Page-turning novels need to keep their readers engaged in every scene, but not every scene will be a treasure trove of spine-tingling action. Likewise, not all scenes can have deep character development or drama. Instead, a successful page-turner will have to balance both curiosity and concern to keep up its narrative drive.
However, the Hook is by no means limited to stories based on the Three Act Structure. Ideally, every story should have some kind of Hook. This scene occurs at the very start of your novel, and hints at some interesting tidbit or story beat coming later on. This causes your reader to ask a question and engage their curiosity. At its core, the Dramatic Question is simply the core conflict of your novel written as a question.
However, this kind of sells it short. This way, your reader immediately has a new question driving them forward , maintaining the momentum of your narrative drive. When it comes to creating narrative drive, scene structure plays a huge role in how engaging your novel is moment-to-moment. Scene structure also ensures you have a clear connection between every scene in your story. Each scene begins with the goal from the previous scene, and ends with the goal for the next scene, meaning your entire novel will have a clear line of cause and effect driving it forward.
A lot of writers get confused when I bring up chapter structure, for a few reasons. For starters, many people believe scenes and chapters are the same thing, when in reality, a chapter is actually just a collection of related scenes. This means that chapters are more a pacing tool than a structural unit of your story. When done well, chapters give your readers the unique sensation of being funneled forward through your story, where each chapter ends leaving them hungry for more.
You create this chapter funnel by grouping common scenes together, with each scene rising in tension and stakes until the chapter pays off with some kind of resolution—before hinting at the goals and conflicts of the next chapter. Lindsey Lohan. Show the reader only as much as they need to continue reading. This is a trail of breadcrumbs left for a hungry little bird — make them hop for it.
Tease it out slowly. Distill the pitch. Clarify the hook. What is the most delectable part of the character, the conflict, the plot? Sharpen the hook to catch the readers. A page-turner of a book has a kind of manic energy — and while a story like that can have a lot of complex things going on in the background, often the story itself has a very simple crux to it.
And that crux is, almost literally, a crossroads. Will she cure her disease? Will the couple get together? Will he save his son, or blow up the moon, or avenge his chihuahua, or whatever.
This is it: the binary question. Yes or no. Let this question infect every page. Let it grant the tale the energy it needs to compel readers. Always circle back to it.
Write with vigor and intensity. Get excited. Infect us. Take us for a ride. Love the journey. They move quickly. Kick off the kiddie wheels. Thumb the safety off. One of the most compelling things a reader will experience is a writer who is operating at a blistering, almost careless level — an author who will blow it all up just to keep you entertained is an author worth reading. Want to learn more about writing, storytelling, publishing, and living the creative life? All this, straight from the sticky blog pages of terribleminds.
Direct from terribleminds. They taste like sweet liquid sunshine nectar! Ransome July 14, PM. Love this. You make so much sense you are such a great teacher after I wade through the colorful…. Mark Gardner July 14, PM.
Avalyn Doyle July 15, AM. Hey Chuck….. I know I will get into trouble with this but I need to say I am mostly disappointed with modern fiction. What happened to the lush habitat created by the seduction of a beautiful sentence? There are so many delightful, ambitious and hungry words that need someone to savour their birth. Why is stimulating fear such a grab-all?
OzFenric July 15, AM. Lowest-common-denominator, yo. I suspect the rush to writing novels entirely of words of two syllables or fewer reflects a declining standard of literary interest and ability, more than a concern for fast-paced prose.
Flesch—Kincaid have a lot to answer for. A very big difference. Hey Ozfrenic. Thanks for your reply. Yes, there are books that are excellently written and well edited. I seem to have acquired a super critical mind post the recent How to Get Published course. Maybe I need to get back to Michael Crichton for a refresher. Michele Ceres July 15, AM.
Chuck, you outdid yourself with this one. Thank you for the entertaining advice delivered with the pace of a page-turner. You might be interested or appalled to learn that I quote your writing wisdom in the draft of the first chapter of The Possibility Book. Not from this post though. From something you wrote a while ago that I found interesting.
Thank you, Chuck. I needed this. All they want to do is talk. Blah blah blah. Weird, because when I wrote fan fiction Shuttup—everyone has to start somewhere I had kind of a reputation as a sadistic cliff-hanger monger. I need to find my murderous mojo again. Alright then. Back to editing. Elizabeth Poole July 15, PM. Talk about their world, how magic works, info dump their feels. The first draft is for you, so write all the info dump stuff your mind needs to tell yourself the story, and then prune that stuff way back in revision.
When writing fan fiction, you already KNOW a lot of the stuff you have to make up when writing something original. Emma Haughton July 15, AM.
Pleased to see your point here about taking your foot off the accelerator once in a while. I write thrillers and find standard advice to have tension and danger in every chapter a bit misguided. Even rollercoaster rides need lulls and straight bits, a chance to get your breath and prepare for the next downward rush. I think one crucial element to making a story a real pageturner is caring deeply about the central character, and for that you have to see different sides of them, not just panic and bewilderment or kick-ass gun-toting fighting mode.
This sentence actually seems perfectly rational. Which may say something about me. By training and using a soulless animal, the Vatican can avoid that whole issue.
One assumes the Pope would receive a special indulgence from God for the act of sending an ape-assassin after someone in the first place. Come to think of it, Martin Cruz Smith probably had to do a fairly stiff penance whenever he wrote an Inquisitor book, too. Kay Camden July 15, AM.
Tina Gabrielle July 15, AM. Great post Chuck! Good tip that will not only catch the readers, but will help the author write the book. Lee Mountford July 15, AM. Loved the post, Chuck. Another thing worth adding is something you raised in a post only a few days ago, and that is the introduction of a character — how they are introduced is important for maintaining pace.
Not like, sitting around, flicking their genitals and staring at the Travertine tile reminiscing about that time the exposition exposited about that other exposition, but actually up and about. Interacting with the world — exerting will — with agency. Good point, Lee. Paul Weimer July 15, AM. Knowing where to start your story is crucial in this day and age, I think. Play candy crush or watch Mark Wahlberg fight Decepticons, or something. Allison Rose July 17, PM.
Dialogue says a lot more about someone than what your narrator can describe. Melinda P July 15, AM. I love this post! Your examples really help me envision how to do this in my own WiP. Why, when discussing books, do we often reference movies and television instead of books for good examples? Dialogue by nature moves quickly. You have short paragraphs pretty much automatically, because nobody speaks in pages of unbroken type these days.
I love writing dialogue—I find it always speeds the plot up and ratchets up the tension. So if things are flagging, get your characters interacting with dialogue—nothing is more riveting than a detective and suspect playing cat and mouse in an interview, or a loaded conversation between a husband and wife who distrust each other.
Use a time lock. That is, have a ticking clock that will give a sense of urgency to your story. You get the idea. Or, if it works for your story, have the action occur over a short period of time and use present tense to convey that sense of urgency. If it works for your story, use shifting points of view. Switching between viewpoints of different characters propels the story forward, as the reader has more than one viewpoint they want to get back to and follow.
Make your characters emotionally complex, ambivalent, and unpredictable. No one is all good or all bad. Real people have mixed, complicated feelings about lots of things—other people, situations, and so on.
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