Keeping Your Reader’s Attention Is About More Than Your Novel’s Beginning
Let's talk structure
So, keeping your readers attention is obviously about:
Stakes and dread—what they are afraid might happen to the character
Sexy beginnings—starting things off interestingly
Character wants—the characters have to want things so the readers can want them too
Connection—the reader needs to care about the character and those wants
Honestly, all the elements of a book are connected to keeping your reader actually reading the book. I want to focus for a hot second on just one of those.
Gasp! I know! Me focus? Yes, yes it is possible.
So, keeping your readers’ attention has a lot to do with the entirety of the story and its pacing.
As Susan Stewart writes on The Writing Cooperative,
“Many novels are written like a three-act play. Each act must end with something exciting, either action of some kind, or a big revelation, or a huge setback. The point is to get the reader there and then make them so surprised that they just have to read the next chapter. Some writers refer to this structure as “three disasters and an ending.”
“The novel should climb in intensity as each act is written. The middle of the second act (the middle of the novel) should hold something so devastating that it seems to be impossible to overcome.
“The beginning of the third act should be another disaster and by the end of the third act, there needs to be some kind of resolution. Whether it’s a “happily ever after,” an acceptance of the situation, or in the case of a series of novels, something that makes the reader want to read the next book, the reader wants to feel like the story has come to a satisfactory end.”
So, she mentions a couple of things in there:
Three-act structure. This is the beginning, middle, and end. Or the set-up, main body of the story where main character goes after their wants, finale where they get their wants or not.
Three disasters and an ending—you can think of these as three moments of big change and an ending if your book is a bit quieter than people trying to prevent a pixie apocalypse.
She says the middle of the novel is the absolute point of devastation. Others say this is the beginning of third act/end of the second.
But the most important advice in those three paragraphs is that the intensity usually keeps picking up increment by increment until the end. There can be a bit of recovery in between those intense moments. That’s a nice ebb and flow that a lot of writing coaches and editors adore.
That is linked to scenes and chapters. Each scene and chapter needs to have a point for your readers to want to keep reading. Stewart advocates for them each having their own three-act structure as well, writing,
“How you structure your chapters is just as important as how you structure your whole novel. Each chapter should be its own little three-act play. The chapter should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The ending is the most important part of the chapter. If you can end it at a turning point, or some kind of suspense or disaster, they won’t want to put the book down.”
But to keep the reader with their adorable nose in the book or the eReader, you want to have each of those scenes and chapters building with intensity and with stakes, where the reader is going to want to know what’s going to happen and how.
Pretty cool, right?