A fact some writers don't like (and how to test your book for the E factor)

Whether you’re writing a book about how to be a better presenter, a mystery, a book on raising Dobermans, a literary novel about a man’s mid-life crisis, or any other topic, it has to entertain.

This thought is prompted by a chat with a person who said he plans to write a book but he’s interested in “challenging people, not entertaining them.”

Well, good luck with that.

I didn’t waste energy on arguing with him. For one thing, I’ve found that people who “plan on writing a book someday” seldom actually get around to it. For another, trying to convince people that they’re wrong seldom works, either.

I’ve adopted a strategy I’ve seen attributed to both Alexander Woollcott (top right) and  H. L. Menken (bottom right): whenever anybody disputed anything he’d written, he wrote back, “Dear Sir/Madam: You may be right.”

But the man I was chatting with was wrong. Of course it’s fine to set out to challenge or educate as well as entertain but if it doesn’t do the latter nobody will read very far.

That’s why I often suggest that writers subject their first page to a simple but telling test: if this was the first page of a book somebody gave you, and you had no idea of what was going to happen later in the story, would you go on to read the second page? 

If the answer is no, don’t despair—that’s the first step to making changes that will also change the answer.

 (For advice on writing from the very best writers—Twain, Chekhov, Austen, Stevenson, and more—see my newest book, “Your Creative Writing Masterclass,” published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)