Writing Strategy
What Readers Want to Hear Might Differ from What They Need to Know.
The key lesson for writers is to put readers in a trance state while delivering difficult points.
Introduction
The psychology of writing is complex. So is the psychology of reading. As writers, we want our message to be heard. However, popularity is not the only mechanism to reach this goal. While we get to a broader audience, if our message does not impact people’s lives, our popularity does not mean much.
It is easier to write about what readers want to read, but it is more challenging and vital to what they really need to know. The purpose of writing, of course, matters to writers and readers. Some writers only write to earn a living. However, some want to make an impact on society. Finding the right balance for both purposes can be a challenge.
As a reader, I want a piece of content or a book to make specific changes in my behavior. In other words, I look for impact from the persuasive words of experienced authors. While the message is critical to satisfying my need, the way the message is delivered also matters to me as a reader.
Purpose of this story
I had a conversation with a successful author in my circle who helped me to build a customized audience. Each mentoring session gave me new perspectives, so I thought it would be helpful to create a story out of this conversation.
In this post, I want to share a reflection on the experience of a non-fiction writer who had a dilemma in choosing topics for her writing practice initially.
However, this author nailed a critical analysis of reader feedback available in online book reviews. Interestingly, she decided to validate subjective views from writers which did not resonate with her.
Insights from Dorothy
Dorothy is a fiction writer who published multiple novels which did not sell as she desired. She wanted to tap into the non-fiction genre readers in her niche. She observed the market and noticed that while some books sold millions of copies, some only sold a few.
To understand her potential audience, Dorothy decided to analyze the non-fiction market. She read reviews of best-selling books and identified a few patterns. She created a few non-fiction books, but they did not sell well publicly. So, she wanted to create her own audience using unique marketing and distribution techniques.
I want to cover her unique marketing and distribution approaches in another article. However, in this post, my goal is to provide an overview of Dorothy’s key findings from her topic analysis from a readability perspective.
When I asked about her findings in her investigation, she shared a few interesting points. Her conclusions resonated with me as a reader and a writer.
Dorothy found out that emotionally laden books and articles with controversial slants usually go viral. She mentioned that high-quality content written with pure logic could hardly get any recognition if it did not include emotional delivery. She believed that reason and meaning must be presented with emotions.
Dorothy pointed out that while literary enthusiasts criticize raw writing for a lack of style, sometimes naturally presented content might gain more visibility than well-refined pieces. The key pattern was perfection versus pragmatism. She decided to change her style to a natural delivery format pragmatically articulated.
It was not a surprise when she mentioned different people were attracted to various topics. However, she found out that some topics attract the majority. When I asked her the type of topics she discovered, her answer was related to human nature.
She mentioned that the most common topic was related to survival. I understood that topics on our basic needs associated with the continuation of life could gain more visibility. She touched on survival, such as eating, drinking, sleeping, managing stress, and working conditions. She also added productivity, improved living conditions, and extended life.
Another common theme she mentioned was related to our relationships, emotions, and mental attitude. For example, love, companionship, friendship, and care to protect loved ones gained interest from non-fiction readers.
Dorothy particularly highlighted social proof as an essential human need. She mentioned that recognition by others, being appreciated, being part of communities, and having a place in society as fundamental human desires. She confirmed that writers touching on these topics usually found a relatively bigger audience.
I asked her about generic versus specialized topics. She mentioned that while generic topics found a bigger audience, there was explicit value in specialized content. However, as more authors covered generic knowledge, there was usually a scarcity of specialized content, such as in a technical domain.
This conversation on topics gave me some insights. First, even though it is challenging to identify what readers exactly want, there are some patterns that writers can consider in choosing topics for non-fiction books and articles.
I appreciated most from Dorothy’s comments that while some writers successfully provided what readers wanted to hear, those writers who offered what readers really needed have produced more sustainable results.
She said if we could find a way to write non-fiction pieces focusing on what readers needed to know rather than what they wanted to hear and put the readers in a trance state while reading difficult points, we could be the winner as writers.
This was an enticing remark for me. Thus, I asked her what we precisely needed to achieve this goal. She said we needed to be realistic by showing all possible aspects, including negative, positive, and grey areas of points.
She pointed out that some writers only touched on positive or just negative aspects of points in their content. As a result, they limited their reach because only looking at one facet reduced content value. I understand that looking at points from multiple angles can make the content more engaging and interesting.
Nonetheless, just listing facts and simply describing them can hardly spark any interest in readers. Therefore, narrating the points in a way that puts the reader in a trance state makes the most significant difference in producing good reading outcomes. She wanted me to understand that this unique storytelling mode must not be confused with sugar coating.
Conclusions
These two points sound so simple and are known by many writers. However, using these two elements in non-fiction coherently is not a trivial task. This approach requires multiple writing skills and considerable reader management experience. However, I believe that writers can achieve these goals with rigorous efforts.
Dorothy sold many non-fiction books to her designed audience. Her non-fiction books performed much better than her fiction books. Her two points on writing on reader needs and putting them in an enchantment state made good sense to me. Therefore, I wanted to highlight them in this short story.
We all have different approaches to building our audience. Therefore, I’d be interested to learn the techniques you use to attract specific readers to your non-fiction content to enhance the value of this story.
Thank you for reading my perspectives.
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Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
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