The Writer-Reader Bond

For the last year, I’ve been telling the first-time authors that I coach, that a book is tremendous “social currency.”

Having a book you’ve written breaks down walls. Your author status earns you an usual level authority in our culture, like having a pilot’s license, vs. a driver’s license or a AAA member card.

The bond between author and reader is accelerated and deepened by the quality of the book, including the cover image and design, the page formatting and font, the lack of typos, the back cover blurbs, and all the myriad elements: use of epigraphs, appendix resources, even the dedication can be a compelling “hook.”

I coach my rookie authors on the length of their sentences (average of 25 words each) and paragraphs (three to four sentences, sometimes one sentence for impact).

Your average reader may not be reading 70 pages of your the book in a cozy armchair by a fire, or in an Adirondack chair on a dock overlooking the lake. Your reader is mostly likely reading half a chapter at an airport departure gate, or in a crowded commuter subway train, one hand holding onto the strap, the other hand holding the book open.

I’m not saying dumb the book down. I am saying make it easier for your reader to comprehend your brilliant prose.

Enough with the multi-clause sentence, that gets you in comma trouble.

Enough with the page-long paragraphs that create what I call “gray glaze” for the human eye. It’s as if you’re coating the page with teflon, inhibiting comprehension.

Yesterday, I had lunch with an author client. “Hallie” began her memoir January 30 and two winter months later she has written 150 pages in the first draft of her manuscript. It’s been an impressive lift, which I call the “Saturn V” rocket stage, getting the space capsule (book) into a permanent orbit beyond gravity.

With some additional writing in April, and editing in May, we will have a 180-page book ready for a June launch. Hallie halted me with that timeline. She didn’t feel like she was prepared to have her first book out in public so suddenly. She didn’t feel like she’d earned it.

I asked Hallie if anyone else had read the manuscript, besides her husband. “Yes,” she replied, “someone quite influential in the community and here’s what he had to say.” And she then read me a very articulate, and not at all, surprising synopsis of her book.

“Back cover blurb,” I said.

Hallie had established a bond with one reader, who would naturally extend her readership to hundreds of readers through his eloquence, credibility and sphere of influence. Hallie is on her way.

When you are writing, do you imagine a reader “persona” reading your book in final form?

It may not influence what you write, but does this exercise in “empathetic authoring” influence how you present the material and make for a stronger book?

What I’m suggesting here may not be ideal for fiction or poetry, but it certainly makes sense for memoir and any type of nonfiction.

Photo Credit: Francois Philipp