Getting people to keep reading is a tricky business. You can\u2019t be there with them. You can\u2019t tell them, \u201cI know this part is slow, but wait till you see the payoff.\u201d Instead, you have to imply there will be something important, not at the end, but just around the corner.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve got to keep your reader wondering what is going to happen next. I believe in action scenes and reaction scenes. Your protagonist acts, it backfires horribly, and he spends the next scene trying to piece things back together. At the end of each of these scenes, I will always have a question that will be answered in the next scene. Hopefully, the reader gets the implied question and will keep reading to get the answer.<\/p>\n
There are several ways to imply the question. There is foreshadowing, which most people reading this blog already know. You can\u2019t be too heavy-handed with it, but foreshadowing can be a good way to increase suspense. The reader knows something is going to happen, they just don\u2019t know when.<\/p>\n
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A book I recently read used the story timeline to create suspense. I already knew what the outcome of the situation would be, just not how it would happen. As such, I found myself dreading the moment.\u00a0 The danger of messing too much with a chronological timeline is that you can lose your reader. If the reader loses track of where they are in time, then it doesn\u2019t work. Even though the timeline isn\u2019t chronological, it must still be logical. It has to make sense dramatically. There must be a reason you pieced it together that way.<\/p>\n
Logical plotting itself can be a good tool for getting readers to keep going. If you know what your ending is, what has to happen to get there? If you know the beginning, what would probably happen after that? If all you know is a character and a setting, what would likely happen in that situation? Obviously, you need surprises, or the story isn\u2019t going to make a lasting impression. Twists are part of the business. But a logical structure can help keep the reader inside the story.<\/p>\n
Even if you don\u2019t do anything else, you have to get the reader inside the story and keep them there. That means anything that distracts from the narrative illusion must be edited out. That metaphor that was so clever when you thought of it? It might not be your friend. When the reader starts seeing the wires, they aren\u2019t fully engulfed in the story. I\u2019m sure you have been reading in bed and next thing you knew, it was two hours past when you planned on stopping. That is your goal. You want to create that experience.<\/p>\n
One of these days, take a look at your favorite story, the one that affected you most deeply. You would probably be shocked how few metaphors and how little purple prose it actually contains. As a writer, first you learn to overwrite, and then you get over it and just write. Rely on your characters and situations. If the reader relates to them, if they care about them, then they will be sucked in. If the readers don\u2019t care, no amount of fancy language is going to make them care.<\/p>\n
These are just a few of the techniques writers use to keep readers interested. There are many, many others. You can find them in the countless books on writing, or in the many serial publications on the subject. Do they work? I hope so. Otherwise, I\u00a0 have wasted hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours reading books and magazines about craft and theory.<\/p>\n
Keep them in mind. Maybe they will help you. Maybe they won\u2019t, but it is always worth a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Getting people to keep reading is a tricky business. You can\u2019t be there with them. You can\u2019t tell them, \u201cI know this part is slow, but wait till you see the payoff.\u201d Instead, you have to imply there will be something important, not at the end, but just around the corner. You\u2019ve got to keep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1120,1158,1191],"class_list":["post-4605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mechanics","tag-techniques","tag-theory","tag-turning-the-page"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}