You’ve managed to hook your reader with your opening. How do you keep them turning pages? Good fiction or memoir stems from stories with conflict.
Emotional Conflict: Create tension and suspense by adding emotional conflict about what your POV character is seeing and feeling.
Physical Conflict: Introduce a sense of physical conflict. Is it raining? Is there a time limit? Is Mom glaring?
Risk: Inserting conflict for the sake of it becomes pointless unless the character is facing a certain degree of risk. Must be believable risk. If necessary raise the stakes.
Consequences: The conflict is pointless unless dire consequences threaten to dash the character’s hopes, dreams or goals.
Writing Tip for Today: Ask questions about your readers. Why should the reader care what happens to your characters? Why should the reader keep turning those pages? Why would the reader want to read what happens next?
Hi Linda,
Not a great writing week for me, but one in which I at least outlined some high stakes into the story I am working on. Hope I can make them believable.
Hope your proofing is going well. Hard to work inside on these gorgeous spring days.
Looking forward as always to class tomorrow eve.
Diane