Things the Make Me Care. Caring in Your Books

So what makes you care about a novel?

And I don’t mean, my-friend-gave-me-this-to-read-so-I-feel-obligated-to-read-it-because-I-care-about-them.

I mean, why do you care about a book and, while we’re at it, how do you get someone else to care about your book?

Everybody has read tons of books like this: You get started reading, the main character or best friend is in danger and you’re like, ‘Meh, let the giant Chinchilla eat them’.

WhAt??

How could the book have stooped to the point that you would rather see them eaten by a mutated furry rodent than triumph?

I think it comes down to two things, both in writing your own stories, and getting people to care about your work in general. Sure, we’d all love somebody to acknowledge our creative genius just the way we see it, but that’s not the case.

1. The characters we write/read about just aren’t relatable to us.

Why should we care about somebody who has an issue we have never or will never run into? ‘Oh no! I have too much money! How am I ever going to spend it all?’ That’s not a relatable character.

A character who is going through the same struggles and heartache and triumph that we can see ourselves going through.

The second reason people don’t care about your work:

2. You don’t care about the people. Seriously. You want somebody to care about you? Care about them first. I mean legitimately care about them, not ‘I kind of care but secretly am doing it to meet my own personal needs’

Show them that you empathize. Show them that you’re human. And then show that through your characters.

Just a short thought I’ve been sifting through, trying to organize it.