The Key to Telling a Story that Resonates with Readers
If you want your story to matter to readers, then you need to write about something that matters to you.
Sounds simple, right? Yet so many writers skip the step of figuring out why this story is meaningful to them, and then find themselves struggling to make it engaging or even to finish writing it.
As a certified book coach, I’m trained in the Blueprint for a Book methodology developed by Jennie Nash. And the very first foundational step we explore in this method is your deep-level why:
Why do you want to write this book?
Why must you tell this particular story and why now?
What’s the belief burning in you that feeds this particular story?
If you’re like most writers this story has been tapping you on the shoulder for a while…whether it came to you all at once or bit by bit.
We humans are a creative bunch. We all get ideas all the time, but only certain ones really stick around. So, what is it about THIS particular story idea that makes you keep coming back to it? Why do you feel the need to tell this story? (Pro tip: Look for the personal connection you feel to the story.)
➡️ Tapping into this is the key to telling a story that resonates with readers.
In her fantastic book, The Making of a Story, author and Stanford University writing teacher Alice LaPlante emphasizes we need to write stories that are deeply meaningful to us with true emotional resonance: “If a subject doesn’t resonate for us, personally, if we don’t find it irresistibly interesting, then the result will be utter dullness for the reader.”
And I’ve discovered another reason that knowing your deep-level why is so important: it’s the first step in delivering an emotionally satisfying novel to readers.
Here’s how...
➡️ Your deep-level why leads you to your story point. (I’ve written about your story point here.)
↪️ Your story point aligns with your protagonist’s character arc—how your protagonist grows and changes is the primary way your readers will experience your story point.
↪️ And in upmarket, women’s fiction, and book club fiction, that character arc—the emotional context of the story—is what ensures an emotionally satisfying ending for the reader.
If you haven’t yet tapped into the reason your story is so meaningful to you, then you’re going to struggle to get all of that emotional context and internal plot onto the page. And if you don’t have the internal plot nailed down, it doesn’t matter if your external plot is solid.
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