Verbal Contract… harnessing the words that push reader’s buttons
by Damon Suede
(A-game Advice was a monthly column offering practical
tips for winning promo that fits your personal style, strategy,
and measure of success.
Since some of us are headed to conference this month, I
want to get grammatical with y’all.
Promo language is first and foremost
language. Knowing how to
parse and manipulate words makes it easier to sell your stories,
full stop. Even if you “hate” grammar or “avoid” the rules of
English, language is the writer’s single greatest superpower.
Learning how to embrace and exploit it will make your work and the
selling of it exponentially easier.
You may think you hate grammar because you hated it in
fifth grade, but today, as a writer, grammar offers one of the most
powerful weapons in your professional arsenal. The ability to
navigate and deploy grammar effectively will make your books better
and your sales higher,
literally.
Like all genres, romance comes with some pivotal
preconceptions: a central relationship, an optimistic ending. All
the actions we associate with romance come down to those two core
principles. Romance characters act to build and protect a
relationship. Those central lovers act to earn their optimistic
ending. They do things that matter, and we pay attention to same.
I always tell my students: stories are not about action.
They don’t use actions, tell actions, show actions, or describe
actions. Stories are action. Stories are made
of actions like pigs are made of pork. The moment you decide to
write a genre story, you have committed yourself to the task of
building fascinating actions for a specific audience with specific
expectations.
Once you tell that story you have to sell that story. And
that is why I want to get grammatical with a chat about basic parts
of speech. Parts of speech are words divided by their function in
forming sentences. Consider the function of modifiers (adjectives
and adverbs) nouns, and verbs.
When you describe
a romance narrative to readers with modifiers, using language that
signals the kind of relationship, the kind of optimism, the flavor
of fantasy, you attract different kinds of readers. Saying that a
couple is “sweet” or “wild”, “hot” or “humble” only
tells them what to
expect. The same goes if I say a heroine does something “slowly” or
“cleverly” or
defiantly.” I have to trust that those words mean the same things to
every reader. Relying on adjectives and adverbs requires that
everyone agrees on what those descriptives mean.
Spoiler alert: no
one agrees on what anything means. Even if cloned in a vat and
brainwashed from birth, readers bring the full rich tapestry of
their varied experience to every story. Relying on overlapping
opinions won’t stand up to scrutiny or skepticism, which makes
modifiers perfectly terrible
for promo language That’s why folks side-eye most books that says
“COOL!” or “HAWT!” in a review or on its cover. Modifiers are too
easy to doubt, to swiftly discarded. They are the junk food of promo
language. At best, they offer opinions.
So let’s drill down further, nouns get more specific
because they are inherently concrete: a hero who is a “duke”, a
heroine who is an “assassin”, a sidekick who is a “martyr”…any of
these nouns convey general identities and trust the reader to come
fill in the gaps by reading the story. By definition nouns are
inherently general; they convey broad assumptions.
There are dukes and
dukes, assassins and
assassins, martyrs and
martyrs. How do we distinguish between different types of a
thing a role, a status, a defining function in a community? Forget
about fiction; how do we do that in our actual lives? We don’t! Not
all lawyers are the same. Not all dogs are the same. Not all
weddings are the same. The only way those assumptions overlap is if
we share prejudices and worldviews, and here’s hoping we
don’t. Nouns create pools
of identity and invite us to come splash around in the hopes our
assumptions line up with theirs.
So what does that leave us? What type of word is always
specific, always clear, always emotional, always dramatic? What part
of speech pinpoints every nuance in the story with perfect clarity?
What skips over opinions and assumptions to express the actual
dynamics of every moment?
Verbs.
Once heroines “rescue” or “redeem”, once heroes “protect”
and “cherish”, once sweethearts “love” and “laugh” and “live” that
HEA, they show us the romance without any superfluous
telling. All the nouns and modifiers only gild the lily. Writing to
his daughter in 1938, F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “Use verbs, not
adjectives, to keep your sentences moving. All fine prose is based
on the verbs carrying the sentences.” Smart writers learn to ditch
all that window dressing in favor of the real deal: active verbs.
For your promo efforts, that does triple.
For anyone who doesn’t know let me confess: I’m a verb
freak, a verb junkie, a verb cultist, a verb crusader! I collect
verbs with the obsessive devotion some fanatics reserve for comics
or shoes or memorabilia. I hunt for verbs in old books and invent
new ones whenever I’m able. I just
wrote an entire thesaurus
of verbs over an inch thick (called
Activate) because I
couldn’t find a verbal reference juicy enough for genre authors.
Verbs are the muscular magic inside all storytelling,
because they reveal what matters; they
are what happens. They
also provide all the power that sells your story; their singular
actions attract the ideal agents, editors, and the passionate
diehards who need your book like oxygen.
When it comes to your language, verbs literally
do everything; every other
part of speech can only frame the energy unleashed by verbs. Verbs
inherently show while
adjectives, adverbs, and nouns can only
tell. That’s what I mean
when I talk about verbalizing a narrative. The core of storytelling
is those dynamic, emotional actions. Characters
do things. In bestselling
romance they do astonishing, fascinating things that movemillions of readers.
Now that’s all very well and good, but what does that have
to do with pitching and promoting your work so you can make a
living.
Using modifiers to sell a book make people doubt whatever
you’re saying. "Beautiful” or “ugly”, “smart” or “silly”, “forceful”
or “feeble” are all adjectives that apply widely and mislead wildly.
Opinions, and nothing more.
Nouns are a bit clearer: trigger words like “duke” or
“damsel”, “vampire” or “virago” paint a clearer picture… except for
one problem: nouns don’t DO anything. They just sit there like cold,
unwashed potatoes waiting for something to flavor them and make
something delicious out of them. Sure nouns may look fun and feel
solid, but no one reads a book to watch a bunch of inert subjects
and objects sit around static for 330 pages. Nouns rely on
assumptions, which are inherently flawed, biased, and limiting.
Every genre, every subgenre, every trope, every hook comes
down to the VERBS which define it.
Calling a book romantic suspense or erotic romance or sweet
contemporary is a promise to the audience predicated on certain
actions and tactics (aka verbs).
Rakes need to be redeemed
and treasures treasured,
second chances require characters who
risk and
trust and forgive, secret
babies need to be born,
hidden, and
claimed. The verbs you use telegraph what readers should expect and
do all the work to deliver
on that promise. They offer a verbal contract with the interested
professionals and relevant fandom.
Audiences read for
the actions. Romances need things to delight and to
damn, ravish and swoon, embrace and excoriate. Stories,
relationships, and complications arise from those specific
verbs. Characters in a romance
DO things all the time, and those actions are what
make the story a romance. With subgenres that goes double:
subgenres are defined by the gradations of action which flavor the
proceedings. Action creates character and plot and heat level and
setting and genre and everything else that makes people want to know
what happens next.
How can you convince readers to take a chance on your work
and guarantee the emotional ride? How do you pitch to industry
professionals or create advertising worth its salt? By highlighting
the kinds of action that attract those audiences.
Action is all.
Use your verbs!
That goes for telling a story and selling the story. When
writing marketing copy advertisers and copywriters learn to exploit
verbs every change they get. Verbs are clear, dramatic, and potent.
Essentially all branding, all marketing, all promo comes down to
clear communication of actions which appeal to the right set of
readers.
And so I challenge you to get specific:
what are the verbs that will
sell your story to its ideal audience?
There’s a reason that keywords are so critical, online and
on back covers. Keywords help filter the thousands of books readers
don’t want in favor of the handful they do. Fans are constantly
scanning for the right actions that indicate this book will take us
on the emotional ride they need at the moment. The verbs make the
choice, for them and for us.
Think about how you shop for books. You…
-
head to a certain genre or subgenre (which features certain actions)
-
consider the cover (which depicts or implies actions)
-
read the blurb (which relates actions and consequent re-actions)
-
ask friends (who relate the memorable actions)
-
check out the sample (which shows literal character actions)
-
read reviews (which assess actions in genre context)
Actions
are what make you buy the book: the verbs. Moreover, I can guarantee
that certain actions are dealbreakers for you. Maybe you don’t like
to read about abuse or grief; “abuse” is a verb, “grieve” is a verb.
Actions also tell readers what
not to buy. Verbs are fan bait and bane, so make certain you
know what you’re trying to say and to whom. The right verbs can
muster a devoted army for your voice and ward off the trolls and
saboteurs. The wrong verbs leaves readers feeling cheated and
annoyed with you. And words don’t cost a thing. You’re a writer! All
you have to do is find the right verbs and use them to make things
happen.
One of the simplest ways to determine what your fans seek?
Go to the source. Learn what attracts and repels, fascinates and
bores your specific audience. They tell you
constantly what they want,
what moves them, what irks them, what catches their eye or bores
them silly. Caveat scriptor: make certain you look to the actions,
though. Don’t get distracted by the nouns and modifiers (as most
people are) in reader praise and complaints. Look for active,
transitive verbs which recur in their comments and opinions. The
verbs are the real mojo you need to tap.
As an exercise: choose an author or a subgenre you feel
sits close to you on the virtual shelf and choose three target
titles. Maybe their tone or the setting is similar. Maybe the heat
level or the pacing creates the same vibe and payoff. Or maybe you
just admire and gravitate to that corner of the market. The simplest
way to pinpoint the overlaps and telegraph that to readers is to
excavate the relevant verbs.
-
Harvest the fan-bait actions from blurbs and quotes on the targeted books.
-
Hunt down fan language about the targeted books in reviews and online discussions with the most devoted audience members.
-
Study and dissect the target books for the literal verbs used to create moments of dramatic import and emotional impact.
At core what you are doing is analyzing your niche at the
atomic level. You aren’t “borrowing” tropes or plots. You’re
literally looking at the core words that accomplish most and
resonate most. Learn to spot what your readers seek;
they tell you, over and over.
If you want to get a bit technical, when analyzing your
sources, make a big list of the verbs used in a piece of text and
dump them into an online word cloud generator to see which pack the
biggest punch with this specific audience. Happily, word cloud
generators focus on recurrence to quickly show which words carry the
most weight by rendering them literally BIGGER, incredibly useful
when analyzing language for marketing copy. It will show you the
trigger words and teach you how to squeeze.
I just did this word cloud exercise while studying separate
genres and tropes to write
Activate and the results gobsmacked me. In fact the word clouds
inspired a wacky trope class I’m teaching at the RWA conference in
NYC. While compiling all that verbal data, I learned what I write,
how genres and promo have evolved, what packs the biggest punches,
what different groups of my fans gravitated toward, and where
possible audience expansions might be hiding… like a secret SEO for
reader’s cravings, editor expectations, and my muse besides. I
discovered what makes heroes heroic, why some settings linger in the
mind, and how bestselling titles hit their targets. The words told
me the whole story. Win-win-win.
Verbs tell us everything we need to know.
Hell, I’m a writer. I get to
use those words on the fly
as I need them. They work inside and outside the story. They are
simultaneously a Hogwart’s invitation, Wonka’s Golden Ticket, the
Stick of Destiny, the secret sauce, the microfilm, the family
jewels, the glass slipper, divine fire, and the One Ring…with no
Dark Lord to worry about. Magic at your fingertips, pulsing with
possibility which you already know how to use.
When chatting about category romance in January, the
inestimably delightful Caro Carson described my wacky verbalization
process as “looking through the Matrix” at any given story. By
eschewing surfaces and digging right down to the actions, writers
learn to see past the obvious bits and bobs to the energy pulsing
underneath, which allows us to shape story more consciously and
attract the readers who have been hunting for us all along. Using
the right verbs just boosts our signal above the ever-increasing
noise.
The best part about individual verbs: you cannot plagiarize
them. Different writers will learn different lessons and take
different advice from digging around in those active verbs. Study
them with colleagues and you’ll reach different conclusions. And the
minute you use those
verbs, your voice makes them yours. They are the atoms from which
writers build worlds. Reading and studying marketing copy, reviews,
or even titles is a way to extract the energy that appeals to you
without lifting the prose itself. In truth, studying actions and
their verbs is how you can most easily avoid inadvertently borrowing
from anyone else. Use the verbs, and you transform them.
Even better, this is the exact work agents and editors need
you to do when they’re acquiring titles. The way you will pitch and
sell a traditionally-published project is by pinpointing the
fascinating actions that editors and agents know they can craft into
something market ready. When industry pros talk about hooks and high
concept they are speaking to the kinds of unforgettable actions that
drive bestsellers.
So what are the actions that best describe and sell your
current project? What if you have no idea? Spoiler alert: you do.
You wrote it. There are verbs on every page.
-
Extract the active transitive verbs you use in the book. That’s invaluable information and a craft lesson to boot.
-
Reify the blurb, synopsis, reviews, and more to see what folks say (or should) about the book
-
Eyeball your bookshelf neighbors (and heroes) to see what necessary actions should be part for the course.
-
Identify your weakest and worst habits…the places where the language gets vague, passive, or redundant. Perfect as you can.
Then get specific: what verbs recur? What behavior
dominates the verbal wordcloud? What actions could you focus or
amplify? Make certain you can and will honor the verbal contract you
have made with the reader. Telegraph those targeted actions in your
swag, your messaging, and the kinds of events you host. Connect
those dots for readers and industry pros.
That active, dynamic verbal palette tells you were you need
to go in your promotion: the images you should foreground, the
moments that need depiction, the core emotions fans crave. Follow
the map your verbs draw for you. And if it leads you I the wrong
direction, use your words
to get your book and its promotional efforts on the right track.
Use those verbs to make decisions about the cons you
attend, the imprints you court, the titles you self-pub, the swag
you generate, and the ads you buy. Look for alignment between your
primary verbs and the verbs of other outlets so you can make savvier
decisions and waste less time on dead ends and dead horses. Make
that verbal contract in all your promo and then keep your
promise…and then some.
But wait! There’s more! As you stretch your own language, as you negotiate fandom expectations and publisher requirements, your books will improve, your stories will evolve. Of course they will, because your own vocabulary will grow and ripen, mature and evolve. Your magical powers as a writer will expand until your books don’t just change your fans, they can change the world, one word at a time.
Originally published as part of A Game Advice for the Romance Writers Report.
If you wish to republish this article, just drop me a line.
