JohnCuando.net

We've all read material that made us react emotionally, even physically, because of the impact of the writing.  We read a particularly violent passage and wince, or a particularly sad episode and feel the tears well up. When we read about a particularly odious character we might feel ourselves tense up, grit our teeth or frown, or even shudder.  We show physical signs of anger. Our physical reactions are in some way caused by what we are reading. But how?

Think about how we react when we see someone upset.  We notice that they are breathing rapidly, perhaps shaking, they are tense, their face is unusual flushed, perhaps there are tears in their eyes.  Very soon, we feel something of what they are feeling, we feel a little sad too, even though whatever caused them to be sad hasn't happened to us.  That's empathy at work.

When we relate to other people, we have a remarkable ability that few of us are even aware of: we can mimic the facial and bodily gestures of others but on a much smaller scale.  When someone is frowning, we can tense those very same muscles but only a little.  When someone winces, we can wince too but with very much less intensity.  But what does that do?

Just as the state of our brain affects our body in fairly obvious ways, such as when we are scared or excited, so also does the state of the body have a subtle influence on the brain chemistry.  When we mimic the bodily reactions of someone experiencing strong emotions, we generate a small but similar response in our own brains, releasing smaller quantities of the same hormones responsible for the emotional response. And that's what we recognise as empathy.

So when we see someone who is sad, we actually mimic them almost imperceptibly and make outselves feel a little sad also.  That gives us an important way to relate to their feelings.  We know how they are feeling because we too are feeling the same emotions but not as strongly.

But how does understanding that help us as writers?  If we read some of the more exciting passages, we can feel ourselves changing our bodily position, tensing our muscles, feeling fear or excitment which has a noticeable effect on our bodies.  That physical reaction in turn stimulates our brain to excite those same areas responsible for empathy.  The reason we can empathise with the characters is at least in part because our bodies are responding to what we find out about them.

Instead of picking up on the perception of their bodily state, their voice and their gestures as we would if we met them in the flesh, we are getting similar stimuli from the text.  If we, as writers, can generate the same physical response through the use of language, we will greatly help the reader feel empathy for our characters.

How does that translate into the craft of writing?  Compare the use of an active verb tense with a passive verb tense.  "John caught the ball" is an active verb in which you can imagine yourself holding your hands out to receive the ball seconds before it reaches you.  You can almost feel how heavy it is.  Now contrast that with "The ball was caught by John".  This is the passive and it also disconnects you from the action.

Instead of feeling the movement because you are in John's position, you feel nothing because the subject is the ball.  Nothing to encourage your body to react, nothing to empathise with.

Those hooks into action, into people doing things in places, give the reader the opportunity to empathise.  And the more opportunity for the reader to empathise, the more credible are the characters and the more captivating the plot. The reader reacts to what happens and cares about the characters.

How do we draw out the empathy?  One way is to think about the situation and try to feel how you yourself are reacting.  Do you feel scared, tense, relaxed, carefree?  Are there menacing things around, people you don't trust, do you feel guilty, or relieved?  How does your body react to these feelings?  The answers provide you with some useful hooks.

If you draw out the physical aspects and show the reader how the character is reacting, that provides the opportunity for empathy.  The reader will find themselves reacting too.  Of course it can be overdone.  Terrifying the wits out of the reader may drive empathy to the point of discomfort and they stop being entertained and just get scared.  The overuse of excessively emotive language can make the character seem false and break the empathy spell.

And a constant appeal to empathy can exhaust the reader just like a needy friend who gives us no rest.  We get tired of the emotional roller-coaster.  Some genres can survive on the high-action, high excitement, ever-moving plot.  But others require some chance for the reader to regain their composure, to readjust their perspective, to relate in different ways to the other characters.

It's a useful technique to think about the opportunities for the reader to empathise with each character, not just to make the characters more credible, but also to develop our skills as writers, using language to evoke such strong responses.

OK, so the book is in press, available through print on demand, and it's listed on Amazon and all you have to do now is sit back and wait for the money to come in... or not!

In practice, the number of books around completely swamps your marvellous offering and unless you can get it noticed, no-one is going to buy it.  But you realise that, so you set up your website and start putting content on it that you hope will be noticed.  But how is it going to be noticed? If you put articles which contain popular keywords, topical titles and interesting content, then maybe, just maybe, your site will attract some traffic.  But getting listed on the seventeenth page of Google isn't going to sell books.

So somehow, the traffic has to be steered towards the site and then on to Amazon.  You can get involved in the AdSense and Amazon Associates to get some income from clicks which result in sales but since you're trying to sell your own books, don't expect very much.  Amazon will give you an author's page which of course, you should populate with something, but unless people are already looking for you, that won't be of much use.  Instead, you need to generate some reviews.

Amazon offers a place for reviews but they will reject reviews from people who do not have Amazon accounts.  If they suspect you of creating fake reviews, they might even pull down your book so you need to be sure they are genuine.

Building traffic to your website isn't easy, and it's time-consuming.  Offering the chance of comment and discussion is one way.  Putting interesting and useful content is another, but if writing is your forte, maybe you won't want to be too attached to daily website maintenance.  But your website is your face to the world so you do have to put some effort into it.

Selecting some online publications may seem like a good idea but you need to be selective.  Some are desperate for copy and will print whatever you send them, but they are often the ones struggling to get hits.  You almost certainly won't sell anything through them.  Others will have an editorial policy and will welcome books for review but may take a long time getting someone to read your book and write a review.  Having someone write the review and submit it may well be a better approach but many sites are suspicious of this kind of covert marketing.

Contributing to a forum, getting involved in discussions, may seem like a good approach but this has to be weighed against the forum policies.  Many of them strongly dislike an approach that looks like marketing and they think of it as spam, regardless of how much you contribute.  Typically any marketing is restricted to a profile entry, so don't expect many sales from this source.  If you push your own title, you can find your account closed.  Occasionally forum administrators can come over as quite dictatorial because they want to protect their contributors from a potential flood of advertising.

Getting reviewed in printed publications may seem like a better bet but you have to think about the marketing costs very seriously.  If you draw up a list of review editors for print publications, you may decide to send out twenty or thirty review copies.  If a quarter of them actually pass it on to be read and reviewed, you might be lucky and get some reviews in a few months time.  Cost this exercise against the likely sales.  If you are self-publishing, this can be a significant expense in postage alone.

The moral of the story is that you have to focus your marketing on getting small numbers of sales, rather than to imagine that your are immediately in a large scale market.  If by offering free pdf downloads of a sample chapter you can generate a few sales, that's money in the bank for very little effort.  And the more places you can offer this, the better.  Using Scribd.com or Lulu.com or Urbis.com allows you to present your work and direct others to buy the printed version.  You may decide to make available a pdf downloadable eBook for which you charge.  Again, look at the small scale.

By choosing a group of activities all aimed at developing small numbers of sales, self-publishing can be self-financing and may even make a little money.  So remember, once you've hit that magic break-even point, the rest is all a bonus.  Your book can last forever and can continue selling year after year after year.  Almost no-one makes it big - period!  But there is plenty of opportunity to publish your own book successfully.