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. 

Is nobody reading your stories? You’re probably doing THIS wrong…

You write a story, put it out there… and nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nobody (apart from your mum) seems to care. It’s a powerful story, one which had an impact on you when you lived or imagined it. Why doesn’t anyone comment on it or share it? The wind has been taken completely out of your sails. What went wrong?

Is it because what you have to say is worthless? Definitely not.

Rather, it is because people haven’t seen the value in what you have to say… which is a different matter.

And that is because (brace yourself for the honest feedback) you haven’t provided them with the story in a way that is of value to them. This is totally a problem you can do something about.

Creating an emotional connection with your readers

Go back to the time when you were living a story that you have tried to tell. It doesn’t matter if it’s a true story and you lived it for real, or if it’s a story that only happened in your head. How did you experience it? Or at least, how do you remember experiencing it? You might remember the colours, shapes, light, movements and other visual aspects of the experience. For example, do you remember the way that cloud sped across the sky and turned the ground grey?

Perhaps you recall the sounds more than the sights. The way the school children were shouting in their yard a quarter of a mile away; the way the back door slammed and cut off the noise from outside. Maybe you remember the characteristic rhythm of a clock.

It could be that you remember the feelings in your muscles, joints and ‘guts’ more than the sights or sounds. The way a person shrank in utter defeat or misery; the way you tapped and fiddled with a pen in your nervousness. The way people behaved physically – and changed their behaviour as the story moved on – is a third way you might have experienced the story.

These three ways of experiencing a story (sights, sounds and kinaesthetic sensations) are likely to be the main ways in which YOU experienced that story. The balance between the three ways varies from person to person, but you can be pretty sure that those three types of stimulus were present in your experience of the story.

Now let’s move on to how this can help you tell your story in a way that will help you form an emotional connection with your ideal audience…

Four things you should never say to a writer…

There are some awful things you might have said to a friend who loves writing. You probably said them in all innocence. Allow me to explain why you should never, ever repeat them, since your friend is unlikely to tell you him or herself.

I am a writer. I work with writers. I help people become writers. I know that when a group of writers congregate in a room and one of them tells the others something a well-meaning friend has said, everyone else will wince in shared sympathy and empathy.

That’s because the individuals in that room ‘get’ it. Whatever their ages, genders, races, nationalities, they get it. Even regardless of the genre each of them prefers to write in – which is a far, far greater divide than racial groupings or generations could ever be – they get it.

What should you never, EVER say to a writer? Read on:

2. “What did I think of your story? It was really nice.”

Did you give the story anything more than a quick scan? Did you look at it at all? If not, just say so. If your friend is serious about writing, she wants REAL feedback NOT a platitude. She wants to know what you liked about it, and she wants to know what you didn’t like – what was confusing, what was boring, that kind of thing.
You could actually cause damage to your writer-type friend’s confidence by saying it was ‘nice’. ‘Nice’ is a word we use to describe a gift we think is a bit dull but we don’t want to hurt the person’s feelings. Please, offer a real emotional reaction to that story. Perhaps you were angered or disgusted by something in it: that is better than saying it is ‘nice’.
What if your friend gets offended by you saying this? If she is serious about being a writer, she won’t be. If she is offended… well, she asked… and you won’t have her bothering you for an opinion in the future.

4. “I really liked that one. It reminded me of… you know, that book…”

Please… go and check your facts first. Is your friend’s work really reminiscent of ‘that book’ or is it just that a particular word or character’s name set you thinking of something else you’ve read? Unless there really are glaring similarities, do NOT say this to your friend. It will not be taken as a compliment, even if you’ve compared the text to Pride and Prejudice or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It will be taken by your friend as a sign that he has been wasting his time. What is the point of writing something that has already been written? What publisher will take his book on if it is a rip-off of something else?
What if your friend really has lifted a plot wholesale (even unconsciously) from somewhere else? If you’re sure about it and you’ve double-checked your facts, it would be kindest in the long run to tell him. Do it gently and privately – it will be very bad news, but if he is a good friend he won’t shoot the messenger. (Unless he turns you into a character in a new story and has you murdered in a brutally imaginative fashion. If this happens, you’ve done him a favour by providing him the inspiration for something original.)

So now you know the truth, dear friend-to-a-writer.

Be kind to your writer-type friend, even if to do so you must be cruel. Above all, be honest. Otherwise, you may well recognise yourself in a future story meeting a very sticky end.

Could you really write a book?

It seems that every other person these days has a book in them, whether it’s a book to tell their own story, a novel, or a book to complement their business. Do you recognise yourself in this?

How many of those people actually write their book? I don’t mean start writing it and leave off a thousand words in, or get an outline put together and do a bit of research about CreateSpace… I mean actually write an entire book. I don’t mean writing a first draft and then leaving it to gather dust in a drawer, either.

Elizabeth Gilbert (she’s the one who wrote Eat Pray Love) in her fabulous book Big Magic, which is about living a creative life, tells us about her idea for a book that got away. She started working on it, then for one reason and another she abandoned it. The idea left her and found someone else to write it. Someone else wrote the book instead of her.

Chances are, seeing as you’re reading this article, you’ve got an idea for a book. It could be a book you’ve been looking for but haven’t found anywhere. It could be a book which will motivate and help a particular group of people – people who really need to hear what you’ve got to say.

Here’s the thing. If you don’t write it, they’ll never hear it, unless they hear it from someone else. 

So why don’t YOU write it?

Excuse number one you might be making… “I don’t have time…” or “I’ll do it when I’ve got more time…” Let me ask you this: WHEN do you imagine you are going to have more time? When the kids are older? When they move out? When you win the lottery? When you’re in a residential home for the elderly?

How do you think those people who HAVE written books managed to do so, or at least when they were writing their first book? Few of us have a writing hut we can escape to for hours on end. What you do – what we ALL have to do – is fit your writing into the cracks in your life. That half hour when the kids are at their swimming lesson. That lunch break. That time between dinner and bed. If scrolling on social media is more important to you, carry on. If that soap opera is so vital, don’t let me stop you. Crack on. Someone else can write your book instead of you.

If you really want to write your book, you will. If you want to find excuses, you will. 

Excuse number two you might be making… “It’s too hard.” Writing a book IS hard – at least, writing a book worth reading is hard. There are various promotions out there which promise that you can be published thirty days from now. You could be, indeed. That doesn’t mean what you’ll have written will be any good.

It was Ernest Hemingway, apparently, who wrote, “The first draft of anything is sh*t.” In thirty days, you could possibly write a first draft of something. Or anything. Would you be happy with that as your legacy, though?

Writing a book is hard work. Some people call it practice. Effort. There’s no getting around it. Does that mean it’s too hard for you? It depends…

If you want to put in the work, you will. If you want to decide it’s too hard, you will.

Found this article useful? Try this one… https://bestbookyoucan.com/writing-business-book-know-start/

Planning on writing a business book?

You want to write a business book so that people will see you as the expert in your field? You want potential clients to be desperate to work with you? You want the book to sell or circulate in its thousands? …
What you need to do is keep those goals in mind every step of the way, isn’t it?
NO.
Frankly, a focus on those goals will lead to you writing a book which portrays you as a total ego-maniac. Nobody will want to read it, never mind act on it by seeking you out. I seriously doubt that even your nearest and dearest will be able to look you in the eye and tell you they’re impressed.
Think about it. How much time would you spend reading a book which is nothing more than an extremely wordy advert for its writer’s products or services?
Those goals are the benefits you want to achieve for yourself.
There is nothing wrong with wanting those benefits. You’re not a terrible person for having those ambitions.

‘But this is my story… Isn’t that valuable?’
We all have a story of some sort and yes, everyone’s story is valuable. Why do we find stories so interesting? Why are they so ingrained in our human natures? One word: emotion. When we read a story or watch a film, what we want is to feel what it is like to be that person and live that life. I am not sneering at stories in general nor at your personal story. Stories are wonderful expressions of ourselves.
But here’s the thing… when a person reads a novel, that emotional connection with the characters is primarily what he or she is seeking. His expectations do not go beyond that. He probably isn’t expecting to learn a lesson in his own life. When that same person reads a non-fiction book, especially a business or self-development book, a lesson he can take into his own life is exactly what he expects and wants. If he doesn’t get it, you’ve lost him.
Do share your story. Stories encourage readers to engage with your message. Stories are a key element of what makes us human. But… and I mean this kindly, as advice to save you wasted energies… make sure that when you sit down to plan, organise and write your book, you keep offering your readers value they can use in their own lives.

People crave help and advice
By putting aside your own goals for your book, then – sales of goods and services, book sales, enhanced professional reputation – and focusing instead on how you can use the book to help your readers, you will do a much better job of actually achieving your own goals. Try looking your own ambitions in the eye and they will run away and hide from you.

Three myths about good writing

There are many myths about what makes good writing. Here I debunk three of them…

1. Good writing needs to be grammatically correct.

Not always. Controversial? Not particularly – just common sense. Take another look at those three sentences you’ve just read. Every textbook of English grammar states that a sentence needs to contain a main verb, yet those sentences do not have a single verb amongst them (main or otherwise). Did that stop you understanding them? I doubt it. I am not saying that we should throw the rules of our language out of the window and burn them all on the bonfire while we dance around it wearing bear skins. As a general rule, standard English is the way to go.

But (and how dare I start a sentence or a paragraph with a conjunction!) there are times when we can bend or ignore the rules. There is indeed wonderful beauty in the standard English rhythm of Dickens’ “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” (A Tale of Two Cities) but there is also beauty in the truth of the words, “I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.” (The Color Purple, Alice Walker). Celie’s voice couldn’t talk to us in standard English – it wouldn’t be true. So that is writing myth #1.

3. I need to use lots of unusual words and long sentences so that it doesn’t sound simplistic.

There’s a world of difference between simplistic and simple. Simplistic is bad. Simple is good. Avoiding swallowing a combined edition dictionary and thesaurus does not make your writing simplistic. Treating your reader as if s/he is stupid makes it simplistic (see the above note about too much detail). Simple is beautiful. Simple doesn’t tangle your reader in sentences which use three different types of subordinate clauses plus an embedded clause (and no, it’s not desperately important whether you know what they are or not). Simple doesn’t leave your reader baffled because you’ve used three words in a row s/he doesn’t know. Simple writing lets your reader read it without drawing attention to itself. Your reader is free to enjoy the story. Simple! Writing myth #3.

So what am I really telling you?

Good writing serves the reader, not the writer. How can you engage your reader in the story? How can you make your characters come alive and dance for their audience? Anticipate what the reader will want, then give it to them (though tease them now and again by making them wait a while for answers). The reader isn’t thinking ‘How can I admire this writer?’ but ‘Am I enjoying this story?’ That, dear reader, is the crux of it – write so that your reader enjoys the story.