When the objective is clear and the character is
moving towards it, the reader will stay with the story, at least until they reach
a natural break in the narrative.
But ever be reading a book and you find yourself in
a section where not much is happening, no great action or set piece, but you
can’t stop reading?
You go from one line to the next and it’s like
you’re leaning forward as you’re going down a hill and it would almost be more
effort to stop than to just keep going.
That’s the power of momentum.
Any time you give a character a specific objective
you have the opportunity to create momentum. But if can string all the
objectives together, then you can keep the reader perpetually in the flow of
the story.
It may feel like it will be obvious that whatever
the character does it will be in pursuit of their main objective, so you don’t
have to keep mentioning it. But this isn’t about the story making sense or characters
behaving in plausible ways, it’s about creating a sense of forward movement
that the reader will find hard to escape from.
For example, let’s say our characters are off to a
big violent showdown and get in their car. But on the way they decide to stop
off at a bakery to get a doughnut. It
turns out that this bakery is actually a front for a weapons dealer and our
characters are actually going there to get hold of some serious firepower. Only
the reader doesn’t know that.
You could quite easily decide that the surprising
nature of why they’re going to the bakery will be a cool thing for the reader
to discover, so you don’t make it clear why they’re headed there.
If the time between deciding to go to the bakery
and revealing the real reason for going there is quite short, you won’t lose
much momentum.
If the characters go to the bakery and check out
the different cakes and have a long chat with the woman behind the counter
before the real reason for going there is revealed, then even though you may be
able to recapture the reader’s interest, you will still have lost a lot of the
momentum you built up.It's a trade off, and only you can decide if what you gain is worth what you lose.
If you reveal up front what they’re doing—There’s only one place to buy a anti-aircraft
missile around here: Ma’s Old Tea Shop—then that will keep the momentum
going, although the surprise will be gone.
But the aim here is to provide a connection to the
main story, not necessarily explain it. So the important part is to
bring up the connection. The above example does that, but you could also do it
like this:
“First we
need to stop off at Ma’s Old Tea Shop”.
“This is no
time to get yourself a doughnut.”
“Oh, Ma sells
more than doughnuts.”
Just letting the reader know this is not an
arbitrary left turn in the story, even if it’s just a hint, is enough to keep
the momentum rolling.
Finding small ways to remind the reader this is all in pursuit of that ultimate goal (whatever that might be in your story) is all it takes to keep things rolling.
Bear in mind, the reason I made it an unusual place
to get weapons is because if they went to a gun shop to get tooled up, it would
be self-explanatory why they were going there. When the link to the main story
is clear, the momentum will automatically be there.
Having said all that, if you write deep enough in
the character’s POV, it’s possible to hold the reader’s attention purely by
maintaining a strong enough focus on the character’s needs. He’s angry and
pissed off with the bad guys, and he’s going to the goddam tea shop. If we know
the kind of guy he is, we’ll know there must be more to this tea shop then just
cakes and Earl Grey.
But it’s also worth remembering that when you’re in
deep POV, we should know what the character knows, and when he does something,
we should be aware of why he does it. That won’t make his actions less
intriguing, it will only make the bond between character and reader all the
stronger.
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