Trust exercises

How to keep readers following where you lead

“There’s a sweet spot. There’s a trust factor, and you have to remember that your trust factor changes as you proceed through the book… At the very beginning, your audience does not necessarily trust you at all… then past a certain point, you can start to be very delicate with your brushstrokes.”— N.K. Jemisin

In a recent Writing Excuses podcast interview, sci-fi and fantasy legend N.K. Jemisin talked about the delicate art of building reader trust. In first drafts, she explained, she tends to “slap on the paint” by over-explaining characters to keep readers anchored. In later drafts, she focuses on building readers’ trust so she can write with more subtlety and nuance.

That idea hooked me. How do fiction writers earn that trust?

In my day job in software UX and corporate leadership, trust is everything. The themes Jemisin discussed felt familiar:

• How do we help people feel safe following us where we lead?

• How do we show we’re reliable guides who can help them achieve their goals?

Harvard Business Review’s Trust Triangle breaks the concept of building trust into three parts: logic, authenticity, and empathy. It’s surprisingly useful for writers, too.

Logic

Cohesively map out where you’re taking readers

Readers don’t have to understand your characters right away—but they do need to believe they’re in capable hands that will lead them toward that understanding. Trust grows when the story feels coherent and its twists make emotional sense.

Author Jeffrey Escoffery once realized his horror story failed because the “what” came before the “why.” Readers didn’t yet care about the characters, so the stakes didn’t land. “I wasn’t yet having a coherent conversation with the reader,” he writes. “I hadn’t built in enough gestures to suggest that they should trust that I was taking them anywhere worth going.”

Building trust through logic

• Signal control from the first line. Show confidence about where the story’s going.

• Keep your characters’ actions true to their motivations. If they deviate, help readers understand why and believe it.

• Maintain a consistent tone and internal logic. Contradictions break the spell.

• Don’t stall the narrative. Signal to your reader right off the bat that the ride is worth taking.

Authenticity

Tell the truest story you can

Hemingway famously said, “All you have to do is write one true sentence.” (Be sure to read this advice in the arrogant tone EH probably intended when he wrote it!) Still, readers know truth when they see it.

Authenticity is about tuning out the noise and writing what only you can write. When I read The Hating Game recently—expecting a fluffy rom-com—I was surprised by how alive and emotionally honest it felt. Only later did I realize it was Pride and Prejudice in disguise. The author’s fresh take and unique approach made the familiar story feel new.

Building trust through authenticity

• Write what you care about. Ask yourself why you need to tell this story. If you write with sincere passion, you’ll make the reader care about the story too.

• Be emotionally honest. Let readers feel your characters’ real vulnerabilities by tapping into your own real experiences, memories, and emotions. Author Robin Farmer writes that this equates to helping people who live very different lives than your character relate to what your character is feeling.

• Develop your voice. Find your “tuning fork”—those recurring themes and rhythms that are uniquely yours. An exercise from a workshop I took once asked writers to list their all-time favorite books, movies, and TV shows, and then deduce what they all had in common. This helps you understand your influences and how they’re conspiring to create your unique perspective and style.

Empathy

Make trust a two-way street

Writing is a dance between you and your reader. You lead, but only if they choose to follow. Empathy means showing readers you trust them: that they’re smart, intuitive, and ready to connect the dots. It also means keeping your promises. If you hook them with action, don’t follow it with chapters of expository drudgery. Foreshadow a gun? It better go off. (Thanks, Chekhov!)

Building trust with empathy

• Deliver on what you promise, emotionally and narratively.

• Anticipate readers’ reactions. Imagine what questions they’ll have, how they’re feeling in the moment, and what they expect (and hope!) will happen next.

• Reward them through generosity of craft. Make them laugh, let them get lost in vivid detail, and give careful attention to the rhythm and emotion of your prose. Increase their delight and surprise, letting them relax into the story and trust it’s going to keep getting better.

Trust is the ink on the contract between authors and readers. When readers trust you, they’ll follow you anywhere, letting you lead them into the dark and back again while staying open, curious, and ready for what comes next.