What's Your Angle

A distinguishing feature of book proposals, essays, and stories that sell well is authors who understand the power and necessity of a good angle. But what is angle, exactly? What does it look like? And how do you find the right one?

For some, angle means catering to special interests. As with our more polarized news sources, coloring a story from one side of the aisle or the other (or targeting any special interest) increases confirmation bias and attracts already like-minded people. For others angle means reeling people in, finding the right hook to attract interest so you can present content. In the publishing world, both definitions find validation as ways to sell.

But may I offer a new place to begin, a new perspective on what we do as writers and artists? What if we were to look at angle not as “How will I get readers to see me and what I have to say?” but “How can I see them and what they long to know?” I propose that if we start with the reader—not just in mind but at the heart of what we set out to write—angle will take care of itself.

Rain for the Just and Unjust

Kansas City, where I live, and much of the Midwest has experienced record rainfall this year. We need rain and lots of it, but when it comes all at once and more than the ground can absorb, it’s not only useless, it’s destructive. The unchecked flood of writing in our information age acts much the same way.

Many communities, like the one where I grew up near Houston, have paved so much soil and developed so much flood plain that water can’t seep into the earth the way it used to. Too many communities are impervious to the replenishing rain they used to absorb—and are at risk of flooding from even the more minor deluge events that have increased this decade. But being impenetrable from above does not mean Houston’s groundwater system needs no replenishing. It does mean that Houstonians will have to find new ways to manage their environment, to divert run-off into helpful channels, and to help water reach and soak into the soil.

Writers need to assess the current landscape and adjust, too. Readers have always had a say in the marketplace through how and where they spend their dollars. For instance, the New York Times recently announced they will restore several categories to their best-selling books lists because of reader outcry when they removed them. But now, like no other time, the larger populace has created a reader-curated literary world, sorted out not just by dollars but also by likes and shares. In fact, the market has become so saturated with online publishing, blogs, the 24-hour news cycle, and self-publishing in addition to traditional publishing that a lot of excellent writing goes right down the drain as unread run-off. The soil is too full to absorb it, the market too deluged to see all that’s out there.

In addition, several years ago, celebrated Christian author Philip Yancey wrote about his forty-year experience in the industry, his ever-reducing income for the same amount of work due to the lower prices of e-books, and the impact online buying has made for book sales:

There was a cost to the industry, of course. No longer would shoppers browse the shelves, pick up books to scan the contents, and walk out with five books when they had intended to buy just one. Now they ordered the one they wanted online, untempted by new books they did not even know existed. Scores of college and seminary bookstores closed as students ordered the required books online, forfeiting the ability to browse among unassigned books that also might interest them.[1]

Because of these market forces, writers have to fight their way up a slick and muddy slope to gain any kind of visibility. Online and offline platforms help, of course. In our celebrity culture, those who have visibility in one venue will often have more access to visibility in another.

But there’s more to this visibility problem than meets the eye. We live in a time when people and businesses realize that books are cultural and brand capital. Want to promote your business? Write a book. Want to draw people to your church? Write a book. Want to expand your influence? Write a book. I understand those motivations, but they often breed a branded rehash of the same old story. What we need are not more books for the sake of increasing brand capital; we need books to promote fresh insights. To correct erroneous assumptions. To expand the borders of classics that exclude. To include more diverse voices as influencers. And to provide current cultural application of eternal truth. That’s an angle that comes to serve rather than be served.

Nothing New under the Sun

When thinking about angle, we are wise to remember Solomon’s adage, that “there’s nothing new under the sun.” When we boil ideas down, we realize someone else has written on my subject before me. For instance,

•              There are only so many different plots (boy meets girl…).

•              The Bible has only sixty-six books to discuss.

•              Yes, humans tend to act poorly.

•              We all need to remember to share, be kind, and to play nice.

•              Power corrupts. But sometimes a person rises above it.

•              The poor will always be with us.

•              Jesus saves.

We need angle not because truth changes but because we often have to shift perspectives to see truth and let it soak in. Sometimes we need help breaking up the pavement encasing our hearts and minds.

Consider that if we write truth, it’s because we have discovered something already there rather than created something new. That reality can challenge our egos if we seek self-glory rather than to magnify glory. Years ago, on the edge of adulthood, I spent the summer at the Boston Ballet School. Free one evening, I got a frozen yogurt and roamed city sidewalks with one of the young men also in the program. He was a few years older and primarily in the program as a pathway to choreography. When a natural lead-in to talk about God came up, I followed it, knowing that my friend was likely an atheist. He made a striking statement I will never forget. His natural impulse was to believe that God existed, but he refused to acknowledge the impulse. He said, “If I believe there is a God, then any ballet I ever create will first have its source in him. And I want it to be mine alone.” Wow. Pure hubris. But honest and theologically true.

All creativity is sourced in the Creator. There’s only one true original. But we can all add our fingerprints to the lenses we use to magnify what we see in this world and beyond. We aren’t God’s automatons. Our unique experience adds something important to the content, shifting the light and how readers see. A good angle frees us up to address our readers with creative humility, serving them and the content—and not our résumés.

Make All Things New

Like Solomon, a wise author considers angle right from the beginning: How will I approach and research my topic? Why will my content matter to someone? How do I answer the question, So what?

There’s a difference between “what I am learning and so this concept is new to me” and “what we have learned and so this concept is new to us.” Ask yourself, have you read widely (or have wide/deep experience) on the topic you want to write about? Does another author (that you could promote instead of writing yourself) cover everything you intend to say in this proposed article or book? What do you have to add?

•              Are you modernizing with new research, insights, and application?

•              Are you finding and calling out the blind spots of yourself and previous writers?

•              Are you asking the questions the audience is asking and connecting the dots?

Content with an angle that serves the reader will reshape current thought, reveal holes in our understanding, and relate to the reader’s felt needs.

Reshape

If anyone can readily find all the information, illustrations, and quotes you use in your book on the internet, what are you adding to the general pool of understanding? We all stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us. We don’t have to throw ideas out to make them better—in fact, I highly regard studying the enduring classics in most fields—but we do need fresh perspective. We do need to explain to a new generation why old ideas should persist or fade.

So as you approach your topic, consider whether you are merely repeating what others have said or you are adding something new. Zoom in to see cracks in the brick wall. Zoom out to see how that wall encompasses a nation. Connect ideas across disciplines and cultures. Move the horizon so we can see a new world.

As you look at your content, keep in mind that you are not modernizing truth itself but the way we perceive it. Even in scientific fields, new breakthroughs and writing about breakthroughs never changes reality or the truth of our universe, only our understanding of it. What we thought impossible yesterday, we discover today possible, which means each advance in technology, each new discovery of the universe was always possible. If we are moving in the right direction, we reshape our misunderstandings into better understanding, give new language to old ideas and experiences.

Consider the attention Jesus garnered by revising the collective discussion about the Sabbath, saying, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Did Jesus change the Sabbath from obligation to a benefit? No, from its origin in creation (Gen 2:3) to its installation in Israel’s law (Ex 20:8–12), the Sabbath always had a purpose for giving humans space to enjoy God’s good and ordered world, for relieving our burden, and to frame our doxological purpose. But humanity stood on their heads when it came to Sabbath, looking at it upside down. Jesus flipped the world back around so we could see it.

Reveal

Jesus’s insight caused a stir because it revealed the blind spots of the religious leaders. We tend to call the person who asks questions and pokes holes in our pet beliefs a “devil’s advocate.” Certainly the religious leaders saw Jesus this way, calling him “Beelzebul,” prince of demons (Mark 3:22).

We tend to assume that anyone who undermines our core values, reasoning, and standards sides with the opposition. It used to drive me bonkers that my dad would always ask questions I couldn’t answer as I expressed my thoughts on topics. Sometimes—often—these exchanges felt adversarial because I wanted to settle the issue where I had landed and look no further. But in truth, he was teaching, mentoring, and helping me to dig out misconceptions and fill in caverns before they collapsed into sinkholes.

Sometimes we fear asking too many questions, especially questions pertaining to faith, values, authority, and hierarchy. What do we fear? That our world will come crumbling down? Digging to the foundation might reveal poor construction, water damage, or uneven settling, but it also can confirm faith that a house will stand another century. If the house is sound, digging to discover its soundness will not make it less sound. Neither will failing to investigate a house’s unsoundness make the house stand more firm. But if we fail to investigate, we may be in the house when it crumbles.

What question are you not asking?

Greek and New Testament scholar Daniel Wallace caught my attention a decade ago as he taught us the book of Romans in a Greek capstone class at Dallas Theological Seminary. How many years had he studied and taught the content and grammar of this ancient letter? Yet he mentioned that every year he would dig into new layers of the syntax to see if it would hold water. He asked, is my interpretation right, and if the interpretation changes, does God still exist? With abandon, he wrung the text out for answers, fully willing to ask the questions that might sink his faith.    

Who has the most faith? The person refusing to poke holes too deep in a timber for fear she will find wood rot? Or the person checking for wood rot, trusting that the timber will withstand any inspection?

As you explore your content, what questions have you avoided? What dark corners remain? What holes should you poke as an advocate before they are made craters by an adversary? Remember to look through the lens of those excluded from authority, especially if you are part of the inclusive group. A good angle reveals what others have failed to see.

Relate

An angle that serves is an angle that relates. Reshaping and revealing will matter little if you fail to answer the questions your target audience is asking.

In chapter 4 of John’s Gospel, Jesus choses his audience carefully. He waits at a well for the outcast that would come to draw water in the heat of the day. A Samaritan woman approaches, someone who would normally be apprehensive of a Jew like Jesus. She has run through five husbands. Widowed or divorced? Her fault or theirs? We don’t know, though she most likely had little power in each situation. She now lives with a man not her husband, probably so she can eat. On that account, at least, she has been made an outcast in her community.

Drawing water by herself, she must have known how her choice and situation would cause her current suffering—yet knowing those facts had not changed her behavior. (Perhaps she had seen no other option.) But Jesus catches her attention in a way it seems no one else has; he reaches into her core felt needs. First he notices her and accepts her. Surprised, she asks, “How is that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (v. 9). Then he answers the questions she asks silently, deep inside, the ones no one else cares about: Does God see me? Does he care? Is there any escape from my loneliness? He invites her personally to be one of those in God’s circle, worshipping him in spirit and truth (v. 23). And she takes him up on the offer.

Not only did Jesus know about the husbands and current living situation, details she did not tell him, he knew the secrets longings of her heart. Rather than turn away from him and continue in her sin, she lay down her water jar and approached the community that had shunned her so she could draw them to Jesus. Of course, we mere mortals can never know the secrets of the heart as Jesus did, but we can make educated guesses. We can look beneath the stones in a heart to its motivations. We can see how the needs of the body affect the soul.

How do we pursue relevance? Study our culture. Study your audience. What questions are people asking outright? What longings seem to drive behavior? What values can you find in common? What obstacles keep the rain from soaking in? You might find it helpful to create a grid for different subgroups so you can differentiate and nuance with specifics how each approaches and responds to your topic and the felt needs it answers. For each subgroup, answer the “So what?” questions: Why does this information matter? What does it change? And why, specifically, will this person in this subgroup care about it?

You might have answers for questions the world is not asking. In that case you might either need to change the question your answer, change how you approach your content, or connect the dots from your question to one your audience does have. But you must filter all your content through this question grid. Asking the readers’ questions will help you find soil ready to receive your unique voice and experience even in the midst of a flood. A good angle is not what you want to tell people; it’s how they are prepared to hear.

Write on the Tablet of Your Heart

For a final insight to choosing the best angle, ask yourself some pertinent questions: Why do I write? Primarily do I want to serve myself (make money, gain stature, increase celebrity and cultural power) and hear myself talk? Or serve others (improve lives, increase understanding, create beauty, serve justice) and be invited into their conversation? Am I working just to be a good writer? Or a good neighbor too?

An angle that serves affects not just what we write but how we live. Are we taking a new look at old problems? Are we digging to reveal our own blind spots? Are we willing to change our daily habits so that how we live is more in harmony with what our neighbors truly long for?

Our world has a flood of voices. Let’s grow hearts with ears.

[1] Philip Yancey, “Farewell to the Golden Age,” Philip Yancey (blog), July 6, 2014, https://philipyancey.com/farewell-to-the-golden-age.