The Right To Write

Writing Page-turners: Part 1

As requested by RamonCoetzee

If nothing is happening in your novel, nothing may ever happen--according to the reader. Humans in general have this mentality that if nothing interesting is occurring, nothing interesting will ever occur, but I am not here to tell you that. You probably already know that, but maybe you are wondering why your novel still isn't doing any good in the fields of suspense.

Suspense is built on many things. There is no real secret to keeping people on the hook. Different genres have different methods and different writers have different techniques. I am only here to share the few general ones. I plan to make this a series, so stay tuned.

Chances, Possible Outcome, and Conflict: Conflict is your best bet; it can be used in any scene, any situation, and any genre. Unresolved problems overlapping and tearing at the character is the best way to make the readers keep reading. Your reader should be emotionally invested in the main character, enough to care and watch him succeed or fail at solving the unfortunate positions your evil writer's mind has put the main character into. Then there is foreshadowed danger and possible outcome.

Possibility of danger is at every corner, problems are piling up like homework, anything could go wrong. Readers need to acknowledge that anything could happen. Not only can they happen, but some of them need to happen, or else readers will soon consider anything going wrong a false belief. Readers need to believe that your character is something more than a lucky person who can avoid any messy situation.

Just to make a small note, conflict and chances of failing don't need to be life or death situations to be captivating. In fact, if that's the only possible outcome you have, your conflict is most likely too unvaried to qualify as a book-long source of interest. The conflict can be anything related to the genre, as long as failure is worth your time. Failure and stakes need to based on the small goals your character has. It could be your character trying to ask a girl out or winning a race; failing needs to come at a cost. It doesn't have to be the main goal of the book, but it has to connect to the main plot, and either advance it or make the plot progress backfire. They have to correlate with the character's values and goals. So yes, stakes are important, but can be overused. 

Also, I have heard many varieties of opinions about coincidences. Some believe that coincidences are a good way to get characters out of any sticky situations, but no. Maybe using it once or twice is fine, but don't overdo it, and make sure the given scene is not too important, or you will have readers mentally rolling their eyes at how lucky your character is.

Readers don't like lucky characters, readers like characters that take control of the situation and turn it around with their own capabilities. If your character is that lucky, then he could probably get himself out of the plot in the first place. Where would your book be then? Hey, but I'll tell you what coincidences can do. They can make your character's problems even worse than they were before! Cruel? Welcome to the world of writers, where we ride black unicorns that emit blood-soaked rainbows!   It is a writer's goal to make the main character's life as bad as it possibly can be! But hey, don't call the police, they will get to solve their problems in the end, right?

Writer's often forget how important conflict is to the main plot. Conflict needs to connect to it. Having a scene that is only exciting and evoking, but that doesn't have a purpose other than that is utterly useless. Get rid of that. Connect your conflict with your storyline, let it affect the storyline. Because if you do, your reader will be emotionally invested in the outcome of the main character's coping with conflict.

For example, maybe you have romance plot line, where your main protagonist is trying to win the love of a boy out of her league. Maybe your character promised to go to a party, but is risking meeting her classmate enemy, but this may not be plot-related, but it still is an interesting setup. Let's transform this scenario into something plot-related. Your character promised her friend she'd go to a party to talk to a certain someone about how to gain the attention of her love interest, but she knows that her love interest's ex-girlfriend is there. The second example is significantly more captivating because the reader wants to see how this affects the character's goals, but the first example is merely her going to a party, risking meeting her enemy and has nothing to do with the character's real goals.