Three Top Tips On Characters and Readership

By Antonio Litterio

1. Make your readers care about your characters and what happens to them. Grab them on page one, and don’t let go. Your audience is hungry for action, whether it’s romance or drama. They want to escape from their everyday lives into a different reality.  Give them heroes and heroines they can relate to, and give those characters aspirations, a job to do and a journey to make, whether it’s real or metaphorical.

2. Let your characters grow and change through the course of your book. Make them interesting and multi-dimensional. Remember the words of Rudyard Kipling: “I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.” He trained as a journalist, although his verse hold true for fiction, too. “Why?”is the main man you want nagging away at your reader, urging them to turn the page to find out what happens, how and where, when and to whom (or "who to", if you're going for the popular vote).

3. If you’re determined to launch your writing on the public, make sure you aim in the right direction. Find out exactly what readers want, and give it to them. Nothing less (or more) will do. Writing for profit doesn’t work in the same way as producing meals for children. You can’t say; “you’ll have this, and like it.” or “how can you say you don’t like it if you’ve never tried?’ The purchasing reader has the right of ultimate veto. If you want to sell, fit your work to your audience.

This is an extract from my next release, You Can...Write a Book. To find out more, mail me at christinahollis(at)hotmail.co.uk, putting "Booklet 2014" in the subject line.