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writercisesOriginal Posting Feb. 24, 2016
Writer's Digest, October 2001 (yes, 15 years old. The paper is brown!). On pages 28, 29, and 63, Michelle Brockway has an article called Launch Your Next Chapter. It's about seven different ways to convince readers to turn the last page of one chapter and go on to read the next.
Michelle starts by pointing out that for readers, chapter endings often are natural stopping places. But as writers, we want to give the reader good reasons to keep reading, we want to create forward motion. Here are several strategies...
1. Keep secrets. Everybody wants to know a secret. If you hide something at the end of one chapter, readers are likely to keep reading hoping that you will reveal it soon. Minor secrets? Reveal them soon. Bigger ones? You might want to hold it back longer. Keep the mystery growing.
2. Make plans and vows. Characters say they are going to do something. The reader wants to know what they actually do. Curiosity, motivation, what is this character really going to do?
3. Announce arrivals. New characters who turn up at the end of a chapter makes everyone wonder what's going on. Who is this, and what are they going to do to the story? Do make sure that these are significant characters, not just a plumber who just fixes the pipes and walks off again.
4. Schedule departures. When a stage of existence, a job, marriage, life itself, ends, things change. If you end a chapter with a similar exit or conclusion, we'll be looking for the consequences and repercussions.
5. Reverse expectations. Whenever characters surprise us, we want to know what's happening. So go ahead and undermine the readers' assumptions and expectations. Then go into the explanations in the next chapter.
6. Ask a question. Usually we just imply questions, but sometimes the narrator can bluntly ask. And the reader keeps reading to find out the answer.
7. Introduce new problems. Fiction is all about the goals of characters and the obstacles to them. Guess what? New problems mean we want to find out what the character will do next. Highlight the problem in the end of a chapter, and we're going to look forward to finding out about it in the next installment.
"Creating surges of interest buys the writer time. You may dangle a big question for a book's entirety. Or you may use the momentum created by chapter-ending curiosity to move readers through the following pages of slower paced flashbacks or descriptive passages."
All right? Keep the readers turning those pages, and use your chapter endings to launch the next chapter. Secrets, plans, arrivals, departures, surprises, questions, and most of all, new problems!
Your assignment? Take a look at something you're working on and consider how to make the transitions launch pads for interest. Use those chapter and scene breaks to make the reader keep reading.
Write!
tink
Writer's Digest, October 2001 (yes, 15 years old. The paper is brown!). On pages 28, 29, and 63, Michelle Brockway has an article called Launch Your Next Chapter. It's about seven different ways to convince readers to turn the last page of one chapter and go on to read the next.
Michelle starts by pointing out that for readers, chapter endings often are natural stopping places. But as writers, we want to give the reader good reasons to keep reading, we want to create forward motion. Here are several strategies...
1. Keep secrets. Everybody wants to know a secret. If you hide something at the end of one chapter, readers are likely to keep reading hoping that you will reveal it soon. Minor secrets? Reveal them soon. Bigger ones? You might want to hold it back longer. Keep the mystery growing.
2. Make plans and vows. Characters say they are going to do something. The reader wants to know what they actually do. Curiosity, motivation, what is this character really going to do?
3. Announce arrivals. New characters who turn up at the end of a chapter makes everyone wonder what's going on. Who is this, and what are they going to do to the story? Do make sure that these are significant characters, not just a plumber who just fixes the pipes and walks off again.
4. Schedule departures. When a stage of existence, a job, marriage, life itself, ends, things change. If you end a chapter with a similar exit or conclusion, we'll be looking for the consequences and repercussions.
5. Reverse expectations. Whenever characters surprise us, we want to know what's happening. So go ahead and undermine the readers' assumptions and expectations. Then go into the explanations in the next chapter.
6. Ask a question. Usually we just imply questions, but sometimes the narrator can bluntly ask. And the reader keeps reading to find out the answer.
7. Introduce new problems. Fiction is all about the goals of characters and the obstacles to them. Guess what? New problems mean we want to find out what the character will do next. Highlight the problem in the end of a chapter, and we're going to look forward to finding out about it in the next installment.
"Creating surges of interest buys the writer time. You may dangle a big question for a book's entirety. Or you may use the momentum created by chapter-ending curiosity to move readers through the following pages of slower paced flashbacks or descriptive passages."
All right? Keep the readers turning those pages, and use your chapter endings to launch the next chapter. Secrets, plans, arrivals, departures, surprises, questions, and most of all, new problems!
Your assignment? Take a look at something you're working on and consider how to make the transitions launch pads for interest. Use those chapter and scene breaks to make the reader keep reading.
Write!
tink
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