(5 min read.) This big creative writing advice can help you write work that matters to strangers. It’s also part of why bad books sell so well. Have you read “Twilight” or “Fifty Shades?” How about “The DaVinci Code?” They didn’t tell good stories. But they created the CHANCES for FEELINGS that readers craved. You can do the same.
Allowing readers to feel isn’t the only thing that writing can (or should) do, but if you can do it, you’ll get and keep the audience’s attention. Once you’ve got that: you can do almost anything else.
If you’re already stoked to try doing it, go write. But if you’re game to dig into some quick creative writing advice plus a guided journaling exercise to help you identify what you need and want to be writing, stick with me for about four more minutes and I’ll do my best.
Writing Advice on How Readers Read
The difference between a book and a movie is that your reader needs to finish the book. Not just by turning the pages until they get to “The End.” A reader finishes your book by taking your words and vividly imagining them into life. You start the story, they finish it.
Although you’ll do more than half of the sweating and struggling, your reader does more than half of the most valuable creative work. Their personal daydream of how the characters look, move, sound, and feel is what makes the writing matter. The reader finishes the story. Without them, it’s a list of words; with them, it’s a meaningful experience. But it’s an experience they can’t have without you.
Try thinking of your story as a blueprint rather than as a finished product.
(In other words, your pages are a tool that allows a reader to do their creative work. Your reader is the ultimate collaborator on and final creator of any story. I’ve said this before about nailing the writer-reader relationship and I’ll say it again because I don’t hear it often and because I think it’s useful to repeat your best ideas. It seems to be kind of rare as writing advice; a lot of writing advice really forgets the reader is a creative powerhouse. I think that sets writers up to fail, so I have a real THING about it. Ok, rant over.)
All readers want to access their feelings. As a writer, you’re giving them an excuse. You’re giving them support. You’re giving them an opportunity. You’re not doing it for them. Ultimately, they create the feeling. You provide the invitation, the space, and the excuse. You give them the chance to bring a feeling forward. Your writing is the escape hatch for feelings that already live inside the reader. What do you want to help them set free?
Readers use “Twilight” or “Fifty Shades of Grey” because they want to feel desired. Readers use “The DaVinci Code” because they want to feel like they’re in on a secret. What can readers use your work to feel?
Guided Journaling Exercise for Creative Writers
If you like this idea but you’re not sure what feelings you need or want to focusing on, try this guided journaling exercise.
Get a notebook and a pen, set a timer for fifteen minutes, and put these three questions at the top of your page. You can spend about five minutes on each journaling prompt, or just dig deep into one. Follow your instincts.:
What would it free me to feel?
What feelings do I see people around me chase?
What feeling would I pay a million bucks to feel right now?
Make a list. See what pops up.
Now, look at all the feelings you listed. Find combinations that feel exciting. Write chances for people (including yourself!) to feel those things. Make the center of your work the chance to have a few feelings you WANT.
You’ll be your first reader, so why not write chances for yourself to feel the way you want to?
Personally, some of my favorite feelings to create opportunities for these days are: feeling delighted, feeling like I just got told the hottest gossip, feeling like empires can crumble, feeling safe, feeling gorgeous in an unusual body, feeling amused, feeling scared but not terrified, feeling part of a group that all cares about each other, and feeling lucky to be alive. It’s good creative writing advice to write about something you’re interested in; what feelings interest you?
Once you’ve got a few feelings you’re interested in, it’s time to add some contrasting ones and turn it into a journey.
Turning Feelings into Journeys
A single feeling isn’t a story. It might be a poem, but even tiny little haiku poems have an emotional leap (it’s called a kireji (fact) that goes from one feeling to another. So if you want to keep readers with you, you’ll need to move them through a series of chances to feel different things.
If you really want to get ADVANCED about your story structure (and I do, because this is how I structure my own writing), here’s some practical writing advice. Pick a handful of feelings that don’t quite go together. Arrange them in an order that seems like a cool little roller coaster. Funny to sexy to scared to safe to surprised? Now, create opportunities for your audience to feel those things in that order, over and over, as a cycle. Let it be the skeleton under your story. Simply see if you can invite one feeling and then the next. Send the reader on that journey, over and over, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, as a recurring cycle in this specific writing project. If you stick to this cycle of emotions, your story will have a ton of dynamic variety but a kind of inherent harmony that no other technique can offer. At any given moment, you’ll know where you need to head; your compass will say “time to create an opportunity for someone to feel scared,” and you’ll realized you need to move the action to a haunted house or whatever your solution is. You’ll never be directionless, because you’ll know what you need to do next for your reader. I prefer this TEN TIMES OVER compared to a plot outline or a “beat sheet!!!” That’s my style. It might not be yours. But I invite you to try it on and see.
If that seems a little complicated, a simple way to structure your story (and something beginner writers can try) is to think of two opposite feelings. Scared and safe? Powerful and powerless? Together and alone? When you get a pair you like, help the reader to bounce back and forth between chances to have those two feelings. Congratulations: you have a compass to guide your first draft.
If you already have a draft, it’s not too late to put some of this strategy to use while editing. When I’m revising or editing I sometimes like to list out the feelings a scene might allow for, in order, and look at that instead of at the text itself. “Wow, this scene creates chances for people to have a lot of warm and gentle feelings. If I don’t want someone to get bored, I might want to add something exciting or scary to keep the work dynamic. How could I do that?” Congratulations: that’s a revision plan.
I invite you to try this idea on and see if it works for you. If it makes writing feel exciting or easier, keep it. If it’s not for you, junk it without remorse. But if you don’t try it, you’ll never know if it might change your practice for the better.
Big Creative Writing Advice Takeaway
Write chances for your reader to have feelings. Let your reader do most of the work; just give them an excuse. Pick a pair or cycle of emotions. Move between them. Try making that journey your “beat sheet.” See what happens to your writing when you focus on giving a reader opportunities for specific emotions. If you like it, do it forever
xo, megan
There’s no one way to write. There’s only your way. I hope some of my tactics and ideas can help you find it.
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