How to Write a Good Story

7 Ways to Make a Good Story Great (III)

6. Make them laugh.

Did you grin or chuckle at that last line about the snake-belt guy lacking a girlfriend? What agents and editors love above all is wit. Note that wit is not exactly humor: We might laugh reading a scene where a vain person gets a pie in the face, but that's humor and takes no intelligence to perceive. Wit is more of a brain thing.

Here's the key: We laugh when we're given a perspective we'd never have dreamed of. We laugh when we can see absurdity that others can't. We laugh when we're surprised, and when we're caught off-guard by understatement. All of these can serve as subtle tactics for adding wit to your fiction.

If you're feeling stuck, one easy and effective way to capitalize on wit is to comb your characters (rather than your plot) for possibilities. For instance, you might decide to give a character a blind spot. Imagine that snake-belt guy shows up for a first date and the woman slowly picks up her purse and leaves the coffee shop without so much as a word. The underlying wit is that until that moment, it had never even dawned on him to consider leaving the snake at home.

Also notice that his date's behavior in this example is understated—another smart way to incorporate wit without overdoing it. To take this scene further, instead of having snake-belt guy get mad and storm out, or phone his buddy and say, "Gosh, I just don't understand why that date didn't work out," you might have him just sit there with a blank expression—and then, when the server arrives, order coffee, patiently and acceptingly, alone.

Look for opportunities to incorporate small, believable incongruities. A character who is sharp about some things but not others can be funny. Consider the nuclear scientist who can't heat a cup of soup, the successful MBA who runs up credit card debt, the diplomat who can't keep peace in his own house.

7. Make them cry.

Lots of books make readers laugh and lots make readers cry, but when readers laugh and cry while reading the same book, they remember it.

What makes people cry? I'm not talking about beloved pet dogs that die. What I mean is: What's the mechanism by which readers get overcome with emotion, whether it's about Old Yeller or a state-fair contest cake that falls before it's been judged?

Agents and editors are looking for emotional suspense, with a walloping payoff.

Here's the key: Your pathos must not be cheap.

In this case, cheap is usually the crappy twin of quick. Get rid of quick, and you'll usually avoid cheap, arriving at quality in the process.

Take your time and let emotion build from a single seed. I might add that cataclysm at the end is fine, but you don't need it.

Let's say you want to break a character's heart. Let's say the character is a big, tough bar bouncer. How to make him vulnerable?

Well, children and romantics are the most vulnerable among us, aren't they?

Maybe our bouncer has never given up his boyhood dream of being a fighter pilot. Maybe, as a 30-year-old, he decides to go for this dream. We follow him as he attends night school, gets his GED and signs up for the Air Force.

He tells no friend back home, no one he loves what his ultimate goal is. That way, he reasons, if he fails he won't lose face with them.

You know what to do from here: Let his dream come closer; let him overcome setbacks. Let it unfold. Then, let some big shot take a disliking to him. When he finds out he's being reassigned to the flight line (the wallop) for no good reason (double wallop), he realizes that though he has no one to jeer at him, he also has no one to console him.

This subtle facet of emotion has fueled many a bestseller.

Agents and editors are tuned to seek flaws and weaknesses in an author, but their hearts melt in the face of author strength, competence and bravery.

Follow these suggestions, and readers of all sorts will respond to the deeper edge of realism that they recognize but cannot always name.

PS: After reading these last two points, I agreed wholeheartedly with Elizabeth Sims. Why do I love the books I love the most? I laughed, I cried, I felt what the characters felt.