Emotions Belong To Readers

When it comes to using emotion in a story, the person whose emotions should be most important to you is the reader.

An emotionally invested reader is more likely to go wherever the story leads, and also more likely to make allowances for parts of the story they aren’t too sure about.

You can still keep readers engaged through intellectual curiosity or general drama and action, but grabbing them emotionally is always going to be the most intense experience for them.

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Differentiating Through Dialogue

While there’s nothing wrong with making characters sound different by giving them specific accents, it’s not something you can do for every character in a story. Not unless your tale takes place at the United Nations.

And while giving them vocal tics is useful, yeah? It helps identify them quickly, yeah? It also gets old just as quickly, yeah?

Rather than using how people speak to make them stand out, it is much easier and more effective to use what they say rather than how they say it.

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Choosing Character

There are two basic types of character: the ordinary person and the special person.

The special person is really good at their job, has skills most people don’t, or maybe even possesses powers beyond those of regular folk.

The ordinary person is like you or me.

Once you decide which type your main character is, the important thing is to get the reader to see the character as someone worth reading about.

Both types have certain drawbacks which, while not a problem, need to be addressed.

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Beginnings And Their Endings

My view has always been that great first lines are overrated. Famous opening lines tend to become famous after the fact. Once a book becomes acclaimed or well-loved, the opening takes on a significance that it didn’t have to start with. Nobody read “Call me Ishamel” and thought, Genius!

First paragraphs are overrated too. Orson Scott Card has a theory that the first paragraph is a freebie, and I’m inclined to agree with him.

The first paragraph can be in a different POV, be generic or introductory, set the tone, or be the lyric from a song. It doesn’t really matter and readers don’t really expect it to be consistent with the rest of the book.

Ever since somebody came up with Once upon a time...  readers have understood that.

First chapters, however, are important.

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An Awesome Idea

For this year’s A to Z Challenge I will be doing a series of hints and tips on how to get from the start to the end of the writing process. I will be keeping these posts relatively short (for me). And a big thank you to Arlee Bird for creating the A to Z Challenge. Cheers, Lee!

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Some people can sit down with a blank page and start writing. Come to think of it, we can all do that. But some people actually like what they end up with. And by some people I mean not me.

What most of us need before we start writing is an idea. A good one.
 

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