1. A writer must draw their readers' interest. There are several ways to do this, but a lot depends on your readers' preferences. I believe that you, as the writer, shouldn't have to write romance because that is the current craze. Write what you want to write. But write to intrigue. Make the romance reader want to read your science fiction. One of the most important ways to accomplish this is to have a strong beginning. If you dump your protagonist's backstory on the reader, and their appearance, and how the city they are in was founded at the beginning of the story, chances are, they will put down the book. You want to enthrall them from the beginning and add in the backstory and stuff later. Jump right into the action and suspense, whether your protagonist's memory has just been wiped or a battle has just begun or a dangerous stranger has just walked into the tavern. Draw them in and fill in the details as you go.
Then, once you have captured your readers' interest, you must keep them reading, keep them wondering. I don't mean that you have to have constant intensity, but I do mean that things should always be happening, action-packed or not. One of the best things I think you can do to keep your readers reading is to put high stakes into the writing as soon as possible. Once they see that a bad thing is going to happen if the protagonist doesn't stop it, they will want to see it through.
2. A writer must make the world and people they have created real to readers. If they do not believe in the characters or their world, what is the point of them reading the story? In order for the readers to believe in them, you have to believe in them first. Give every location vivid setting and backstory, and do even more for the characters. People are very complicated, they are often inconsistent and not stereotypical. I will go into a deeper discussion of character and setting later. But for now, suffice to say that your readers will not become invested in your story until it becomes real to them.
3. A writer must affect their readers emotionally. Have you ever read a book that made you cry? Have you ever been so angry at the antagonist that you just wanted to crawl into the pages and throttle him? You became emotionally invested in the story. This happens when the story becomes MORE than just a story, which is why point #2 is so important. I believe that the strongest tool in making your readers become emotionally invested is your characters. THEY HAVE TO CARE ABOUT YOUR CHARACTERS or there is no point in them reading it. When your character is in pain, you want them to be in pain.
That doesn't mean that you make every character completely likeable. One of my favorite characters in the Harry Potter series was Severus Snape, and he wasn't exactly what you would call likeable. Why do people like him? Because he had depth. He wasn't just mean for the sake of mean. He was bitter because of the hurt that he had suffered. A character that only has one layer isn't a character at all. They are robotic stick figures. 2D characters that always act the same will not affect your readers.
4. A writer must make a point. The reader shouldn't be the same after reading the story. Your story should teach something. This is one of the most important aspects of your story, in my opinion. You can pour your beliefs into ever word, every sentence, every page. What is the point of a story that doesn't have a moral, that doesn't make...a point! That doesn't mean that you have to hammer your opinions into them. But you should have an underlying theme, an underlying lesson to teach.
There are lots of things that I have probably left out, but theses are some of the more important things that should be included in your story. You might think, I'll just write my story and hope for the best. But if you're going to invest so much time and sweat and tears into something, you should make it powerful!
(Thank you for listening to my ramblings. If you have any questions, please comment.)
No comments:
Post a Comment