Writing Stack Exchange
Writing Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [audience-reaction]

This tag is for questions specifically relating to the interactions between a work of writing and its audience, including asking about how the audience will react to a particular development, how to manipulate audience expectations, or how to elicit a particular emotional reaction in the audience

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How do I make a timid, introverted protagonist sympathetic and likable?

People like proactivity and boldness. Indeed, this has been suggested to be why readers are often drawn to charismatic villains over heros, people are more drawn to the proactive, goal-oriented villains who often behave in a socially dominant manner…
user2352714
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How do I make a headstrong female character likable and not annoying?

I have a story where one of my lead characters is a headstrong young woman. In terms of personality she is hyperactive, energetic, and charismatic, but at the same time these traits make her arrogant, insensitive, and tone-deaf. One thing I have…
user2352714
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How do I manage audience expectations for a paranormal romance story?

A big part of writing is managing audience expectations, especially as it pertains to the genre. I.e., if a story is pitched as an action-adventure story, people expect a story of fight scenes and explosions; if it's pitched as a comedy they expect…
user2352714
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How can I balance a male character saving his love interest without making the female seem incompetent (and vice versa)?

Stories for many, many years made frequent use of the damsel in distress trope, where female characters are depicted as needing men to save them in big, dramatic displays. People eventually realized this was very sexist, which lead to an increase in…
user2352714
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How do you introduce a new character in later entries of a series?

I had an outline for a book series in which I introduce a new character in one of the later volume to act as an introductory viewpoint character for people who are just picking up the series for the first time. However, the character never really…
user2352714
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Keeping your audience after you've guilted them - what's the secret sauce?

Consider that your story has a moral that points to the simple fact that we all have committed and contributed to your protagonist's crisis. The protagonist walks through life desperately needing help, and getting none. I do this in a way that is…
Vogon Poet
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Is the bildungsroman dead for contemporary audiences?

My story can't hide the fact that it is bildungsroman, but there really are few linear year-by-year character reveals on the shelves today. Nothing like The Curious Life of Benjamin Button is coming out today, or am I just missing it? Test reads…
Vogon Poet
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Will readers understand references to Tarot cards?

I have named the members of a group of things in my latest work after the major arcana of Tarot cards. While I can think of a few other works of fiction that do the same thing (the bosses in the House of the Dead series, or the episode titles of…
TheWreckersCompanion
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How/where can I get people to tell me their personal reactions to my work?

The book I'm writing is memoir, journalism, social critique, diatribe, autoethnography -- accounts of personal experience, research to help me understand, reflection, analysis of social factors, opinion, witnessing, speaking out, howl.... It would…
kaybaird
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When do you have too many plot arcs?

I have a story which could fit nearly any genre and still be engaging, and often times the back cover synopsis likes to brag about multiple elements, like "It has suspense, drama, rib-splitting humor, and wild action!" all together. Let's say you…
Vogon Poet
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Writing Science Fantasy: Problems with oversaturation of weird?

I have been thinking of writing a Science Fantasy novel, basically a world with both magic and not currently invented science. I have concerns that it might just have too much fantasy, too much extraordinary, so the world would seem stretched,…
TheDragonOfFlame
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How to make a time-constrained story not feel like a laundry list of events?

I am writing a comic, which upon first glance is a survival story about what a forgotten astronaut does to stay alive upon an inhospitable planet. Its first book spans from cycle 0 to cycle 614 with each being 14.8 hours long. The second book will…
user57188