with Guest Jeff Gerke
Hacking Your
Reader’s Brain
Do you remember when you
weren’t a novelist? Back when you had never heard of point of view or dialogue
attributions or show vs. tell? Maybe back when you could enjoy a novel just
because…well, maybe you didn’t even know why you enjoyed it. You just did.
Back then, what was it that
made you love a novel? Was it seriously that it had strong verbs or very few
–ly adverbs? Was it that the author didn’t bury her dialogue? Was it truly
because the book had no prologue or that the writer found a number of
alternatives to “said” and “asked”?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all
about strong fiction craftsmanship. I am a big believer in how the art and
craft of the novelist can strengthen a novel, and I not only use them myself in
my fiction, but I have made a living teaching great fiction craft.
But I have never read an
Amazon review (by a non-novelist) that said, “I loved this novel because it had
no gerunds!” Or “I would’ve given this novel 5 stars except the author used the
word ‘that’ seven times in the opening chapter.” Or “What made me love this
book was how the author refrained from referring to floating body parts,
maintained a consistent POV throughout, and made effective use of beats to
simulate the passage of time.”
Uh…not so much.
What do thrilled readers
actually say? They say, “I couldn’t put it down!” and “I felt like I was in the
middle of the story” and “I worried about the characters when I wasn’t reading”
and “It swept me away” and “I stayed up all night reading it.”
Did you notice? Not a craft
comment in the bunch.
The typical reader of fiction
doesn’t know—or care—about to-be verbs, weasel words, or whether or not the
author introduced the inciting event within the first two pages. The typical
reader of fiction wants to be thrilled, carried away, and utterly engaged.
She wants to not be bored.
And if you can remember back
to before you knew all those fancy fiction craft terms, you might recall that
you wanted that too. Still want it.
It used to baffle me that so
many of the novels that became blockbuster sellers were so terribly written. In
craft terms, they were junk. I recall throwing a bestseller across the room
because it was so hideously crafted. And yet novels with high fiction
craftsmanship most often sell poorly. Most often, but not always.
Then it dawned on me: It’s not
that novels with low craft are embraced by the typical reader and novels with
high craft are disliked by the typical reader. It’s that a book’s success
actually has nothing at all to do with its level of craftsmanship.
That’s a hard pill to swallow
for a guy who gets paid to teach craft.
So if high or low fiction
craftsmanship isn’t what makes or breaks a novel, what is?
To quote the movie I, Robot: “That, detective, is the right
question.”
In The Irresistible Novel, my fifth craft book from Writer’s
Digest, I tackle this very question. In Part 1, I look at over 100 fiction
craft “rules” and discuss what they’re good for, how to use them, when to break
them, and how to not be paralyzed when they directly contradict one another.
All of that is setup for Part 2, wherein I look at the only rule
of fiction that merits paying attention to much at all. It’s so essential I
promoted it from rule to commandment. Indeed, the Great Commandment of Fiction
is this: You must keep your reader
engaged from beginning to end.
Your reader, you recall, wants to not be bored. Said another
way, she wants to be engaged from start to finish.
How do you do that?
Our answer comes from a surprising quarter: neuroscience.
As I researched The
Irresistible Novel, I encountered the work of Dr. Paul J. Zak, Professor of
Neurology at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Dr. Zak studies the brain
chemistry of reader and viewer engagement.
In other words, he studies what makes people become engaged
with stories.
It turns out that the brain is doing one thing (or, really,
almost nothing) when it is not
engaged with a story, and it does something very different when it is engaged. Neurotransmitters like
dopamine and adrenaline and GABA are flowing through the brain of an engaged
reader. These are the brain chemicals the reader is craving. It’s what we feel
when we’re loving a novel and it’s what we don’t feel when we’re not.
The key brain chemical involved in reader engagement is
oxytocin. It is the neurotransmitter responsible for empathy. When you’re
watching a video of a baby’s first steps and the baby falls and cries, you
might say, “Aw!” and make a sad face out of sympathy. That’s your brain on
oxytocin.
Your reader wants to feel connected to your protagonist.
More than that, in fact. Dr. Zak says, “Your job as the writer is to make the
reader become the character in the
book.”
You can do that intentionally. You can trigger oxytocin in
your reader’s grey matter. Along with adrenaline, testosterone, glutamate, and
the rest. All on demand. All in coordination with your story.
You, my friend, are going to hack your reader’s brain.
All of Part 2 of The
Irresistible Novel explains how to do this in full, but I’ll give you one
key right here.
You connect your reader to your hero by showing the hero
being vulnerable. It’s no mistake
that almost every Disney child hero is missing one or both parents. When you
see a child without a daddy or a mommy, you lean forward in sympathy. You say,
“Oh, come here, honey, I’ll take care of you.” You see the person in need, your
brain releases oxytocin, and you connect.
Show how your hero is likable. Show how he’s admirable. Show
him being generous and standing up to the bully and feeding the kitty. Show how
he’s similar to the reader. Show him in hard situations nevertheless trying
again and again. Show him being nice to an old lady. All of these endear your
hero to the reader.
But your secret weapon is vulnerability. When the girl is
standing there in her new dress with her new haircut and her mother’s pearls
and she’s ready to give her first kiss, and the boy finally shows up and says,
“Seriously, that’s what you’re wearing? Whatever. Get in the car,” you feel it.
You feel her humiliation and disappointment and anger. And
you are instantly in with this girl.
You will seriously go with her to the ends of the earth in this story. Why?
Because she was vulnerable and you leapt into that space of hurt, and now the
two of you are one. When she’s holding onto the top of the train for dear life,
your palms will sweat.
That’s called transportation,
and it is one of three core ways you must hack your reader’s brain and
cause her to be engaged with your novel from beginning to end.
To learn the other two core ways, and to find an entire
brain chemistry story map, pick up The
Irresistible Novel from Writer’s Digest. (Click here to find on Amazon.)
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Missy Tippens, here. Y'all chime in and let us know what you think! As a reader, what makes you really feel for the hero? What makes you go all in?
Today, I'm giving away a surprise package to one lucky commenter! To be entered in the drawing, tell me who's one of the most memorable characters you've read and why (and also let me know you'd like to be entered).
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Bio: When you’re truly ready to make your fiction publishable, it’s time to call Jeff Gerke. Jeff trains novelists how to better do what it is they’re trying to do. He trains through his books for Writers Digest: The Irresistible Novel, Plot Versus Character, The First 50 Pages, Write Your Novel in a Month, and The Art & Craft of Writing Christian Fiction. He trains through the many writers’ conferences he teaches at all over the country every year. He trained his authors when he ran Marcher Lord Press, the premier publisher of Christian speculative fiction, which he sold after an award-winning 5-year run. And he trains through the freelance editing he does for his clients at www.jeffgerke.com. Jeff is known for his canny book doctoring skills and his encouraging manner, which leaves writers feeling empowered and like they really can do this thing after all. He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and three children.
