Write a story that will make someone cry

Many writers wish they knew how to write a story that will make someone cry. They want to know how to make their readers feel such strong emotion that they sob while reading about fictional characters. Many such writers get part of the answer on their own: they understand that to make people cry they need to have characters in their stories who feel strong emotions themselves. However, they are often still missing a key part of the characterisation process. That key part is character resilience. 

Once you’ve created this character we admire, give them something to struggle with. Give them an event that’s really hard for them to cope with, because it challenges the thing they care most about. If they care most about their young family, threaten that family. If they care most about getting a promotion that they’ve worked for since forever, introduce a character who’s even better qualified.

OK. You’ve challenged your character and they’ve answered the challenge. What next? Your character now needs to encounter hardship and difficulties on their journey to solving the problem. Things have to be hard. You have to give them something that’s difficult to achieve. You also have to make the obstacles in their way tougher and tougher to overcome. Their emotions need to be stretched tighter and tighter as they start to crack under the pressure.
They might feel a great temptation to give up and let the bad guy get what he wants. They must sink into a pit of despair. And there must be a terrible loss. To make someone cry when they read your story, you must put your character through an event that is too much for anyone to realistically bear. But even that is not enough.

You must go a step beyond this. What will make your reader cry is not so much the fact that something awful has happened. What brings your reader to tears is your character’s reaction to this event. There will be the immediate despair, of course. But then he or she must show their true mettle. They must pick themselves up, look their defeat in the face, and face it anyway. They must be defiant and resilient even though it is surely impossible that they will overcome.

Again, The Hunger Games offers us a great example of defiance and resilience. Katniss loses a friend and ally. She initially despairs but then shows her true courage and is defiant in the face of the enemy.

It is the resilience of the human spirit that makes a reader cry, not the sight of a character crumbling.

Will your character finally overcome the obstacles to their happiness and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

Maybe. That’s up to you. You’re the writer. In a sad story with a tragic ending, certainly your character won’t. But they’ll go down fighting. The key to making your readers cry when they read your story is always your character’s resilience. 

Would you get up tomorrow and decide run a marathon?

You might decide you wanted to run a marathon, true. You might decide that you were going to start running this week and plan to build up to longer distances. You would probably reach out to your park run organisers and local groups. You would almost certainly ask those in the know how you should start and what equipment you should invest in.

You would NOT, however, dust off the trainers you’ve not worn in ten years, step out your front door and run twenty six miles.

Imagine how that conversation would go with a fitness coach…

“Hi! Let’s start with your fitness goals. What do you want to be able to do? Walk a mile? Walk up flights of stairs without getting breathless? Run 5k? …”

“I want to run a marathon.”

“OK, wow! Good on you. How long have you had marathon running as an ambition?”

“Years. I’ve always thought I’ve had a marathon in me. I’ve just never got around to starting.”

“And now you’re ready? Fantastic! Well, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll start with finding out what your fitness level is like and then work on building up your strength and stamina. If you look around the gym you’ll see there are different areas for different types of work – ”

“Oh, no, no! You don’t understand. I don’t want to do all those things.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No, I don’t want to do those things. What I want to do is run a marathon.”

“Yee-ess. I understand that. What we are able to do here is train you from the place you’re at right now to a place of fitness and stamina that will mean you’re able to run that marathon.”

“Hmm, I see. But there must be another way of doing it. I mean, I’m not saying you don’t know your job or anything, but I learned how to put one foot in front of another when I was really young. Can’t you just show me how to do it – you know, how to get my breathing right and how to go at the right pace and all that – then I’ll just put my name down for the next marathon?”

“You’re kidding me, right? You know it doesn’t work like that, right?”

“Why not? That other gym, the one down the road, say they can do that. It’s on all their advertisements.”

“Is it?”

I have lost count of the number of people I’ve spoken to who have a novel or personal story in mind. They know exactly what it is about and feel they just need to ‘get it out’. I understand that feeling. Of course they want to produce the great work they feel so passionately about.

Then, all too often, I hear the words I dread. The words that mean the person in front of me with such a great story to tell simply isn’t ready to work with me. The words that mean they are going to have to go through the painful process of trying ‘quick fixes’ and falling for flattering words before they can see what’s actually going to work.

What they say is, “I just need someone to start me off and show me what bits to put where and I’ll be fine.”

I used to try to re-educate those people, to try to save them months or years of pain in which they try to write their story but still can’t get it to come out right. I wished they could have understood me when I told them about the need to learn to tell a story that is irresistible – it’s not just about getting the events of the story down on paper. The actual principles of doing that are not very complicated but they take training, just like running a marathon does. I have learned that they will just look at me with that, “Yeah, what do you know?” expression.

They often end up with their confidence crushed, convinced there must be something inferior about them because they can’t do it … it was supposed to be simple and straightforward, wasn’t it? It was just a case of ‘getting it out’. They’re not ready to hear the truth until they’ve learned from bitter experience, which makes me really sad. I wish there was more I could do about it. Horse to water, and all that.

These days I content myself with wishing them the best of luck and reassuring them that my door is open should they change their mind.

Are you writing stories that no one will ever read?

‘Sure, I’ll read your boring novel. The way you’ve told it is like wading through mud, your characters speak like robots and you’ve written lots of dull and pointless description, but I know you’ve spent time writing it and you think it’s fabulous so of course I will give up twenty hours of my life to make you feel good.’

… said no reader EVER.

I spend some of my social media time in support groups for writers and storytellers. I like to keep up with current issues, see what people are worrying about, and it is always possible to learn something new.

Some of the time, though, I end up shaking my head in disbelief. Recently I saw a thread started by a young writer who was worried that he was wasting his time. He was concerned particularly that he might be creating stories that nobody else would ever think were worth their time and effort to read.

Out of the shadows already had come fifty or more group members, almost all singing from the same song sheet…

‘Don’t worry about it, man. So long as you’re writing what YOU love, that’s the point.’

‘Just write from your heart and there will be people who resonate with your story.’

Stories that readers find irresistible

That poor guy was expressing his concern that he might not find an audience to read his stories. He was terrified that he would put them out there and get nothing but tumbleweed around them. He was writing because he wanted to have an impact on people and make a success of himself as an author, not so that he could tuck it away in a drawer or create a support group for a specific issue.

What he wanted was to make his stories irresistible. The reason he posted in that Facebook group that day was because he knew his stories WEREN’T irresistible.

Now I don’t know what was good or bad about his writing: he didn’t share any extracts in the thread. But he knew it could be better and he knew it was his job to make it better.

That guy looked to be in his early twenties. Many of the people offering him ‘advice’ must have been twice his age, at least. He didn’t know it, but he had wisdom that those ‘experienced voices’ simply didn’t have and probably never will have. Despite his lack of confidence, he had grasped the truth that no audience out there will ever read something just because its writer loves it. He could see that every person who chooses to read a story will do so because they can see something in it for THEM. What’s more, he could see that it is up to him to engage people in his stories.

Nobody owes him their time, effort or money to give him an audience. That goes for the rest of us too. It is the job of all of us to write stories that are irresistible.

“I’ve got an idea… but I haven’t got a clue where to start.”

If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard those words! What is that fear of getting started all about? It can be different issues for different people, but the most common reasons I dig out of people are as follows…

People sometimes don’t think they’re good enough to be a writer – as if writing a story, never mind a whole book is something only the elite can do. Remember this – every famous writer had to start somewhere. J.K Rowling was about as poor as a person can be without actually being homeless. Charles Dickens spent some of his childhood doing very unpleasant, dead-end work in a factory. They both had ideas. What made the difference was that they made a start. What you come up with first might not be very good – but I wouldn’t mind betting that those authors’ early attempts would make their famous later selves blush.

Often, that person with an idea hasn’t done any creative writing since they were in school. They feel they’ve forgotten the ‘rules’. How about marathon runners who only began running seriously as adults? It’s the same thing. We can train our brains just as we can train our bodies.

Some people worry that they’re going to get it wrong because they were ‘no good’ at English in school. Writing as an adult, when you get to choose exactly what to write, is completely different from writing in school. You’re not being given marks out of ten any more – you’re being given a chance to put your own voice out there… and having your work checked for you isn’t cheating any more – it’s called editing and proofreading!

Occasionally, it’s as simple as a nervousness about the blank page – that empty new document staring back at you. Just start writing. Write anything. You don’t even have to show anyone that first attempt. The point is that the page won’t be blank any more.

You can always get help. 

Why you should never write a book

So what if you’ve always had that idea to write a novel? Big deal if the fabulous life events of a family member ought to be recorded for posterity in a book?

Nobody actually wants to read any book you could write, right? You haven’t written anything of that nature for years – not since you were in school. You don’t have the wit of Stephen Fry, or his vocabulary, come to that. Do you really think you could write enough? Books need to have thousands and thousands of words in them! Not to mention the effect it would have on your family and social life: everybody knows writers are loners; in fact, they mostly live tragic, isolated lives in a cold cottage somewhere on a blasted heath.

Actually, no.

How do you know nobody would want to read it? If the story grips your imagination, chances are it would grab other people’s imagination too.

School may be a long time ago (longer for some of us than for others!), but who says that learning stops when you leave formal education? School isn’t a place where all the knowledge and skills we could ever use are downloaded to our hard drives – it’s a place where we learn how to learn for the rest of our lives.

Why are you comparing your words with the words of other people? Of course you’re not Stephen Fry! Or Philippa Gregory. Or J.K. Rowling. Or… anyone else who isn’t you. Your voice is uniquely yours.