The right setting can bring a story to life for the reader They can increase tension, capture the imagination, change the story’s pace. A story might have an elaborate and detailed setting or hint at one, leaving it up to the readers to fill in the details. All are effective in their own way, and the types of settings you might use will vary depending on genre and the story you want to tell.
Planning Your Novel
Which POV Is Best for Your Story?
POV (point of view) is one of the most important aspects of storytelling, allowing readers to experience the story differently depending on how it is told and by whom.
See Your Scenes Through the Eyes of the Reader
As writers, we often get so caught up in making sure we have all the proper elements in place we forget who our stories are meant for—the reader. Most readers know nothing of the work that goes into building a story from the ground up. They’re merely looking for a great story. One that draws on their heartstrings, allows them to step outside their dreary lives, and has them dying to know what happens next. These are the elements we need to capture in our stories.
Keep Readers Invested by Raising the Stakes
We want to make our books impossible to put down and to do so, we need to keep our readers turning the pages, dying to know what’s going to happen next. And nothing does that better than characters in trouble with no end in sight.
How to Use Tension to Keep Your Readers Engaged in the Story
Just as a story thrives on conflict, it also thrives on the tension created by that conflict. Tension creates a sense of unknown and leaves the readers wondering what is going to happen next. It is vital to keeping the story alive in the reader’s mind, and to do so, there must be some form of tension in every scene, preferably every page. Even if the tension isn't resolved in the current scene, it can set the stage for future events and keep the reader turning the pages.
How to Develop Your Story’s Conflict to Its Full Potential
Stories thrive on the conflict between the protagonist, the world, and the people in it. It’s what it’s all about, and you can’t have a story without it, or there would be nothing to hold the story together and give it purpose or to entertain our readers.
What Motivates Your Characters to Take Action?
Whether we know it or not, the events and people around us can affect us in ways we don’t even realize, sometimes motivating actions we normally wouldn’t dream of taking. We act out in anger in the blink of an eye before we even comprehend what made us angry in the first place. We shut down in shock when we’re subjected to trauma too great for us to handle. We don’t always choose to act the way we do, but there is always a reason, even if it’s buried deep in our subconscious. The same is as true for our characters as it is for us, affecting everything in our story from plot to conflict to stakes.
When is the Proper Time to Introduce Our Characters?
The speed at which we introduce our characters can be crucial to whether readers will remember them or not. If we introduce too many too fast, they might not remember their names, or that they had even been mentioned.
Using Secondary Characters to the Best of Their Abilities
Nobody makes it through life without touching the lives of others. While the protagonist and antagonist are the life-blood of the story, secondary characters serve their own purpose and need to be as realistic and relatable as the main characters.
Defining What Makes a Strong Antagonist
We can’t have a strong story without a strong antagonist. They are the glue that holds the story together. Without them there would be no conflict, no reason for the protagonist’s involvement. In essence, there would be no story. But to really bring our antagonist to life, we need to make them more than just a representative of ultimate evil.
Renea Guenther 