Have you ever wondered how to get readers to be intrigued about your work on page one? Well, you’re not alone. Many writers want to create literary masterpieces with magical stories, wanting to share their fictional world with everyone. But how does one do that, effectively?
How to capture the fleeting attention of our reader, and leave them wanting to know more?
The best way is to have a paragraph before the first chapter to make readers interested. Let’s take a look at an example from the novel, The Damage Done by Hilary Davidson, a mystery novel written in 2010 - “It was the bright yellow tape that convinced me my sister was dead. When the police had called me, I’d cried for her, but afterward a slender thread of suspicion had snaked into my brain and coiled itself around my thoughts. Claudia was deceitful, like every junkie has to be, but she also had a temper and hated to be ignored. I’d kept my distance from her since September; maybe being the butt of the world’s worst practical joke was the price I would pay for four months of silence.”
In the first sentence, it uses the connotation of the bright yellow tape to convey the message that her sister was dead, correlating the bright yellow tape to the police. The second sentence conveys that the story is not one sided and has a deeper story. That is why a slender thread of suspicion is used. It is a metaphor and a symbol; a metaphor because it compares a slender thread to suspicion and a symbol because it represents the main character's slight suspicion about her sister as the thought coiled around her thoughts. The second half of the paragraph explains part of the backstory to the relationship between Claudia and the main character, giving us a context in which to weave the strands of information provided. It’s a wonderfully crafted first paragraph, and sets the story in motion while getting the reader interested about the death and the relationship the main character has with her sister.
Let’s take a look at another example. This is a segment from the first chapter of The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch (2006): “Locke Lamora’s rule of thumb was this – a good confidence game took three months to plan, three weeks to rehearse, and three seconds to win or lose the victim’s trust forever. This time around, he planned to spend those three seconds getting strangled.”
The paragraph gives a wonderful element of intrigue and interest, for when the speaker states: “he planned to spend those three seconds getting strangled.”, one is automatically invested. It’s quite an interesting paragraph as it makes the reader think: “Hey, why does he want to be strangled?” It also makes the reader wonder: “how did the protagonist come to such conclusions regarding the ‘confidence game’? What even is a confidence game?
Making the reader wonder about something which cannot simply be looked up is how to make readers interested in reading your story.
The key takeaway here is that in order to get readers intrigued in your work, you must use the writers’ arsenal - tools like imagery, literary devices, and description. Show when needed, and tell when needed - one cannot afford a bored reader plowing through pages of purple prose, or dozing through simple, unimaginative “bullet lines”. You want to be able to create paragraphs that lure your readers into the storyline. Even though getting your readers interested in your writing is a tough task to tackle, through perseverance and effort, anything can be accomplished!
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