USING EMOTIONAL DRAWS

In Hollywood, while studying green-lighting for films, I learned that we can predict how well a screenplay will perform based upon its emotional appeal.

The movie studios found that by creating short trailers and testing how well they drew in an audience in the first two weeks of release, we could eventually predict how well a film will do.

Of course, every viewer is an individual, and their tastes will vary.

Overall, we can predict how well an audience will respond to a film based upon several criteria—the viewer's age, the viewer's sex, and the type of emotional appeals that the trailer creates.

To give you an idea of what I mean, let's analyze an audience by age.

When you're a child—between the ages of 0 and 11—you're in what I will call the "discovery" phase of life, a time when much of the world seems strange and new to you. In some ways, the world seems boundless, because every time that you turn around you learn about some new wonder or some new region of the world that you have never heard about. So children in that age are predisposed to what I, and a few others, call "wonder literature."

In wonder literature, the main emotional draw (outside of the essential story itself) is typically that it arouses a sense of wonder. Hence, stories set in fantastic settings are extremely interesting to children. But when you encounter something new—say a new animal— there is more than one possible outcome to the encounter.

              Wonder—The encounter can in some way be more satisfying than you had imagined. (In which case a sense of wonder is aroused.)

              Humor—The encounter can twist away from your expectations in a way that is neither wondrous nor terrible. (In which case a laugh is usually evoked.)

               Horror—The encounter can be more painful or traumatizing than you had imagined possible. (In which case terror or horror are aroused.)

Because of this, young readers, by virtue of age alone, are biologically predisposed to be drawn to works of wonder (fantasy or science fiction), humor, and horror. Those are the largest draws for them.

Statistically, those are the strongest draws. How strong are they? Ninety-eight percent of children are drawn to wonder. Ninety-six percent are drawn to humor. Ninety-two percent to horror.

As a child reaches puberty, testosterone leads boys to become more combative and competitive than the girls. Hence, young men become attracted to adventure by the age of five or six, and by the late teens it becomes a primary draw. Sexual interest (pornographic element) also becomes a powerful emotional draw, reaching the height of its power during the middle and late teens.

Young women on the other hand begin to develop a strong interest in romance just before puberty, at the age of eleven through thirteen. Sure, the young women may be interested in having their romances placed in fantastic settings—witness the popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean—but the romance and sexual angles are as important as the fantasy.

By the mid-20s, the draw for fantastic literature is no longer overwhelming, and people in that age range may quit reading fantastic literature and watching fantasy films altogether. Men may begin picking up thrillers instead of science fiction, while women lean toward straight contemporary romances.

As your audience ages, the sexual draws gradually stop interesting the readers at all. In part, it's because of the failing hormone levels in adults. A woman at 40 is nearing menopause, and the male at 50 is reaching a hormonal crisis of his own. They lose interest in sex to a great degree. Instead, adults who are raising their own children are confronted with a myriad of problems—how do I teach my child to get along with others? Why doesn't my husband ask for directions when he gets lost? And so on. Older readers tend to be more thoughtful, more grounded in reality, and more interested in stories that have practical applications to their own lives.

Older women tend to become more interested in mysteries and dramas as they reach their 40s, and men's taste in fiction soon follows.

Thus, as you begin to try to categorize your audience, you can see that the emotional draws to your story—wonder, humor, horror, adventure, romance, mystery, suspense, and drama—need to appeal to your target audience.

You want to write a story that doesn't have a hope of success? Try aiming a contemporary family drama at six-year-olds. From an audience analysis it sounds silly. Yet it happens all of the time. A 50-year-old grandmother decides that she wants to write a childrens' book, and what does she write? A story about a kid who has to try to save the farm from ruin during the Great Depression. She loves drama, so she writes drama—completely unaware as to why children stay away from her book in droves.

Less than 10% of children respond to drama as a draw.

In the same way, wonder literature for the over-60 crowd tends to win few fans, too.

Some emotional appeals can even drive an audience away. For example, let's say that you try to create a pornographic movie aimed at young women. About 85% of them will report that they react negatively to your story, while a very few might respond positively.

If you want to succeed, pay attention to what the most powerful emotional draws are for your audience age, and cater to their tastes.

Here are some of the emotional draws that are important to know:

                 Very young children—ages 0-5: Like wonder and humor in that order. Note that spooky stories may attract them, but can easily terrify a toddler. Mysteries can also attract a little one.

                 Children—ages 6-11. Wonder, humor, and horror are the top three attractions, with adventure beginning to draw young men. A great example of what you're trying to accomplish can be seen in R.L. Stine's Goosebump series.

                 Girls—Age 11-19. Wonder, humor, and horror are still important, but by age 13-16 romance becomes the primary draw. Also, note that this is the time when girls will become more interested in coming of age stories. They're trying to understand the world and cope with their own growing powers, and they're trying to understand their place in society.

                  Boys—Age 11-19. Wonder, humor, and horror are still important, but by age 11 adventure becomes a primary draw for young men, so they may find themselves enticed by stories set in football camps or on road trips. By age 16, young men also will be more drawn to sexual content.

                  Women—Age 20-40. By age 20, women are drawn primarily to romance, but they also enjoy humor, and horror, mystery and some drama. As they age, the interest in romance declines, and drama and mystery become much stronger draws.

                  Men—Age 20-50. By age 20, men are drawn primarily to adventure, and this remains the strongest draw until about age 50. As men age, they too become more engaged by dramas and mysteries, leaving behind the wonder literature that they enjoyed in their youth.

So human predilections toward certain emotional draws at given ages are a valuable indicator of how well stories will perform in the market. In Hollywood, advertising firms can predict how well a film will do simply by taking a look at a commercial, counting the number and types of each emotional beat (an emotional beat is a scene or sound effect that promises to play upon a certain emotion), multiplying that number by the percentage of audience members who are drawn to each of the given types of emotional beats, and multiplying that by the "reach" of the film (a measurement of how many times a given commercial is likely to be viewed by potential audience members). When all is said, a raw score is used as a comparative to other movies, and based on such comparisons, marketing firms are able to guess within about five percentage points how well a film will do during its first two opening weeks.

Now, here is something important. In Hollywood, we studied a number of emotional tags—wonder, humor, horror, drama, mystery, romance, pornography—but we didn't study all of the emotions. For example, a story that creates a strong sense of nostalgia can be very popular, but we never measured that. A story that creates a strong sense of hope is also powerful, but we never measured that. In Lord of the Rings, Tolkien played upon a strong sense of loss to good effect. In other words, as you consider imbuing your work with an emotional tone, feel free to use emotions that haven't been used in our examples.

With novels, we don't do marketing research to the same degree that we do with film. We don't have the kind of money that it takes to run a Hollywood- style "greenlight analysis" on a novel in order to figure out whether our books will draw a huge audience. But as novelists, we really should know how to greenlight our own stories.

Thank you for reading this novel. There will be 2 more installments posted on Wattpad.  If you would like to read the entire book-- you can copy and paste this link: 

http://amzn.to/2nkStw8