Unless you’re writing just to pass the time, you want people to read your stories. More importantly, you want them to want to read your stories, and not just do it out of spite.
In this post, we’re talking about how to write stories that people want to read and that they LOVE TO read. You’ll learn to choose better story ideas, but you’ll also know how to tweak your existing stories to make them more appealing.
Related: How to write character flaws the right way – How to plot a novel – Writing the boring parts of your story
What makes your book a must-read
There’s a lot more to a must-read novel than just chasing trends, and you don’t have to pretend to be some other writer to be able to attract readers. I’m sure you already knew that, but I just wanted it to make it clear.
We’ll talk about them in more detail later, but here are the two things you need:
A great concept
What is your story actually about? Who are the characters and what kind of world do they live in? What are the genre and the vibe of your story?
Unless you’re already a household name or someone’s favourite author, your concept is what attracts people to your story. In actual physical bookstores, there are naturally other things at play as well that you won’t have control over (like where your book is placed), but as soon as someone hears or reads what your story is about, you want them to be hooked.
A great story
Once your readers start reading, you want them to be happy that they’re doing it and also keep them at it. That’s where your story comes in. It’s also the thing that makes people recommend books to other people, as they’re not going to be like “this book sucks, but the idea is so good, you should read it!”
A story worth reading isn’t just exciting and full of explosions. It gives your readers something to wonder and keeps them guessing how things will turn out. Even if we know the two people will end up together in a romance novel, we don’t know HOW it will happen, and that’s just one element of a great story.
People love to read familiar things
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you come up with a story idea, just to attract your readers. Yes, novelty can be good, like we’ll talk about in the next section, but readers often gravitate towards similar things.
Does your story have a hardened detective who has a soft spot for something? Are you writing a romance novel where someone runs a store or a coffeeshop? These are far from being new ideas, but they could be the exact things that make people say “wow, I have to read that, that’s right up my alley”.
The key here isn’t just to ask people what they like to read and then copy that. What do YOU like? Or have you seen an idea, a setting or a character that made you go “hmm, I wish I had come up with that”? That’s a perfectly fine place to start from.
Understand what it is that people like about specific stories
That said, you do need to know what people find appealing about specific stories. People don’t love romance novels because they’re interested in reading about people having restaurant dates, and historical fiction doesn’t only interest historians.
If you copy something just on the surface level without understanding why someone likes it, you won’t end up writing anything good. For example, if you decided to write an enemies-to-lovers story and you thought that all it takes is having two people argue first and then get into bed next, your story would most likely end up being a huge flop. (If you want to actually understand how to write enemies to lovers well, you’ll want to read this post.)
But also, people love novelty, too
Although people love familiar things, it isn’t ALL they love. Fresh perspectives and interesting combinations of familiar themes are interesting too, for example. (Here are some ways to find new story ideas and here’s the truth about unique stories.)
Vampire romance novels for teens and young adults are old news now, but what if you wrote about “middle-aged” vampires (I mean, who even knows how old they really are) having middle-class problems? That could be a new thing. I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but it’s definitely old with a new twist.
I like the Fallout game series. I also like Little House on the Prairie. So what if I combined them? What if I wrote about a young and a little rebellious girl living in her family’s homestead in a post-apocalyptic world? Maybe I’m a little delulu, but I think it would have a great appeal to a wider audience and not just me. (Probably won’t be anything I’ll be professionally writing, so feel free to steal that idea.)
How to create new ideas
There are two fun ways to come up with these kinds of ideas. First is “It’s like X, but [difference]“, and the second is “It’s like X meets Y“.
Maybe you like reading about dystopian worlds, except you’d like people to be happy that the old world and old way of living has ended, so you end up with a story idea like “It’s like Fallout, except people are thriving”. (I feel like that’s what the My Time At game series is like.)
Or maybe you really like Gilmore Girls but you’re also a fantasy novel enjoyer, so you come up with a story idea to the tune of “Stars Hollow meets Lord of the Rings”.
A great concept + no substance = abandoned books
A great idea with terrible writing and an uninteresting plot won’t feel much better than internet clickbait. Your novel is going to need actual substance, and although we’ll be talking about that next, I really wanted to pause here and emphasise how important this is.
This is often what happens when people chase trends without much care for the quality of the book. They’re like “of course my book will become a huge success, it’s about an unhinged female protagonist and there’s plenty of spice in it!” and then they’re shocked when their terrible writing isn’t a commercial success.
That said, being a commercial success isn’t always a sign of a great book either. Remember Fifty Shades of Gray? It sure did sell well, and then the books all ended up in charity shops. People got what they wanted, i.e. they got shocked or intrigued by these salacious scenes, and then they got rid of the books because they had no re-read value.
I know that you, a person with integrity, already know that, but I do want to make sure you don’t get so excited about your Cool Idea that you forget the substance. You need to put even more effort into writing your story than coming up with your neat concept.
Deliver on your promises
Part of this is about understanding why people love specific kinds of stories, which we talked about earlier. You need to give people what they ACTUALLY want.
If you say you’re writing an unhinged female protagonist, don’t just write someone who says fuck a lot and doesn’t brush their teeth every day. If you’re writing a romance novel, you need to show why the two people belong together and then fight for their relationship, not just put two people together like two Barbies and make them kiss.
You need to have read the kinds of books you say your story is like, otherwise your promises don’t have anything backing them up. You need to know what you’re talking about.
How to get the plot from your story idea?
“You need to turn your great story idea into a great plot” is easier said than done, which is why I want to help you with that. I owe it to your future readers, bestie.
In Your Genius Plot, you learn exactly how to make your story as exciting as the ideas inside your head, and I even show you how I’d plot that Fallout meets Prairie story I mentioned earlier. It has already helped so many writers go from “I don’t know how to do this” to “I know exactly what needs to happen in my plot”, and you could be the next success story.
What do we love about great stories and great books?
Now that we’ve got clear on great concepts and ideas, we can start talking about your story. When you’re writing a novel, you do need a story, a plot, and not just cool scenes. (Writing short stories is fantastic too, of course, but there’s a reason why short story collections don’t usually become bestsellers. We want to be taken for a ride that lasts the entire book.)
“Story” and “plot” are actually slightly different things, and the simplest way to explain the difference is to say that when you turn a book into a movie, they both still have the same story, but if the movie leaves something out, they have a different plot. However, people often use these words interchangeably, and for the purposes of this post, we’re technically talking about the story first and then the plot.
Anyway, let’s talk about stories (or plots) that people actually want to read.
Characters, not plot events
Movies with cool special effects can get a pass, but readers of novels don’t have “cool plot events” at the top of their wish lists, even if they’re supposedly looking for plot-driven stories. We care about these events because we care about the characters who they happen to or who enact them, not because of the events themselves.
This means two things: you need to write characters that we care about (even if we think we don’t like them), and you need to have your characters actively involved in the stuff that happens. Writing characters that we care about or can relate to is a whole subject of its own, but it starts with writing characters that aren’t just One Thing.
As for having your characters involved, you can’t write them just observing things without any personal stakes, and they also need to be doing things on their own. The plot doesn’t just happen TO them, it happens THROUGH them. That also means that you need to let your characters’ flaws and mistakes stir the pot as well, we don’t care about perfect characters doing everything right.
I really do need to write more about writing characters, but this post on not writing boring characters is a good place to start from.
What stories make us feel
Another thing that hooks us into stories is how we feel when we read. Shame and boredom are probably feelings that you should leave out, but sadness, anger, excitement, surprise and joy are just some of the things that we can feel when reading. We don’t necessarily enjoy all the feelings, but they’ll definitely make us remember the story.
Think back to how people have described books, movies or TV shows to you. What did they say? For example, I really liked The Kite Runner, but it was a little too sad for me to read again. Jurassic Park is my favourite comfort movie, though it’s a little too scary to watch with the kids.
Don’t shy away from feelings, thinking they’re only for some kind of sappy romance novels or melodramas. All good stories should make us feel something, and there are so many different feelings to choose from. The best case scenario is that your readers can’t get enough of how your story makes them feel and they keep coming back to your book just to feel it again.
Stories that surprise us
Even though we enjoy familiarity in our stories, it’s not predictability that we’re looking for. You don’t even need to write a plot twist when you could simply take your story to a different direction than what we were expecting. And actually, when it comes to solving the primary conflict of your story, the solution should always be something different than what we and the characters thought in the beginning.
Don’t just pick the first option that comes to you when you’re planning and writing your story, because it’s likely that it’s going to be the first thing that your readers will think of, too. When your story goes in surprising directions, it also makes your readers see things in a different way, and that’s a sign of a great story. Make use of it.
Story settings that feel real
Some books don’t feel like you’re reading a book, they feel like you’re inside the book, living in that story’s world, and people love that. (It might even be the explanation for the massive success of Where The Crawdads Sing, but let’s not talk about that today.)
This kind of an effect is basically impossible to improvise well, you’ll need to do your research and world-building first so that YOU know what’s in your world. How else could you write it? And when you know, you can’t just list what the places look like, you’ll need to involve all the characters’ senses as well as the characters’ actions. You can read more about that here.
What makes your story’s setting stand out especially is noticing things that other people wouldn’t notice and saying things in ways that other people might not. When you use the same words and descriptions as everyone else, you do yourself and your readers a disservice, and you miss out on writing something that really immerses your readers.
Related: Fantasy writing tips & Doing research for historical fiction
Stories that fit their genre perfectly
This option should include other things that we’ve already talked about, but a novel that is an excellent representation of its genre is something that people will gladly recommend to other readers.
What is THE book in your genre? If you don’t know, check out book recommendations where people are asking after specific genres on Reddit and see which books get the most recommendations. Then, actually start reading those books if you haven’t already, and reverse engineer them while still writing your own story, not just a copy of someone else. You might end up with something really good.
Great writing IN ADDITION to other things
Beautiful writing can never replace a good story, but it CAN make your novel stand out. It doesn’t even need to be one specific kind of writing because we all like different things and there are books for all audiences.
Personally, I’m not always a fan of flowery writing, but I do like writing with a good rhythm. I also like unusual but observant descriptions, and writing that makes me laugh without being too jolly or flippant. Think about what could be extraordinary about your writing and then do your best to get there – after you’ve got everything else figured out.
Here’s something to remember, though: Regular readers might not be able to point at your writing and be like “I enjoyed how [adjective] the writing was”, but they can say how you made them feel. The things that happen inside your readers’ heads is the main thing, and there are many ways to get there.
How to write about things that people care about
We’ve now talked about the elements of novels that people actually want to read, but we need to get closer and look at the subject matters that people care about reading.
Universal themes
There are some universal themes that almost everyone can understand. Most people have a family and have been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to fall in love, for example. Not everyone has experienced poverty, but it’s common enough that most people could have at least some kind of understanding of at least some of your characters’ struggles.
Of course, it isn’t enough to write about these things on a surface level and touch them generally. Your story needs specificity. When someone can grab your romantasy book about gnomes and mermaids and say that it’s a fantastic book about struggling with your identity, your book has a lot more staying power than your average fantasy romp might have. We find the universal in specifics.
Staying timeless
Your story can’t take place in a vacuum, so there’s naturally going to be signs of the story’s era in the writing. Yes, even if we’re writing about made-up worlds, because maybe this fantasy novel’s plot is an allegory for the Vietnam war while this other fantasy novel warns people about the dangers of overconsumption – you could probably guess which decades those stories were written in.
If you’re writing contemporary fiction, it’s totally fine for it to include contemporary elements, and there’s nothing wrong if your characters have iPhones and use Twitter. If your story is about Twitter, though, or if the platform has a significant role in the story, your book is already going to be dated when you publish it. (And yes, I know it’s not called Twitter anymore, but everyone knows the new name is stupid.)
Are people going to care about your story ten years from now? Twenty? Fifty? If you don’t know, or if you can’t tell what is timeless in your story even if it’s only about young people’s struggles in the modern world, you might be missing out on writing a story that people still want to read after the hype is over.
Write for your audience
I couldn’t care less about courtroom thrillers or about high school dating dramas, but that’s fine because I’m not in the audience for those books. Demographically speaking, I might be in the audience for second-chance romance novels, but personally I have zero interest in them, and that’s also fine.
Who are you writing for? Write for those people. Age is an especially important factor in writing about things that your readers care about, because writing about teenager problems is not the same as writing about middle-aged problems. Yes, you can have universal themes in your story, but the specifics of how those themes manifest will be different for each story, and you’ll need to consider your audience there.
That said – and I love starting a sentence with that said – there are always books that break out of their genre’s and audience’s confinements, but you do need to appeal to your core audience first and foremost. Then, you can add those elements that will have a wider appeal, like those universal themes or timeless ideas.
Things that we DON’T care about
Obviously there isn’t anything in the world that everyone would care about, but there are some things that can be hard to get people to read about, let alone continue reading about.
There are some things that people only really care about when they’re the ones doing them and in the middle of them. Writers have long written about writers who struggle with their writerly things, and the unfortunate truth is that nobody cares about that stuff as much as the writer themselves does. When you’re a student working on your thesis, it’s understandable that it feels like the most important and interesting thing in the world, but actually, hardly anyone will want to read about that.
Again, it’s about understanding what people actually enjoy. Yes, reading about little shops sure is fun, but nobody wants to read about the struggles of accounting or posting content about your business unless you’re the person doing it.
Here’s a little caveat, though: there are a lot of children’s books that are about very specific things, and I assume that’s because children love reading about hobbies. Books for adults, however, are unfortunately a little different.
No, it’s not about being average
The point I’m making here is NOT that you need to choose the most common and average experiences to write about. If that was what people truly wanted, they wouldn’t be reading fantasy novels. Nobody is actually a mage.
When you have specifics in your story, it’s not really ABOUT those specifics. Bleak House is not really about being indecisive about your future career even if that’s what Richard is, and The Secret History is not really about going to university in New England even if that’s what they – including another Richard – are doing.
The specifics help paint the bigger picture. What IS the bigger picture? That’s what we’re talking about here.
Writing plots that people want to read
Earlier we talked about stories more generally, but here we’re going to get a little into the nitty-gritty details of plotting.
Problems that matter
Most Western stories are about problems. Usually they’re specific problems like getting fired or having to marry a really ugly prince, but in some stories the protagonist’s life circumstances could be the problem if it’s a story that spans over a lifetime or at least many years. (Those kinds of stories are harder to write well, however, so maybe stick to more specific problems if you’re a beginner.)
I already touched this subject earlier, but when you’ve got a problem in the story, it needs to matter, because if it doesn’t, people won’t want to read that. You don’t want people to be saying “So what?” at your story. Even if the problem is something that your readers wouldn’t personally struggle with, it needs to be blatantly obvious why this particular character struggles with it.
Your genre and your audience come to play here again. Problems in middle-grade novels are not the same as in YA novels, and nobody starts reading a romance novel expecting there to be tense negotiations between two dictators with access to nuclear weapons.
Raise questions
The beginning of your story should ask a question that the end will answer, like “Will Katniss get out of the Hunger Games alive?” But also, your story should gradually raise other questions and then answer them, though not one after the other. Stack the questions on top of each other, too, like you’re building a brick wall.
This is what keeps your readers turning the pages. Yes, we just found out that the protagonist’s dad didn’t die when the office building collapsed, but what was he doing at a strip club at work hours? Right, and also, why did the office building collapse anyway? That’s what keeps your story moving and readers reading.
These additional questions should be answered by the end of your story or else you might end up with a plot hole. In the very least, you should have a character acknowledge that they didn’t figure something out – perhaps it was a part of their journey to accept that. If you’re writing a series, you can leave questions to be answered in later books as long as your readers understand the journey is still unfinished.
No easy answers
Life doesn’t usually work in an obvious and straightforward way, and your stories definitely shouldn’t. If your protagonist’s problems can be solved with one phone call and then they just do it, that’s not very interesting. Problems that can be solved with a phone call are only interesting if there are no phones.
We want to worry for the characters and wonder how things will turn out, so don’t take that away from us. If your story is full of “well, duh” moments, it’s not a story that people will want to read.
Easy answers can also annoy your readers and make you seem a little naive or out of touch, which I’m sure you don’t want. I always cringe when characters solve their infertility issues by thinking a little more positively, and that’s just one example of how someone can cheat their readers out of a more meaningful story. Don’t be a coward and don’t be too soft on your characters, alright?
Here’s how to plot a story that your readers will be obsessed with
This post turned out to be a lot longer than I expected, but I have even more for you. Plotting is *my thing*, and I really want to help you plot a story that your readers will love instead of one where even you are not sure what the point is.
You and I could talk about plotting all day and I could give you a 200+ workbook for figuring out every single element of your story, but why do that when I could give you my Simple Plotter that helps you plot your story in just one afternoon? That way you’ll be actually writing much sooner. Tell your future fans to thank me.
Protagonist Crafts is a blog about writing fiction, written by a published author and creative writing teacher. You can find more writing tips and inspiration in the blog and you can get the best author tools at Writer Lifestyle on Etsy.
