How to Keep Your Readers Reading
The Dread Factor
Over on Writers’ Digest, Ann Garvin has a 2016 post about 10 Ways to Hook Your Reader.
It’s a cool post with a nice overview, but what I love is #9 on the list.
“Begin at a pivotal moment
Add an unusual situation.
Add an intriguing character
Conflict
Add an antagonist
Change emotion
Irony and surprise
Make People Wonder
Dread Factor
Keep narrative voice compelling.”
She uses each of those elements but doesn’t explain them there.
But dread is a lot like foreshadowing (which I talk about here), but with a fear factor built in: you know something bad is coming and you care enough about the characters in the novel that you dread that bad thing that is coming up in their lives.
DIYMFA has a post “Four Powerful Tools for Creating Dread for Your Readers.” This one is by Amy Christine Parker.
Her first is to “choose first or close third point of view,” but I’m going to substantially disagree. Richard Matheson’s 1971 novel, Hell House, is creepy and awful and so scary. So, if you’re writing horror in third person omniscient or second person (you daring writer, you), don’t let this stop you.
She advocates for writing the story in first or close third because “the more readers are inside your character’s head being privy to their in-the-moment thoughts, the easier it will be to convey their anxiety.”
For this to work, your character (be they in horror, coming of age, etc.) has to feel that dread, too.
She also says that to create dread, you want to “select a remote or closed setting.” Again, this works for some types of novels, but if you’re writing YA there’s not always a lot more dreadful than a crowded room at your high school when your pants fall down.
She writes, “The more hemmed in your character is, the more heightened the dread will be because there is no escape except through confronting the thing they fear: a monster, death itself, another person. Whatever their foe, there is no way out but through.”
And if you think about it, that classroom is closed, right? So, it just doesn’t have to always be remote. It can be either or. And sometimes a big open space (like a field where fast-moving zombies are approaching) can be pretty dread-inducing.
She also writes,
“Use Unsettling, Repetitive Details
“The subtle and not-so-subtle things you have your character notice or that are present in a scene can add up to a large amount of dread. Having someone’s smile reveal a rotting tooth for example, immediately conjures a feeling of revulsion when your reader pictures it.
“In The Tell-Tale Heart, the two most prominent examples of this are the old man’s vulture-like eye and the sound of his beating heart, which the main character continues to hear even after he is dead, so that it drives him to confess his crime because the dread he feels over it is just too great.”
And finally, she write to “delay the big reveal.”
You want the tension to build up before the thing that the reader dreads actually happens. You want to be the opposite of an anti-anxiety pill. No valium or Prozac prose for your readers in your story.
WRITING EXERCISE
This is from MasterClass.
“Switch up a story’s POV. Take a scene—or a chapter if you’re feeling adventurous—from one of your favorite books. Write it from a different character’s point of view. In this exercise you’re switching out the main character to see how the story can be told in another way. Take the exciting finale from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and write it with Ron as the main character. Another variation of this creative exercise is to keep the main character, but switch POV. For example, if a writer has told a story in first person, rewrite a scene in third person. What information gets left out when you switch points of view? What does the reader know, or not know, in this new way of telling the story?”
PLACE TO SUBMIT
Lighthouse Writers Book Project Fellowship
The Book Project Fellowship covers partial or full tuition for the entire two-year program, designed to help writers of book-length manuscripts the classes, advice, and moral support they need to draft, revise, and—most importantly—finish. Book Project Fellows will receive all the benefits of the program, including one-on-one mentorship with a published author, classes with fellow Book Project participants, weekend intensives and retreats, and publishing advice from our in-house expert.
Deadline: June 26 // Fee