Fiction is entertainment and unfortunately, as a fiction author, you’ve got lots of competition for your readers’ attention. How do you drag your readers away from video games and from Netflix binge-watching sessions?
You can only do that when you focus on the entertainment you’re providing readers.
Fiction is entertainment: what entertains YOU?
Start with yourself. Make a list of what you find entertaining in your own reading. Also, get into the habit of highlighting interesting material. If you use a Kindle or the Kindle app on your device, Amazon helpfully collects everything you’ve highlighted in a book onto a Notes and Highlights page.
When you read an especially entertaining scene, think about how the author managed to maintain your attention — what kept you reading?
These tips may help.
1. Use suspense in every scene
Suspense keeps readers reading.
Anticipation builds suspense. Avoid giving readers too much information — give them what they need to know when they need to know it. Delay giving information, and delay some more, to build the reader’s anticipation, and suspense.
The more you can delay, without annoying the reader, the better. For example, let’s say you’re writing a thriller in which your main character’s daughter is kidnapped. The daughter’s boyfriend has disappeared. Is he involved in the kidnapping? You may decide that he isn’t, but you don’t reveal that for four chapters.
2. Increase the stakes for your main characters
What will happen to your novel’s main character if he doesn’t get what he wants? Can he survive?
Your answer must be NO. Your main character must win through, or die. If his life goes on much as it did before, win or lose, then the stakes in your novel aren’t high enough.
Create a logline for your novel:
You must know what you're selling, so selling your book starts with a one sentence summary, much like a movie’s logline:
When INCITING INCIDENT happens, OUR PROTAGONIST decides TO DO ACTION against ANTAGONIST.
Think about novels you’ve read. What are the stakes?
Consider Pride & Prejudice, for example. Midway through the novel, Lizzie Bennet refuses Mr Darcy and sends him on his way.
Then Jane Austen raises the stakes for Lizzie. Lizzie visits Darcy’s magnificent home, Pemberley; her sister Lydia elopes with Wickham. Darcy owns Pemberley and rescues the entire family from ruin.
3. Remember to play
It’s impossible to be creative if you’re not having fun with your writing.
From The Artist's Journey: Bold Strokes To Spark Creativity, by Nancy Hillis:
Play is the work of childhood—and it’s the work of your life as well. The great British child psychiatrist D.W. Winnicott was a virtuoso psychotherapist and brilliant theorist. He believed that play was essential to health, and that to help his clients play, whether they were children or adults, he needed to be able to play himself.
Think about how you could make your writing fun. It might be as simple as creating a music playlist, or rewarding yourself with a chocolate truffle when you finish a chapter.
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