Promises to your reader

Readers expect you to keep them!

An author is always making promises to readers.

Promises as to what the book is about, whether it will have a happy ending, and that moments throughout the story will make sense and give the reader a feeling of resolution by the end. If they noticed something that could be foreshadowing, will there be payoff for it later?

Some promises are really obvious, while others are subtler. Let’s go over a few different kinds, starting with the promises that get made ahead of the reader actually reading the book.

By that, I mean the pitch. The comps. The cover. You can’t control all of that if you’re publishing with a publishing house, but part of your team’s job is to be aware of the promises and help you make good on them, too. (And if something goes wrong, your agent can step in.)

Pitch

If your pitch describes a murder mystery with high stakes and the main character constantly in mortal peril, but the book is more of a small-town romance with a secondary murder plot . . . the reader might feel misled. Sure, there’s a murder, but it’s only in service of getting the main characters together. (When they look up from the gory body, their eyes meet, and they have a Moment while discussing the etymology of the word viscera . . . So romantic, right??)

Some readers will be happy to pivot and get into the story that’s actually on the page, but others won’t. And a significant chunk of those readers will be skeptical of future books.

Comps

You know about comps.

It’s YOU’VE GOT MAIL meets GAME OF THRONES! (BRB writing that one down for me for later.) Or it’s JANE EYRE meets THE HUNGER GAMES. Or any other number of combinations of classic or popular books or shows or films, meant to draw in your ideal audience.

Comps can be great. They’ve definitely gotten me interested in books before! But keep in mind that different comps can mean different things to different audiences.

GAME OF THRONES, for example, is a hard one, because it’s so popular that a lot of times it just gets used as code for “fantasy.” But even narrowing it down, there’s a lot involved in that series: to some it’s a political fantasy, while others will immediately think of the dragons cool worldbuilding. If your book doesn’t have all of those things — and really deliver on the immense scope that GoT suggests — you risk your reader coming away from your book thinking Yeah, it had a dragon, but I really thought there would be a lot more political backstabbing and vying for power.

Using THE HUNGER GAMES as a comp promises extremely high tension and stakes: a battle royale with only one winner. If most of the contestants live because it’s actually a competition book, readers who came in for THE HUNGER GAMES comp might feel confused.

Covers

Traditionally published authors often don’t have a lot of control here, but ideally the art department knows what they’re doing. And if they don’t, your agent should say something.

But this one is probably obvious. You don’t want dragons wreathed in fire on the cover of a book that’s about a baking contest. Unless it’s a book about dragon bakers. And the cover also has a huge cake or pie on it. (Hi I’m hungry. And now I want someone to write a book about dragon bakers for me. It’s the Great British Bake Off meets How to Train Your Dragon.) If it’s a space opera, the book probably shouldn’t have a cover with a Tudor-era lady and her pet meerkat.

You get the idea.

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Some of those aspects will be easier to control than others, of course. But keeping those promises begins with the author knowing what they’ve written — and how they’re talking to their agent, editor, and publication team about the book.

As for in the book itself . . .

In Romance, there’s a genre-wide promise that it’s going to have a happy ending, that the couple will end up together. If it doesn’t fulfill that promise, it’s probably not going in the Romance section. Otherwise your readers are going to be Pretty. Dang. Mad.

Other genres (and their subgenres) come with certain expectations, as well. This is one of the many, many reasons to be familiar with your genre, trends, and what your target audience is reading.

And narrowing it down even more:

You’re making a promise with that opening page. With that first image. You’re making a promise when the reader sees the character and their motivations, goals, and desires.

To go back to THE HUNGER GAMES, we open with Katniss needing to protect her family. There’s love and duty and determination to keep them — especially her sister — safe. We’re also promised the Reaping, and implicitly promised that something big is going to happen during that scene. (Otherwise, why start right before it?)

Both of those promises are really delivered on during the Reaping scene.

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You’ll make promises to the reader throughout the book. And the series. (If book 1 is a fantasy romp with a minor romance line but book 2 is NSFW . . . expect some confused readers.) One of the keys to telling a satisfying story is to keep track of those promises and deliver on them.

Those deliveries can be a surprise, or wrapped up neatly with a bow, or even predictable — whatever works for the story you’re telling. But readers will remember if you routinely break promises to them.

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Have you ever felt like a book broke a promise to you?

What about a book you thought wasn’t going to deliver . . . but then it did and it was magical?