Birchard Books
Bill Birchard—Writing and Book Consultant
Welcome To Bill's
Craft Secrets for Writers
Reward your readers
You don't have to be a "natural" to write well. Learn instead to write by playing to your readers' brain's evolutionary wiring, which drives people to thirst for rewards. Rewards in a scientific sense, though—from language that turns on motivational drives. Read below for Bill's synopsis, based on his new book.
An eightfold path
A group of midbrain neurons, the "reward circuit," lights up when you say something people like. It releases dopamine to kick off a cycle of desire and pleasure that keeps readers reading. Learn the circuit's desires, or turn-ons, by practicing eight strategies that will not just inform readers but engage them.
STRATEGY #1: KEEP IT SIMPLE
Because….Everyone loves it easy!
Some people rave about complexity, but they’re usually talking about wine (or chocolate!). As for writing, rule #1: Make people love your words by keeping them simple.
Simple as in accessible, instantly graspable. In nonfiction, don’t leave it to readers to decipher your meaning. Turn them on because you’ve turned your grainy thoughts into high-resolution points.
During evolution, our brains evolved to process only so much, so fast. So don’t write to press the limit of readers’ cognition. Reward readers by limiting what you write.
Princeton University scientist Daniel Oppenheimer sought to find out what seventy-one Stanford University students thought of two written passages. The two said the same thing, one composed of simple words, the other, complex.
The students, quizzed later, consistently agreed: The authors of the complex prose were less intelligent. Students apparently had what Ernest Hemingway called a natural “bullshit detector.”
To avoid registering on your readers’ BS meter, reward them with simplicity:
- Thin the ads: Use shorter words, shorter sentences, and shorter paragraphs. Going long does have a place in, say, science, but not in general nonfiction.
- Parse the long: Break up big thoughts and sentences. A measure of your mastery of a message is how well you spoonfeed to readers bitesize pieces.
- Cut caveats: Everything has exceptions. Try to express your message directly without caveats. Keep “interesting” and optional musings to yourself.
- Clean out residue: In draft #1, you’ll serve up a lot of half-baked prose. When you edit, give the prose a golden finish. Toss the crumbs.
[Image by Pixaby]
STRATEGY #2: KEEP IT SPECIFIC
Because…Everyone loves it sense-filled!
Touching, hearing, seeing, smelling, moving—your readers love them all. And they love specific words to match, because specific words fire up specific brain parts.
Put people in an fMRI machine and have them read “garlic”, “cinnamon,” or “jasmine,” and what happens? Not only do their language-processing circuits light up, so do their olfactory ones. The neurons fire for both real or imagined experience.
To your readers' brains, the more specifics you use, the clearer you project action on their internal cinema screens. That’s probably why studies show, all else being equal, our brains process specific words faster. Scientists call it the concreteness effect.
That’s probably also why words like “pelican” and “wipe,” are encoded in the brain with more extensive activation than “bird” or “clean,” general words of the same category. People can “taste,” “feel,” and “see” differences in their minds.
And the sharper the difference, the sweeter the rewards. So to play to your readers’ motivations, favor full-bodied composition that drives the internal simulation machine.
- Get elemental: To cook is good, to fry is better, to sear is best. Seek the concrete word that makes what you mean vivid.
- Rouse senses, action: Reward readers with tastes, sights, smells, movement. Play a multimedia show in their minds.
- Resolve abstraction: Reject intangible for palpable details. Fill the empty showroom of your readers’ mind with brain candy.
- Fashion handles: Seek sticky words and phrases people can see, feel, and smell. Find your “black swan,” “tipping point” or “blue ocean.”
[Image by Skitterphoto CC0]
STRATEGY #3: KEEP IT SURPRISING
Because….Everyone loves surprises!
If the first sentence that comes to mind won’t surprise readers, think up another one. People are wired to wake up to novelty. No surprises, no readers.
So start—and insist on—words, phrases, and thoughts that have at least a little surprise.
Readers find the unexpected rewarding, because the reward circuit developed to assure people are striving to get better. The unexpected, big or small, cues the mind with the pleasurable thought: “There’s a chance for learning"—to eat, socialize, mate, and do just about everything else better.
During reading, your readers’ brains work ahead of their eyes. They relentlessly predict words coming down the line. When you upend your readers’ predictions in likeable ways, their reward circuitry engages, thirsty for a bonus of unexpected learning.
Take a favorite line from fiction, Dorothy’s comment to the Tinman in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: “I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.”
Dorothy’s surprising perspective is a rich cue. The rewards to the reader (and Tinman!) are instant. Her dialogue shows how surprise is an über power for writers. Ironically, even “bad” surprises work wonders, because they still reward readers with unexpected learning.
- Make the familiar fresh: Seek to deliver more than been-there-done-that language. Give readers a tickle on the far side of their unexpecting minds.
- Kindle new reactions: Mingle unlike words. Author Louis de Bernieres writing about a politician: “…he was a poodle amongst wolves.”
- Upend the ordinary: Invert idiomatic flow in unexpected ways. To have or not have heart—L. Frank Baum knew the latter was more surprising.
- Throw a final punch: The power position for emphasis is the last word, sentence, and paragraph. Exit with a zinger.
[Image by Mohamed Hassan - Pixaby]
STRATEGY #4: KEEP IT STIRRING
Because….Everyone loves feeling!
You feel faster than you think. Ponder that for a second: When you open a book, you absorb the thoughts only after feeling the emotions that carried them.
Science shows that a message, together with its emotional charge, is what creates meaning. Our brains are wired to interpret language that way. No emotion, no full comprehension.
What’s more, emotions are reflexively connected to impulses to act. Acting without a lot of thinking gave people a big advantage when someone shouted “fire!” or “invaders!"
So take advantage of how emotions stick to words, especially how they resonate. The better the two reinforce each other, the more you please readers. In short, write with feeling.
Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman tracked the virality of 7,000 New York Times articles. They found that stories carrying emotions—anger, awe, anxiety, surprise—got 34 percent more shares.
So even if you’re writing just an email, to best reward readers, at least show some zeal.
- Have attitude: Consciously choose your text’s emotional tone. As in videos, even subtle background sound cues meaning.
- Frame feeling: Choose words or phrases to frame your feeling. Your emotional frame, as much as your logical one, dictates meaning.
- Move with metaphors: Charged words can help you deliver pop singles. Charged metaphors can help you create greatest hits.
- Move with people: Put people into your examples. They naturally help you deliver emotions and words as one.
[Image by Franz Marc, 1912, “Deer Leaping Among Flowers,” Public Domain]
STRATEGY #5: KEEP IT SEDUCTIVE