Episode 99: How do you capture your reader’s attention?

In this week’s episode, JP and Crys continue their Author’s Tarot Journey, this time using the Justice card to guide their discussion. They discuss the different tips and tricks they use to capture the reader’s attention and keep them engaged.

Question of the week: what do you do to capture your reader’s attention? Do you do something other than what we mentioned? Share your answer here.

Show Notes

Support us on Patreon!

Transcript

Crys: Hello, friends and welcome to the Write Away Podcast. This is episode 99, and it is Sunday, June 19th, 2022, as we are recording this. I’m Crys Cain with my cohost…

JP: JP Rindfleisch.

Crys: How’s your writing week been, JP?

JP: It’s been good. So this week I’ve been really focusing on getting the preliminary edits post developmental edit and My co-author going through it. So I just went through a lot of the track changes, agreed or disagreed, cleaned that up, and now I’m doing a read through and a hard line edit before we send it to our actual line editor, just so that it can be as clean as can be. I think we’re sending it to beta readers before the line editor, but regardless I’m doing a nice cleanup.

Crys: And is this book one?

JP: Book two.

Crys: Book two. I was like, I book one was done.

JP: Book one is done. Book one we’re like launching in under a month.

Crys: Do you have a pre-order?

JP: Not yet. We’re doing a silent pre-order the week before to get people naturally finding it, but we’re not announcing anything. And we’re trying to keep the algorithm to get…

Crys: People who actually want that genre. Yes. Because dear listeners, if you are not aware yet, one of the problems of having a writer-faced podcast is that you can really screw up your Amazon algorithms when your writer friends who read across all genres or read different genres, go and buy your books. And then Amazon thinks that your book is a writing book when it’s really an urban fantasy book, and then you don’t get the readers that you actually want. So do be careful with the books that you buy on their launch because that’s when it’s most important. Later on, you can, there’s no stress because we’re all readers also. But just a reminder.

JP: Yep. So that’s why I’m being weird about it, but yeah. But yes. So I can’t wait for that to launch because that’s super exciting. And I think by the end of this week, I will have book two out of my hands and beginning book three in my hands for edits. Yeah. How has your week been, Crys?

Crys: First of all, I got the German book out, the first German translation on Sunday. So a week ago today. And then it went down Three or four days later. And like only the eBook, the print book was still available. Only the eBook, the pre-order for the second book was up, but only the eBook went down. And it was making some good money, so this is not exciting. But I knew Amazon had some glitches so I waited about, I don’t know, 24 hours before I message them. And I was like, Hey, what’s going on with this? And they’re like, oh, we’ve determined that you might not have the rights to use some of the images in your cover. So we either need you to prove that you do have the rights or we need you to upload a new cover.

I was like, okay, great, because this happened after I found out my co-writer died. So on top of everything that that entails, I don’t need to go into depth because I’m sure everyone can imagine what chaos and emotions that is. But on top of that, I knew I didn’t have the license for the photos, I hadn’t downloaded them. I wasn’t sure if she had them or our cover designer had them. So there was a bit of a scramble there. But thankfully our cover designer had those particular licenses and was able to forward them to me, and I was able to forward them to Amazon, and everything got fixed up there.

But now I am hustling to finish up our last book in time for its pre-order date next week. Which is fine, I’ll have it done without killing myself. But I will be going up to Las Vegas where she lived on Thursday and we’ll be trying to help her family sort things out.

Chances are I might end up managing her work for a while. They may want someone else to in the future. She had thoughts and plans, but she didn’t get a will written. So, friends, this is a reminder, please have a will so that your property doesn’t get lost. And also too, like have a plan. You can go to SFWA Legacy, you can search and they have a lot of information, a lot of links to things you can do to get your literary legacy put together for when you kick the bucket. I don’t have all this in place and I’ve known for years I need to, and I did start. So maybe sometime we’ll do like a little sidebar on preparing your work for when you die. But I started an intellectual property tracker in notion, which have I shared that with you? I should share that with you so you can start it as you are going and you don’t have to figure it out when you have 60 books.

JP: I would appreciate that.

Crys: So that’s been my week. That’s why we’re recording on a Sunday instead of on a Thursday.

JP: And like many listeners, my sincere condolences. That has to suck. But I guess you gotta move on, right?

Crys: Yeah, it sucks. That’s really all you can say about it when someone close to you dies. And relatively unexpectedly, yes, she had bad health and I’d been worried about that. When I looked back at messages for basically since we started writing, like within the first year, I was like we need to have this plan, and we just never put it in writing, but at least we talked about it. We like, I know what her wishes were at least three, four years. And there’s another friend that she was talking to more recently, who will be at the service. I do hope to talk to her and be like okay, here’s what my last knowledge was, what’s new?

Her family doesn’t have any clue how her businesses run. It was the only income in their life. So it’s just, oh, a mess. But that’s part of the writing life that we have to think about these things. So please do dear listeners, please do.

But our card for this week is not death. It is justice.

JP: It is justice. You made me look as to like when is death, anyways.

Crys: Maybe then we’ll talk about preparing your estate. That might be good.

JP: Yeah, so I’ll give a little rundown on what justice is. So the justice tarot card, it is a female figure, I believe, who is sitting in front of a loosely hung purple veil, signifying compassion. And they stand between two pillars similar to those that frame the high priestess and the hierophant. It symbolizes balance, law, and structure. In the original tarot, they’re holding a sword in the right hand, showing logical, well-ordered mindset necessary for justice. And then the sword is pointing upward showing a final decision. It’s double-edged though, so those decisions carry consequences. And then the left hand is a balance showing logic.

Some keywords are obviously justice, fairness, truth, cause and effect in law. And then in reverse its unfairness, lack of accountability, and dishonesty.

So our question this week is how do you capture your reader’s attention? And Crys, you came to me with this question and I am curious, what do you do to capture your reader’s attention?

Crys: First of all, you’re like, how does this connect to justice? And it was like the thing that sparked it is the cause and effect. And for me, it’s like, how do we prove to our reader, how do we justify our reader spending hours of their time reading our books? And I think everyone’s pretty familiar with the save the cat moment, and this is honestly just my opportunity to rant about that moment because it’s one type of earning the readers’ trust or investment out of many. And most people don’t really understand why the save the cat moment works, and therefore they don’t do it well.

The reason the save the cat moment works is that you take a moment, have your character do something unexpected that garners sympathy. The book that really highlighted what we’re really seeking to create with our characters and our readers from the get-go is a connection of often the reader seeing something in the character that resonates that they also feel.

That doesn’t always work. There are plenty of stories where we don’t resonate with the main character. I wanna say Sherlock Holmes. Most of us are not gonna resonate with Sherlock Holmes, but we resonate with John Watson. And Matt Bird in The Secrets of Story pointed out that often we will feel, and then this might even work for Sherlock, that the quickest way to make the reader connect with the character is to have the character try to do something helpful and be misunderstood within the story.

The cheater hack for anyone writing a story to a reader is to have someone reading a book and be looked down on. Because you are telling your story to a reader, someone who has most probably experienced this particular event in their life where they’re like, oh, they think they’re so like smart, because they read or like, why do you read, that’s so boring. Whatever, they’re misunderstood. So for me, very quickly figuring out how to justify the reader’s attention is by telling them, Hey, if you’re reading this and you come across this moment that I write, intending it to reach my intended audience, you’re gonna know that I know how to make you feel with the character. And I’ve justified you picking up this book, reading the first five pages and then staying with me for however long it takes to finish the story.

JP: That makes sense. I don’t know if I do that. I probably do in some form or another.

Crys: I wanna call out, one, your short story that you’re expanding. And two, your story with Abe. You do have some moment of this with Leah in your story with Abe, your YA urban fantasy, there’s a moment where she’s misunderstood by her parents.

JP: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. You’re correct.

Crys: And then in your Nordic dark fantasy short story, your main character constantly just lives under a state of being misunderstood by his father.

JP: Mmhmm, very true. And yeah, I guess like thinking through in that process, yeah. That’s funny because it came pseudo naturally, but at the same point, that’s exactly how you hook someone in as that whole misunderstood character.

Crys: Some people are gonna do this far more naturally than others. My co-writer who just passed was a queen at connecting with the emotions and the writer. She didn’t have to think about it. She just felt it. She knew it. I have to do it on a much more conscious level because I experience emotions differently than a lot of like neurotypical folks. But I have to write it in a way that the majority of people, neurotypical or typical, can pick up. So I have to put in those bits and then consciously where I’m like, oh yes, like my brain just passes by this, but this is actually what happens even if I don’t naturally see it or experience it that way.

JP: When I think of this question in terms of how to capture the reader’s attention, prob like within the first few pages, I always come back to the thing that is super controversial, but it’s prologues. And I think that a well-placed prologue can really grip a reader’s attention in the right way, as long as it pays off later on.

And that’s one thing that like the series with Abe we have, I guess it’s like a dream sequence beforehand, but we show some bad characters. We kind of show that this world is far stranger than what we start off with because we’re starting off in the mundane and the usual. And so being able to put within those first few pages that yes, reader, there is a growth arc here that’s a lot like YAs coming into magical schools. But we need to start in the mundane, so here’s a little glimpse as to like where we’re headed just so that you can get that taste.

And then we did it again in NRDS with Jeff. So the series follows Ethan in the middle of nowhere as he’s learning how to be basically a ghost agent. But we took the first episode and we took his like mentor and we put him in the middle of a busy like Chicago at the top of his game, to show this is what a high-level agent looks like this is where we’re headed. Just to kinda make sure that we’re able to capture that reader’s attention to be like, yeah, stay along for the ride because this is where we’re going.

Crys: Yeah, I don’t have anything against prologues in general. I think the thing that people who say don’t do prologues often there’s two things. One, they are high action genre writers and prologues don’t make sense for the kind of thing they write, and they forget that there are other kinds of stories that do well. Or two, they’ve just seen a lot of here’s the backstory prologues that you don’t need.

And yeah, just like anything, prologues are a useful tool.

JP: And it’s funny because, this isn’t a spoiler for the series, but so the series that Abe and I are working on, we have these pseudo prologues in the first two books, and then we do a cold open on the third one because of the tone of the third book doesn’t need that prologue because you’re right in the middle of the action in that third book. And so it was like this intentional, like we’re gonna keep doing this quote-unquote prologue, and surprise, we’re not because this story isn’t meant to make you feel comfortable through the whole thing. You’re supposed to kind of get nervous and anxious. It’s even funny reading it as one of the writers, because I’m like, I get uncomfortable sometimes reading it because I’m like, oh, why doesn’t this have a prologue, I’m getting nervous. And so I’m hoping that’s emotion and feeling that we can convey once we get to that book.

Crys: The other thing that I would recommend, And this is just books in general, but also specifically for openings, is the Id list, which I think we’ve referenced a little bit. And it was Jennifer Lynn Barnes, I wanna say, who’s a neuroscientist, who gave the talk originally on. at RWA, romance writers association. But if you Google the ID list, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, you’ll find some free resources on it.

And it’s just putting all of the flavor that you as a writer and reader love, whether that is the plot lines that you love, the settings that you love, circumstances, images. Do you love haunted mirrors? Whatever it is, all these tiny, weird little things and just making a giant list and including as many of those things that delight you or terrify you in your story.

Because it’s like, yeah, I love a good pot roast, JP’s vegan, he does not. Why’d I choose a pot roast? I don’t know. I could have chosen pizza, but oh, pizza actually might be a better, we’re gonna switch to pizza. But like a pizza, like I’m not gonna love a pizza that’s all sausage. But if you put some mushrooms and massive amounts of cheese and onions, like all of those, I’m gonna love that pizza. It’s still a pizza either way. It’s still a book either way, whether it has your flavors that you love or not. But that’s my correlation there.

JP: Slight side bar just because you said it. So yesterday my family celebrated father’s day, and I didn’t even think this through, but my sisters and I were trying to organize who was gonna get what. And I was like, I’ll get the hamburger in brats because in my head I’m like, so that I can get my vegan stuff and I can get the right stuff because I know what I like.

So I call my parents say that I’m headed up and I mention it and I hear my mom cackling in the background. And I’m like, why is she laughing? And I hear, and she says, It was just, it was so jarring for her to hear that the vegan in the family was getting the meat. And I was like, ah, whatever. So fun fact, if you ever wanna write a character who has some strangeness to them, make them a vegan who will buy the meats.

Crys: Make them a soulless vegan.

JP: Yeah. Whatever.

Crys: Were there any other thoughts you had about capturing the reader’s attention?

JP: I think in the editing phase, really think about those first few pages and think about how much you can take out. The faster that you can capture their attention, the better it is for the reader. Of course, you wanna apply this to the rest of your story, but those first three pages are so important and so crucial. So don’t lollygag around, you want to give them something to latch onto, whether it’s that character that they can immediately get hooked on because they feel an emotional connection to them. Whether it’s preparation towards what that world is going to look like through the eyes of the character, if you can even do it in that sense. Something that doesn’t drag on, something that hooks them immediately and just says, oh, this is what I’m here for and I’m ready to sit through this whole thing in one night and I read it and then get no sleep for work the next day.

Crys: Which is always a delightful experience, even though we hate ourselves.

JP: Yes.

Crys: Excellent. All right. We are about to go record our business episode for our Patreon, and this week it’s how do you deal with reviews, inspired by the justice card. But my question for you, dear listeners, as you’re thinking about this is: what do you do to capture your reader’s attention? Do you do something other than what we mentioned? I’d love to know.

JP: Let us know. See you later.