Last year I published four very long essays on my site in a series called “The Key Conditions for Reader Suspense.” The folks at SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) liked them and wanted to reprint them on their site. Of course, as I went through those essays I found things to revise
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People go to movies, watch TV, and read novels because they enjoy having a certain type of experience. They enjoy it so much that they are willing to pay for it, again and again and again. Our job as writers is to create a narrative that evokes this desired experience in the reader. Yes, we
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Smith’s Grocery Goodness Just saw the paperback of SERVANT OF A DARK GOD in a Smith’s grocery in Kaysville, Utah. What this tells me is that SERVANT sold well enough when it was in the Smith’s stores in hardback for them to bring it back a second time. I’m guessing it’s in all the stores in the state. I want
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In part one, we talked about the story problem and its central role in reader suspense. We also talked about a man scratching his bum. In part two, we discussed the three character factors that are critical for reader suspsense and how they also help make a character rock. (For those of you just starting
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In the last part in this series we discussed the idea that readers don’t want your characters to be happy. They want them to hunted, stressed, threatened, freaked, and nigh unto some horrible fate for 90% of the novel. At that point, after all that trouble, readers want the characters to pull victory out of
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