readers – Page 2 – WordServe Water Cooler

It’s a great privilege to connect with the world through our words and a greater privilege to connect with the Word about our worlds.

Connect with God about our writing

“God gave you this dream,” my pastor told me. “You need to give it back to Him in prayer because He’s the only one who can make it count for eternity.”

One of my friends posted this on Facebook: “I struggled with my writing for three hours, but after praying, I couldn’t stop the flow. Why did I wait so long?”

When we’re not intentional about prayer, it falls by the wayside like everything else we’re not intentional about.

God wants to be our writing partner. He says, “Let me have it!”

Lord, give me wisdom and direction today.
Inspire me and keep me focused.
Help me to persevere for your glory.

“Commit everything you do to the LORD. Trust him, and he will help you. ” Psalm 37:5

Connect with “the connected”

“You need prayer partners,” a well-known Christian author told me. “Trustworthy, faith-filled people who will intercede on your behalf before God.”

Because we’re missionaries of words, the enemy stops at nothing to hinder us. We need to call on our allies.

I took my friend’s advice and prayed for a little army of intercessors I could add to my email prayer list. They encourage me to keep going, and I encourage them that they’re a key part of my ministry’s eternal reward.

“The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor.” 1 Corinthians 3:8

Connect with God about our readers

If we’re missionaries, our readers are the mission field.

I wrote the poems in A Friend in the Storm, with only one reader in mind, my friend Chantale who was dying of cancer. I didn’t know my audience would grow from one to hundreds when she asked me to read them at her funeral. I didn’t know my audience would grow from hundreds to thousands when Zondervan published them in a gift book. I simply wanted to be a faithful friend.

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.” Luke 16:10

Here’s how I pray for my readers:

Father, draw the right people to my book today.
Anoint my words to jump off the page into their hearts.
Please bring Holy Spirit peace and transformation.

Connect with God about your agent

If we’re going to pray about our God-given gift, we’re going to pray for our agents because they’re a big part of the gift! Just as they represent us before editors, we’re privileged to represent them before the Father.

Lord, may she stay close to you, in the Word and in prayer.
Please help her be balanced and manage her time wisely.
Give her favor, Father. Please open all the right doors for her today.

Connect with God about other writers

“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Luke 10:2

We need to pray for other writers the way we would want them to pray for us.

Here are three great groups to remember in prayer:

Writers that feed us
Writers in our immediate circles
Writers we DO NOT want to pray for

Who are we currently reading? Karen Kingsbury? Max Lucado? Kathi Macias? We need to ask the Lord to continually inspire and bless them.

If we’re a part of a writer’s group or literary agency like WordServe that shares prayer requests, we have a community opportunity to practice true, selfless love.

Are we envious or jealous? We need to pray! God even calls us to pray for those writers who wronged us. It happens. And prayer changes us ever as much as it changes them!

“The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” James 5:16

I’m wondering, dear friends, what is your experience with the power of prayer?

From listening to my readers and following book reviews, four key topics repeatedly surface. While they’re not new ideas, they contain basic value in creating fictional worlds.

Readers wish to be swept away from their normal reality.

If readers wish to be swept away from their normal reality, our fiction has to contain something compelling or unique. This element must be intentional, not just something we hope for in our writing. And it should be identifiable. It can be an unusual setting or a fresh plot idea. Or how about an uplifting theme or a unique friendship? In order to offer something fresh yet appealing, I find it helpful to identify my readers and understand my genre.

Not only that, once we’ve swept readers off their feet, we must protect their experience by keeping them airborne—in their fictional world. They trust us not to let them come crashing back to earth without warning. Good writing remains invisible while creating a safety-net of lasting and vivid impressions. In other words, we must be careful not to do anything to draw them out of the story and ruin their fictional experience.

Readers need their emotions engaged and gratified.

In order to engage and gratify readers’ emotions, we must create fascinating characters with whom they can identify—because they are looking for an emotional connection with the story. Our stories, and especially our endings, must not leave them up in the air, but provide emotional satisfaction and resolution. Again, we target the emotions associated with our genre. Suspense readers are looking for the adrenalin rush. They enjoy a short fall as long as they land safely in the end. Romance readers need to set their feet back on earth with a contented sigh.

Readers expect a takeaway.

Readers also expect a story takeaway. When they have to come back to reality, they want something to take with them to enrich their everyday lives. It can be a spiritual theme that gives them hope in the real world. For a mystery, it might be an unexpected and intriguing twist. In women’s fiction, it might be a distinct image that provokes further thought or action—such as a family that solves their problems around the dinner table. While we foremost entertain, it’s this lingering takeaway that lives on inside our readers’ minds and excites them to spread the word about our stories. It compels them to follow our works.

Readers want to know more about authors.

Readers want to connect with us. It’s humbly amazing, and it’s the source of our greatest blessings. There’s something very intimate in the breath of story, the giving and taking that goes into the entire fictional experience. As authors, we’re sensitive beings who delight in the wonder and fear of it. And so we gladly leave our signature—a link for readers to interact with us or find out more about our writing.

What else? What do readers want from fiction?