How to Write a Five-Star Book
Hint: Make it matter
Every year I set my Goodreads book-reading goal. This year I set it for 50, though I read 58 last year thanks to audiobooks that I can crank through when I’m walking the dogs or cleaning the house. Most books I read are what I consider 3-star reads, which in my rating system isn’t bad. They’re pretty well written, keep my attention, and enjoyable. They’re solid books, in other words.
The four-star reads are the ones that are a cut above that. The books I’m recommending to friends. The ones I step back and say Wow after I finish. The ones that keep me hooked in, fill me with surprise and make me really feel something. The ones with exquisite writing.
And then there are the five-star reads.
These are the books that have all the earmarks of the four-star read but they go deeper. And they almost always make me ugly cry.
I don’t know about you but I’m always searching for those five-star reads.
Last year I read a lot of four-star reads, but only one five-star read: The Women by Kristin Hannah. It was well-written, engaging, harrowing, and honest. In short, it moved me.
Now, I’m a big believer in books finding you during the right times, so maybe that was part of it—I read this book precisely when I needed it—but the other part is, of course, the writing and the story.
And it got me wondering how we go about writing five-star books. How do we create books not only that people enjoy reading, but books that make them sigh with pleasure once they finish it? Books that give them a book-hangover and make the next book pale in comparison.
Here are my commandments for a five-star read.
1. You must change hearts and minds
2. You must consider the experience you want to give your readers
3. You must surprise and delight
4. You must tell the raw, barest truth
5. You must write with precise prose
6. You must create a story-worth character
Let’s dig into each of them.
1. You must change hearts and minds
Changing hearts and mind…sure, easiest thing in the world, right? Anyone who has ever tried to change someone’s mind about something important knows that this is a tall order. You can’t just expect people to buy your thesis because you present it to them. You must prove it. You must show them.
So how does this work in books? Well, it starts with making sure your book has a strong point. This is one of the backbones of great books. Sure, the stories work on a craft level, but, more importantly, they have something meaningful to say about the human experience.
For The Women Kristin Hannah set out to shine a spotlight on the experience of women in Vietnam. In her author’s note, she explains how the one thing that stuck out to her during all her interviews and research was that the women who served in Vietnam were dismissed when they returned, under the permeating belief that “there were no women in Vietnam.” Can you imagine the whole world invalidating your lived experience? Telling you it didn’t happen? Her character, Frankie, goes through this and then finds it nearly impossible to get real help for her PTSD and other conditions that came from her time serving as a nurse in the Vietnam War.
Hannah’s work was ambitious, but she succeeded in not only changing readers’ minds about what happened over there and after the war for women who served, but she made people feel it. I’m sure it both softened and hardened a lot of hearts, making readers feel empathy through her lows, and incensed at some of her character’s struggles.
So if the point of her book was: There were women in Vietnam, and their stories matter she proved it through every twist and turn of Frankie’s story, changing our hearts and minds along the way.
Five-star reads make us believe in things we didn’t before, or they amplify our beliefs, making us face them head-on. So you must have a strong point. You must be cutting through all the fluff to nail down a profound truth about what it’s like to really live.
Put another way, Story Grid calls this the “Non-Negotiable,” or “the core belief shift you want your reader to experience by the end of your story. It’s not just a theme or a message—it’s what makes your story stick in your reader’s mind long after they’ve turned the last page.”
Here’s their simple formula: “I want to move my reader from believing X to believing Y—about themselves, the world, or their place in it.”
In my book, my non-negotiable is this:
I want to move my reader from believing that having a full life is one with lots of money and a fancy lifestyle, to believing that the biggest life is the one with the biggest love.
What’s your story’s point, or non-negotiable? And how can you weave it into every scene, every sequence that shows the effect of events on your character as they move toward this new understanding?
2. You must consider the experience you want to give readers
Related to your story’s point or non-negotiable above, when writing a five-star read, you want to consider the type of book you are writing and what experience you want your reader to have. If you’re writing a thriller, for example, you still want to have a strong point, but you want it to be demonstrated through a pulse-pounding, high-tension experience. If you’re writing a romance, you want that experience to be swoon-worthy and romantic. If you’re writing a literary fiction masterpiece, maybe you want them to revel in your turns of phrase or melancholy.
As writers, we want our readers to feel something when we read our books, and I think in many ways this begins with the genre we are writing—both the story genre and the marketing genre. First you must deliver on these expectations your reader holds. (If it’s a horror, you must scare them; if it’s a fantasy, you must show them a new world, etc.) But outside of that, you must think through the colors with which you want to shade it. Sure you might be writing a horror, but what is the tone? Is it witty? Funny? Do you want their experience to be something more than straight-up terror? Think about what kind of mood or tone you’re aiming for. What vibes?
Take that experience you wish for them to have and work on threading it into every scene of your novel.
3. You must surprise and delight
We’ve all read the sort of books—or watched the sort of movies—that just feel predictable. Like we’ve seen it a million times already and that it doesn’t add anything fresh to the conversation.
Those are typically my 3-star reads. There’s nothing wrong with them, but they also won’t stick in the memory for more than a week or two.
Five-star reads, on the other hand, are typically the ones that do something different. That surprise us or delight us in some unexpected way. Maybe they even emotionally destroy us in the most delightful possible way.
The Women surprised me because it taught me so much about an unfamiliar subject. And then it broke my heart in the best kind of way (which is always a delight).
Some authors surprise and delight with their witty banter (looking at you, Emily Henry), or with their plot twists (Alice Feeney), or their unique worlds and lush prose (V.E. Schwab). Some writers have inventive concepts and they take their readers on wild rides. There are plenty of ways to give the reader something unexpected.
We crave the new and the fresh (especially agents and editors). Some fiction, genre fiction especially, can often feel formulaic and trope-driven (which is fun!)…but for it to be a five-star read, you must bring something new to the story. So figure out how you can surprise and delight your readers, bringing about something unexpected in your writing. A fresh concept? An unexpected storyline twist? A character who is interesting and dynamic? Witty, playful dialogue? Unique turns of phrase that make people want to highlight their way through your book?
4. You must tell the raw, barest truth
Have you ever read a book where you feel like you’re looking right into the author’s own soul, even if they’re writing about a fictional character? Yeah, that’s the kind of honesty you want to strive for when you’re aiming to write a five-star read. It’s terrifying to imagine bearing your heart’s truth to strangers—or to your circle of acquaintances who you interact with on a regular basis but who aren’t members of your closest, inner circle. Or even those closest to you, who might not appreciate depictions that hit close to home.
But the work will be so, so much stronger if you do. It will be more meaningful, more impactful if it has the raw honesty that can only come from you and your perspective. Your voice will shine through, your characters will jump off the page, and the emotions will be that much deeper.
There’s a reason there are so many writing quotes about how writing is like bleeding on the page, baring your soul…because the more you allow of your own heart and truths to come through, the more readers will see something of themselves reflected back. The more connected we all feel to the human experience.
So how do we do this if we aren’t writing a big literary manifesto? You find a way to dig deep. Ask yourself what the ache inside you is for? What does your heart yearn for? What angers or frustrates or disenchants you about the world? Find a way to talk about those things through a character. And take a deep breath to gather your bravery.
Then write.
5. You must write with precise prose
I could chatter in your ear for hours about story, story, story and how you must get it right. And that’s true. But the other half of that equation is your prose. The way you knot words together to make a string of café-lights that illuminate your story.
Even if you’re writing a thriller or horror, which might require less traditionally-beautiful prose, you still need to master your line-level fiction writing. Our words are what paint a picture. They elicit emotions. And unfortunately, when you have cliches, repetitive or clumsy prose, awkward metaphors or imagery, it might take readers out of the story. Same thing with unrealistic dialogue or no sense of time and place.
My advice: study up on fiction writing techniques. One of my favorite craft books is Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. Also study your favorite books. Highlight your favorite passages, pull them apart. When you feel especially [insert emotion: scared, invested, tense, etc.] try to understand why, and what the author was doing that accomplished it.
Some writers are blessed with natural prose that knocks your socks off, but some have to work harder, and that’s okay. But if you skip this step, you’ll never write a five-star read.
As I always say: The book industry does not reward ideas; it rewards execution.
So if you’ve got a great story to tell, better execute it well. Your book deserves it.
6. You must create a story-worthy character
I’m going to go ahead and say it: I don’t think there can be a five-star novel without a compelling character that readers care deeply about. Story is character, after all, right? Things that happen in the book happen to someone and/or because of someone. Characters lead us on a journey. They are our eyes and ears and minds and hearts while we are reading. They’re the lens that color everything.
So if you don’t craft a character that is empathetic, dynamic, and lifelike, you might lose readers.
I’ve written past newsletters about characterization, but the key thing to remember is this: Your character must desperately want something and be actively pursuing it throughout the story, while obstacles prevent them from attaining it. Start there.
Who is your character? What do they want? What stands in their way? And what happens to them if they achieve (or fail to achieve) their goal?
Character is king, as the saying goes. The Women was a five-star read because of all the items listed above…but none of it would have mattered a lick without Hannah’s character of Frankie guiding us through the journey.
So there you have it. The six commandments for a five-star read. I hope that as you’re toiling away working on your book(s), that you’re thinking through your point, and aiming to tell the truth about how you see the world.
After all, the pen is mightier than the sword, right?
Happy Writing!
Karyn