May 2015

When someone is reading a story they are assigning a value to what they are reading. This value can be anywhere from ‘I have absolutely no interest in this’ to ‘I have to know what happens next, sleep be damned’. Obviously you want them to be nearer one end of the scale than the other.

While it’s impossible to have a story where the reader’s engagement is turned up all the way to 11 from beginning to end, there are ways to help you get the most out of a scene, no matter what the premise might be.

Action, conversation, or even a familiar set up that’s been written about a zillion times before— they can all be vastly improved if the reader actively wants to know what’s going on. And there are ways you can help nudge them in that direction.

When writing a story, using the senses to make scenes more vivid and visceral is simple and obvious advice. You want the reader to feel like they’re right there with the characters, experiencing what they’re experiencing.

Using what the characters see, hear, smell, touch and taste will further reader engagement, but these are not the only senses people have. There are in fact a host of other senses that are often overlooked or are so abstract that it isn’t clear how to convey them on the page.

A simple google search will produce a list of senses other than the big five, but it isn’t enough to be aware of them, or to be able to define them. You want to be able to capture the feeling in a way that the reader will relate to, and relate to strongly.