[hider=Maybe pointless rambling]When it comes down to it, there's no logical method or technique that would make all readers care more or less about what's happening in the story. There's general advice out there that's useful, such as the whole 'start as close to the end as possible' or 'kill your darlings', but when it comes down to it, it's generally going to be a shot in the dark. Badly written and poorly plotted novels get published and become popular all the time, from amateur novelists nonetheless. And unless you posted serialized fiction or doing booktok hijinks to drum up interest by posting excerpts, it's not really possible to get a grasp on exactly what the audience reaction would be.

Basically, it's the kinda situation where it's like: "Yeah, just write what you want, for something you're passionate about, and the audience will naturally come."

That being said, the latter half of that statement could be considered. Narrow who you want your audience to be, figure out what they're into, and then adjust your writing and plotting to align with that audience. Could be adjustments like "litRPG people like seeing game systems embedded into writing, so I'll generate numbers to go alongside the magic system" or "isekai people generally enjoy the sense of escapism and power, so better to keep things breezy and not maintain infinite suffering cycles". Of course, the further you are from your own audience, the more artificial or corporate your attempts at appealing to them would become, which is why genre writing kinda just pops up from people who're into that stuff to begin with...so once again, "something you're passionate about".[/hider]
Man, what the fuck was even the point of writing all that?

Anyways, don't get caught up in the whole "my story doesn't have themes" trap. Don't overthink in terms of there needing to be a strong message either, because what you think is 'cool' would end up forming a message either way (which would be very telling as to who you are as a person, for better or worse). On some occasions, people have written stories with a strong, intentional message, but those people are writing those stories to get the message out, not to necessarily grab a reader.

In any case, I'd recommend self-publishing on whatever site you're interested in. Off the top of my head, there's Wattpad/WebNovel, RoyalRoad, Honeyfeed, etc. Toss your writing out into chunks; you'll get readers. Some of them might even comment, whether positive or negative. It'd be a real response though. Writing's an inherently lonely activity (which is why we're RPing instead), so stuff like that might help. I used to self-publish on Wattpad myself, and even if I never ended up finishing that story, the comments I got sustained me in a way that just writing cool things didn't.

Kinda like different types of nourishment, perhaps.