Readers like to be moved and touched by stories. They like to imagine themselves in situations and worlds that challenge them or give them to be or do something other than what they normally are or do in their lives. Good writes make their readers feel joy, fear, excited and know grief. But how do they do that? How do writers stir emotions of their readers?
Show rather than tell
Don’t report that a character is grieving or giddy or afraid. Instead, use the character’s actions to show grief or giddiness or fear. Character actions and responses are good places to focus. People don’t get emotional over reports.
Make Your character sympathetic
If your readers can identify with your characters—with their habits or dreams or choices— they can also identify with their emotions— joy or sorrow or pains. Make sure the readers know, understand and identifies with the character before attempting to connect emotionally.
Write emotion-evoking scenes
If you want to reach the emotions of the reader, you should never hold back. Injuring or killing a character loved one; pet or child will definitely touch the reader.
Word choice can affect reader’s emotions
Some words convey passion, humour or lightness. Other words have no or little emotional shading. Therefore, choose your words well.
Many readers like novels that have a compelling opening chapter. This chapter draws and leads them throughout the novel to the end. If readers are not “hooked” by the first chapter, they close the book. This means the author has failed to do his job.
If you want your book to be a bestseller or widely read, you must write a compelling opening chapter. The chapter ensures readers do not put away the book after reading the first page. Although it may not guarantee that readers will not close the book anytime they’re reading, it’s a foundation for your book.
There are various reasons why your book should have an interesting opening chapter. First, a compelling chapter convinces the editors that you can write, helping them to decide whether they will publish your book or not. Second, when the book is published, it makes the reader say, “This book is interesting.” If other chapters are interesting, the readers will finish reading your book. And– praise it.
To write a compelling opening chapter, first, write the compelling opening line. Only then the readers will take further look in the first chapter.
Describing something can be the most difficult part of writing prose fiction. Writers have scenes in their head, with all the action and dialogue, but they have to fill in what all things look like. Writing or reading a long descriptive passage is boring. However, there are several ways you can spice it up.
First, to avoid dull descriptions, you have to decide that you won’t go for blocks of boring text. Writers put a lot of effort into making their dialogue quotable and amazing. They should do the same for their descriptive passages. This might sound obvious; nevertheless, it’s an important step.
Second, good writers should engage all senses. The description isn’t just auditory and visual but also includes smell and touch. If it’s a restaurant or kitchen, it may include taste. Mentioning the room temperature also convince the readers that it’s a real place.
Third, it is important to know that description can be vivid and great without being lengthy. When it comes to description vividness, some writers argue that that less is more.
Finally, the description should be dynamic rather than static. Things change, and no place or person has been the same forever. For instance, when describing a person you can say: “Judging from her face, she was beautiful once…”
Do you think that people might laugh if you told them you have written a poem? Believe it or not, they would most likely be pretty impressed. After all, many world’s respected performers, rappers, and songwriters are poets who channel their voices into the spoken and written word. If rarely write poems, here are three reasons to get started.
It helps you to figure out your feelings
Let’s face it: there is much confusion in life. Maybe a friend said something rude to you, and you didn’t respond. Writing a poem about what happened will certainly help to sort out emotions. You might be feeling angry, nervous, guilty or betrayed. Putting words on paper enable you organize your thoughts.
Form of self-expression
Do you have something that you really want to say? Maybe you’re mad at your dad or mum. Maybe you’re in love. Maybe you’re tired of loneliness. Whatever you want to say, a poem provides a great opportunity to communicate.
Help to see the world differently
To turn a good poem into a great poem, the poet needs to add more details. Writing poem will encourage you to become more observant. For instance, where a layman will describe a lake as ‘blue lake’, a poet will describe the same lake as ‘navy blue lake with small, moving waves that’s filled with beautiful white geese and surrounded by dense, green pines.”
In all short stories or novels, protagonists are very important characters. Therefore, they traits matter a lot and help them connect with readers. The following are character traits that every central character should have:
Curious protagonists want to solve puzzles, mysteries and will want to know things that they might not be supposed to know. This means that they look for clues, take actions, find secrets, and get into trouble because of things they’ve found out.
After curiosity comes self-preservation. If protagonist falls into danger because of what they have found, it can be too much for them. Therefore, sense of self-preservation comes in and aims to make protagonist act in a different way so that he can escape danger.
People easily connect and like empathetic protagonists. Empathy involves helping those in need. It completes responsibility and duty. This trait enables the protagonist to go above and beyond to solve any mystery.
To move the story forward, the protagonist should be a leader. A good leader takes action and takes care of his or her people. It creates suspense when the leader fails to protect his people. A protagonist does everything to protect his people and this expands his character arc.