what your story was doing on an artistic level and really focus on
What is it going to accomplish for readers? Is it going to entertain them? Is it going to be fun for them? Are they actually going to make it to the reveal that I have been planning to surprise them with? Or are they going to get bored at page 50 because there's actually no conflict on the page that they know about to get them that far into the story? So there's just one example of how your priorities can kind get in the way of the reader experience, but it is something that we want to keep in mind. I think another area where this can come in is if you want your character to be an anti-hero.
But they are so awful that there is actually no reason for characters to be invested in their story. Or I see this with love interest, where we are going so hard on the enemies thing that I'm actually like, I don't want the heroine to end up with this person because they are awful. And that may have been fun for you to write, but unless you're also doing the work to redeem that person, giving us a clear sense of why we should still want these two characters to end up together, why should we want this character to actually succeed at their goals, that is likely going to fall flat even if it was super fun for you to write. There needs to be something redeeming in that character. Unless of course they are the villain or are not going to have a happy ending. But I do think there can be a line that gets crossed where it is no longer fun for readers to follow this character because they are too awful. Obviously that is also going to depend on your genre, your audience. But I think especially in romance, we can cross the line of this person is just unredeemable. I don't want these two people to end up together.
And again, that line is going to be different even within the genre, depending on if you're writing dark romance or not. ⁓ But that is definitely something to keep in mind as well, that your priority of making a character horribly loathsome at the beginning might run contrary to the reader's goal of finding a character that they can be attached to and want to read about for the entire book. There are characters that we love to hate, and that is a very valid option as well. You just need to know, have you pulled off that aspect or is this person just...
Finally, before closing out, do want to say putting readers first does not mean ignoring everything that you love. There is a balance. goal, our goal is to put readers first when we are revising by making sure that we know who writing for, making sure we know what we're writing and what we need to deliver for them. We also want to make sure that at a craft level.
We are doing what we can to make our story accessible to readers, make entertaining to readers. But if there is a big mismatch between what you want to do and what your target readers are going to want from you, there are other options besides changing your story. First off, you can change your target audience. You can change your genre. You can change who your readers. You can keep changing those things even after the book is published. You can change who you market to at any time. Because ultimately, when we're talking about genre, when we're talking about ideal reader, what we're talking about is marketing. So those are things that we want to have in mind as we revise because the decisions you make at a revision level are going to affect your marketing going forward. But if you realize that marketing your book as a romance is going to mean fundamentally changing some key aspect of your characterization or your plot or something like that, change the genre, it's okay to say, I want to kill off one of the love interests. Just don't market that as romance.
And if you're thinking to yourself, gosh, I really want to as romance because that's the best selling category. That's not a good enough reason to market a as a romance when one of the lot of interest dies. You will have to make the decision. Is it romance or will the characters live or are you killing off a character and deciding this is something else? Both of those choices is valid. You get to decide what is worth preserving, which parts of your story are you willing to let go of? Are you willing to change? And where do you need to actually adjust who you are marketing that story to?
And of course, there are going to be things that are not as fluid. If you want your entire book to be a summary, that's going to be a really tough sell for most, if not all, audiences. There is a version of that that could work, I'm sure, but you are going to need to be really critical about is this really something worth holding on to? Is this going to limit your audience too much? Versus is this something that's actually very flexible because there are countless audiences out there. There is not one group of people that you need to be writing for and you get to decide.
What is most important to you? Hopefully it is not something that is really going to alienate readers, but again, there is usually a way to make things work, but you need to be willing to be flexible either in who you're writing for or how you're presenting it. ⁓ And again, it is equally valid to make either choice. You don't have to change everything just because it will serve readers. There are also things you can leave in just because you love them and know that maybe it's risky, maybe it's not. Maybe it's something that readers will fall in love with as well, ⁓ but.
If you start with the mindset of you are here to serve readers, you are here to make your book as wonderful for your readers as you can, that mindset is going to take you further in revision than just very rigidly sticking to this is my book and I want it to be this specific thing. We need to put readers first. And then if you feel in your heart that something is not going to be your book, if you change that thing, don't change it or change it in a smaller way or trying to find a different way to make it work. And that is something I love helping writers do. It is 100 % possible to make other adjustments, to make other changes. And that is why I love coaching so much because we get to have those conversations, of, I don't feel like making that change. So what can I do instead? What if I did this? And then we can go back and forth and talk about it. That is absolutely something we do in reader-ready revisions. We also talk about your love list where you think about the things that you love as a reader.
So you can then find ways to translate that into your projects and make sure that you as a writer is not getting lost, even as we put readers first to make sure that our books are working for them. So there is a way to have balance. Yeah, it's a both and, not either or. And I hope the message is coming across that even as we put readers first you matter you as the artist matter you as the writer matter and as much as I am here to help you put readers first I am also here to serve you and I love having those conversations how can we make this book the best it can be for your readers while also making sure that it preserves your voice your intention as the author.
All right, thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer podcast. If this episode was helpful, please, please, please share it with a friend, post it on social media. I really want this podcast to help as many people as possible. So please share if you can. And once again, if you want my help making sure that you are putting readers first as you revise and get your book out into the world, the next cohort of reader ready revisions is coming soon. So if you are listening to this episode, when it comes out, the link to the waitlist will be below.
If you're listening to this episode in the future, another cohort is likely coming soon, whatever time of year you're listening to this. So check that link and hopefully I will be able to work with you soon and help you create the best book possible for your future readers.
Thank you again for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. Have a wonderful week. Keep writing. Keep getting better, one word at a time. See ya!
