As we begin a new week of writing, let’s anchor ourselves in purpose. The blank page doesn’t care about your fears or your doubts. It only responds to showing up.
This week, the writing community is wrestling with craft questions that cut to the core of why we do this work. Over on r/selfpublish, a debut novelist is asking how to build an arc reader list from scratch before a mid-September launch.
Writer’s Digest just ran “If You’re Bored, They’re Bored”—a blunt reminder that disengaged writing creates disengaged reading. And Fleur Hull’s latest Substack session dug into Amazon bestseller mechanics and KDP updates that affect every indie author’s bottom line.
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These conversations share a common thread: technique isn’t separate from calling. The craft choices you make—how you structure a fight scene, whether you journal by hand, how you pitch your novel’s heart versus its hook—are acts of stewardship.
Writer’s Digest’s “If You’re Bored, They’re Bored” makes an uncomfortable claim. If you’re drafting a scene and your attention drifts, your reader’s will too. This isn’t about high-stakes action on every page. It’s about tension—the engine that keeps a reader turning pages.
Tension lives in the gap between what your character wants and what they’re willing to risk to get it. It’s in the unspoken words between spouses at a kitchen table. It’s in the split-second decision a fighter makes when exhaustion sets in.
Writer’s Digest’s “Your Fight Scene on Heat” breaks this down: a fight scene fails when it’s choreography without consequence. Every blow must cost something. Every block must reveal character.
The craft question: Does each scene change something? If you cut it, does the story collapse? If not, you’ve found your boredom source.
The Hook Versus the Heart
K.M. Weiland’s “How to Pitch Your Novel: The Difference Between Your Story’s Hook and Heart” on Helping Writers Become Authors draws a distinction that saves manuscripts. The hook gets attention. The heart keeps it.
A hook is “a catastrophic chain reaction traps humanity beneath a debris field in low Earth orbit.” That’s the blurb a Reddit writer shared for critique this week. It’s compelling. But the heart? That’s what the debris field means for the people living under it.
The father calculating oxygen rations. The teenager who’s never seen open sky. The politician deciding who gets evacuated first.
Christian writers have a unique advantage here. We understand that external stakes reflect internal realities. The debris field isn’t just a setting—it’s a metaphor for the consequences of human choice. When you pitch, lead with the hook. But write for the heart.
Building Readers Before You Need Them
The arc reader question on Reddit reveals a hard truth: most writers start thinking about audience after the book is written. By then, it’s late.
ARC readers aren’t a marketing tactic. They’re part of your craft process. Early readers catch the boredom you missed. They flag the fight scene that reads like a manual. They tell you whether the heart landed.
Three ways to start now:
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Identify twenty ideal readers. Not “fantasy fans.” Specific people: the friend who devours Brandon Sanderson but skips romance subplots. The coworker who cries at redemption arcs. The beta reader who catches every timeline inconsistency. Name them. Know their preferences.
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Offer value before you ask. Share their work. Leave thoughtful reviews. Engage with their posts. Build the relationship before your manuscript exists. This isn’t transactional—it’s communal.
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Create a simple system. A Google Form works. So does BookSirens. The tool matters less than the habit. Set a recurring calendar reminder: “Reach out to two potential readers this week.” Consistency compounds.
The Case for Pen and Paper
“3 Reasons Why Journaling by Hand Might Help Slow Your Mind” isn’t nostalgia. It’s neuroscience. Handwriting engages different neural pathways than typing. It forces slowness. And in that slowness, connections form that speed misses.
Try this: before your next writing session, spend five minutes with a notebook. Don’t outline. Don’t plan. Just write the question your scene needs to answer. “What is this character afraid to admit?” “Why does this conversation go wrong?” Let the pen move.
The answers that surface in longhand often bypass the internal editor that types at seventy words per minute.
Biblical Perspective: The Craft of Bezalel
Exodus 31 names Bezalel, filled with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge in all kinds of craftsmanship. The first person in Scripture described as Spirit-filled isn’t a prophet or priest. He’s a craftsman. He makes the tabernacle beautiful because beauty honors the One who commissioned it.
Your novel is your tabernacle. The fight scene, the kitchen table argument, the hook and the heart—each is a beam, a curtain, a cherub hammered from gold. Sloppy craft doesn’t honor the gift. Excellence isn’t ego. It’s worship.
But excellence isn’t perfectionism. Perfectionism says “I must not fail.” Excellence says “I will do this well for the One who gave it.” The difference is freedom.
Practical Exercise: The Scene Audit
Take your current work-in-progress. Pick three consecutive scenes. For each, answer:
- What changes by the end? (External circumstance or internal state)
- Where is the tension? (Want versus obstacle)
- What does the reader feel? (Not what they know—what they feel)
- If this scene vanished, what would break?
If you can’t answer cleanly, you’ve found your revision starting point.
A Closing Word
This week, you’ll write scenes that fall flat. You’ll draft dialogue that feels wooden. You’ll stare at the screen wondering if any of it matters.
It does. The God who spoke creation into being invites you into the same work—sub-creation, Tolkien called it. Every word you wrestle into truth, every character you refuse to flatten, every boring scene you cut or fix—it’s all offering.
So write the next sentence. Then the next. The blank page is waiting.
Father, steady our hands and sharpen our minds. Let our words carry weight. Let our stories point to Truth. And when we’re bored, bored, bored—remind us that You are never bored with us. Amen.